Thread: What is this Tool

Setting teeth on saws perhaps?

Not sure Mike, but it looks similar to a sheet metal gauge.

I've seen many similar ones in antique and collectable shops; it's a form of thickness gauge and may be specific to saw making. Someone else is bound to know for sure and will enlighten the pair of us!

Originally Posted by cava

Setting teeth on saws perhaps?

That's it [emoji3]

If you google "saw wrest" you'll find plenty of pics/info.
Cheers
Tim


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sawset

Excellent. Thanks everyone for your responses

Cheers
Mike

as above sawset

Saw Roy Underhill use one on one of his saw sharpening shows.

It is a saw set of the older kind and required a fair bit of skill to use. More likely to be used by a proper saw doctor. Woodworkers mostly use the pliers kind of saw set.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by orraloon

It is a saw set of the older kind and required a fair bit of skill to use. More likely to be used by a proper saw doctor. Woodworkers mostly use the pliers kind of saw set.
Regards
John

Older and wiser heads may correct me but I would imagine that with a little practice you could get it pretty close by eye and simply bring the teeth into full square by lightly running a stone along the edges to true up the teeth.

John

Thanks again for all the responses.

For anyone interested in seeing one of these in action (refer to post from porchguy) above you can use this link

Watch Full Episodes Online of The Woodwright's Shop on PBS | Sharpen That Saw!

Go to about 10 minutes in to the video.

Cheers
MikeG

An extra 10c worth. If you think the saw wrest is a going to take some skillz.

I picked up some tools from a guy a while back and he showed me a photo of his great grandfather setting saws. With an object that looked a lot like a finer version of a brickies hammer.

Tap tap tap on every second tooth, turn over and repeat. About two minutes to set a full size panel saw.

Anyone care to try?

Apparently Bad-Axe saws use a hammer-setting jig .. it came up in the past a bit ..

and Spear & Jackson catalogues (circa 1910 maybe?) (Homesy?) used to describe it as "better" than the plier setting.

Cheers,
Paul

Thanks for dobbing me in, Paul. You know I just like looking at the pictures.

Yes, S&J advocated hammer setting. This image is from the c1930 S&J catalogue. Something I did not appreciate was the guard that could be fitted to the saw set to avoid over setting the teeth (and thereby make setting the teeth more even along the saw's length).


S&J Saw Sets (c1930).jpg