Thread: Sometimes the small things leave you with good feelings

I've never been a guy that liked western saws. In fact since I was first shown a Japanese saw in 1978 or 9 I've maybe used western saws two or three times since. They just never made sense to push through wood as opposed to pull with an ultra thin blade that slices through effortlessly. A few years back I acquired 7, 5 Disstons, a Spear and Jacksons and a Simonds, rip and crosscut saws at a car boot sale in the UK for 10pound; and another two brass back saws, dovetail and carcass saw, from somewhere else for probably a tenner each... Basically, pretty hard to pass up. My goal was to flip them when I got back... But they spent the next seven or eight years in a cupboard gathering rust and dust...

Then recently I was helping out a couple sort out their deceased fathers' tools. I've mentioned here a few times the stuff this guy squirrelled away. I.e. Pristine Stanley 55 and 45. Five infill planes where one is a Norris jack plane that's maybe been used once to see how it worked and that's it. Plenty of Liberty Bell planes. It just went on and on... In that menagerie of tools I did grab a couple of the things that were well on the user end of things... Two of which were the two saws in the pic. How they look now, is not what I dragged out into the light of day. They were in absolute awful condition. The only thing that caught my interest in them was the unfamiliar medallions. I may not use western saws but I have been paying attention to woodworking tools since the late 70s. Heck, I bought my first plane when I was 15, in 79, a Stanley 45... Anyways, the top one was caked in congealed oil. I think the son said his father loved to put linseed oil on everything, over and over till whatever it was, was completely cocooned in the stuff. But the teeth looked good, in fact it looked like they were factory teeth. The bottom one was in real S#$t shape, almost a throw away is what it looked like. Caked in oil but also rust had gotten to some of it. And it was missing about 25% of the teeth. Personally I have no idea how someone could knock off that many teeth, but I was to find out later why...

So they were willing to part with them for a total of 30 bucks, which I thought was a bit too generous, but the medallions were driving my curiosity. So I get them home and brake out the wire wheel, course steel wool and turps. Thankfully the handles come off easily and I attack the plates. Took about two hours to strip the gunk off. The top one has a partial etching that I later dug into. The bottom one showed no evidence of an etching so I thought it was probably some cheapo, especially because so many teeth were broken off. Handles were stripped, cleaned and sanded. Top one was nothing special, just beech, not even a fruit wood. Had me thinking more, I paid too much... The bottom one however, the handle when sanded really caught my attention. I also noticed it was heavier than I expected. As I looked closer, I thought maybe it's pear, definitely not Apple. Then the penny dropped, it's rosewood! Well that got my attention!! The colour in the pic is its natural colour, finished with padded on shellac.

So later that night I have the first saw plate under the lights trying to decipher the partial etching writing. Turns out it's a saw made by a company called: Abraham Ashton Ltd. Hmmm I thinks. Now I need to dig out my uncles family tree stuff and do some looking. Well bugger me!! This guy turns out to be my great great great, somewhere down the tree, uncle. I've always known my family on my dads side have been tool makers and cutlers in Sheffield but I didn't know anything more... Turns out he wasn't known for making good saws but hey, it's worth fixing up now, that's for sure!!

The second one is also interesting. It has very good pedigree from the US. It was made by G.H. Bishop & Co Cincinnati. Apparently, saw collectors in the US snapped them up real fast when they find them... Problem with this one though is it needs serious surgery. Now remember I said I haven't used a western saw since about grade 10. And as such I haven't even touch a saw file - ever. After all, no one ever tries to file a Japanese saw that I use.

So I did ask here if anyone knew a good saw guy around Brisbane or Sunshine Coast, but no joy was had. I did find a saw guy in Wide Bay that wasn't all that keen to take mine and punch out new teeth. But he was willing to take about 20mins of his time and explain what I might encounter with such a saw - really nice guy. He expected it to be quite brittle, after what I described to him and its age and I'd probably have issues with setting the teeth and them breaking off. Anyway, it was up to me to either leave it alone or try my hand at filing a saw. The temptation was too great and I headed down the rabbit hole. It was also good thinking on my part to buy a bunch of saw files the son had to go with the saws...

Now here's were a highly unknowledgeable, probably better described as an idiot, guy takes on a saw. I wasn't going to file off the remaining teeth, I broke out the angle grinder and proceeded to rip them off LOL. I was however more gentile and used a file to joint the plate flat. Now, I'm not the sort that likes to follow the rules or the crowd and in this case it was the same. The plate was stamped with 7tpi. But I didn't want a 7tpi saw, I wanted to be different, so I decided on 12tpi. But there is no way in hell I was going to file over 300 teeth. Me being the ignorant saw sharpening guy decided to short cut the process and use the angle grinder to rough the teeth out. Now is where all the smart saw guys are saying: what an effin idiot. I drew out a pattern in sketchup and contact cemented it to the plate, shaped a disk to 60 degrees and got down to business. In all honesty, one thing I am really good at is hand eye coordination and dexterity, so I actually did pretty good at roughing the teeth out. Now it was down to finish them off with a file - easy right... Well did I ever F%^k that up. What a mess I did of filing. Teeth as bad as a pom from Jaywick. I remember the saw expert saying bluing the teeth would harden them, but a close inspection showed no such bluing. So I suspect what he also said, the saw plate had inconsistent hardness along its length and my file was being pushed all over the place. To say the least it was a bit deflating.

Out came the grinder again and back to a blank slate. I thought maybe I should do the smart thing this time and start with fewer teeth and stick to the 7tpi... So back to sketchup and a new pattern. But I was still not keen on filing all those teeth from scratch either, so out came the grinder again. Now I do remember the guy saying bluing the teeth hardened them. But that didn't happen on the first attempt as I was good at not dwelling long enough to heat the plate to 400F... It was going pretty good until I noticed the grinding wheel was glazing over... I tried to deglaze but it wasn't all that successful, but it was too late to stop now, so I thought. Grinding done, out came the file. First 20 or 30 teeth all good... Next ten teeth I destroyed the file. Yup, I had glazed the disk and started bluing the teeth. There was no point in carrying on. I was about to give up and just toss the saw. Thought, no, it's time for a beer or four and have a think. After the calming elixir had hit my brain, I decided I'd give it one more attempt, but I was going back to 12tpi. My gut feeling was I wanted a nice clean cutting crosscut saw, like I had originally planned. But this time I would file the teeth. One thing was for sure - I was going to need more beer. So got through the first file at 90 degrees and then a light rejoint and back through again at 10 degrees to take off any flat spots and give it a crosscut pattern - whatever that's called.

So, what you see there in the pic is the final attempt - third time lucky! There's a few teeth that went rogue, but over all it turned out good. The litmus test however was setting the teeth. As planned I wanted a really fine cutting saw, so I gave it only the bare minimum of set. Not a single one broke off! All in all it only took 5 more beers.

That was a couple weeks ago and tonight was my first time trying the saws. That’s were the title to this book comes from. Put a big grin on my face using them. The Bishop saw has such a long and smooth stroke with 12tpi, and it cut straight! And just enough set, any less and it would bind up. It takes a real light grip and very little effort to cut with – I let the saw do all the work. And the Ashton is an average saw but I have a distant connection to it. So overall, if you’re still reading this, I ended up with two really nice surprises from what I thought were junk. And learned something new. When trying to sharpen saws, have beer on hand, I make less mistakes then.