Thread: A Crazy Saw Service

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I may have to consider taking them with me.

Regards
Paul

Paul,
Are are you now saying your preparing for the after life.
Container tombs could be a massive hit financial.
I PM you with my business proposal, I think we have hit the jackpot.

Cheers Matt,

Fantastic work, Paul. I apologize I've been a bit absent on this thread, but I've been periodically checking progress, and the end result is just great. If they work even a fraction as well as they look, you've got yourself a solid joinery kit there!

And a few hundred other saws just in case...

I really like the Silky Oak handle. It may be a bit softer than the outback material you're used to, but it's a good analog for Beech, which, despite its somewhat lackluster appearance and slightly excessive prevalence, I still really like.

Bravo. A great homage to some great saws.

But what will you do now?

Cheers,
Luke

Luke

I have not really given them a test run apart from the brief tussle with the two closed handle back saws a few posts back and even there I am still in the process of re-visiting the tooth set up. The rip saw I had re-purposed and it was already a proven performer so I don't have too much doubt that it will do the job. I will have to get stuck into them soon and as you know I do have a few back ups ; Just in case .

What will I do now? Well, there are always saws to resharpen and I have one more user saw that needed to be re-handled and that is mostly completed, but I will come back to that later in the Simonds story thread. There are two more projects in the pipeline that were pretty much running contemporaneously with the Kenyons and this was partly the reason for the protracted time taken for completion of the Kenyons ( when I think on it the Kenyons are not really signed off yet). One project is a little lateral thinking on sharpening and the other is to do with work benches and an alternative to expensive bench hardware: I digress. That will all have to wait for some separate threads, but seeing as how you asked, you got the exclusive

Regards
Paul

Paul,

The saws look really great,I was just waiting for the general riff raft to die down a bit before I comment on them.
It seems this end of the forum for some unknown reason attracts a lot of undesirable attention[emoji849].

As Ian so elegantly put it, you set yourself up for a big challenge, not just one saw, a group of saws,none the lest.
Plus some new timber types to work with in them self coursing a few issues.
I take my hat [emoji145] off to you.

With regards final fitting of the saw bolts and the filing them flush.A hazardous endeavour.
Can I suggest you get a six pack of your favourite vice liquor lol.
Consume at least two maybe three for a bit of Dutch courage,and then cut one on the cans up into nice little flat squares 50 mm or so with a hole slightly bigger than the saw bolts to be filed flush.
You can the use the fresh bits of disposable aluminium has safely gasket!!

Cheers Matt,

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Paul,

The saws look really great,I was just waiting for the general riff raft to die down a bit before I comment on them.
It seems this end of the forum for some unknown reason attracts a lot of undesirable attention[emoji849].

As Ian so elegantly put it, you set yourself up for a big challenge, not just one saw, a group of saws,none the lest.
Plus some new timber types to work with in them self coursing a few issues.
I take my hat [emoji145] off to you.

With regards final fitting of the saw bolts and the filing them flush.A hazardous endeavour.
Can I suggest you get a six pack of your favourite vice liquor lol.
Consume at least two maybe three for a bit of Dutch courage,and then cut one on the cans up into nice little flat squares 50 mm or so with a hole slightly bigger than the saw bolts to be filed flush.
You can the use the fresh bits of disposable aluminium has safely gasket!!

Cheers Matt,

Matt

The thin aluminium safety sheet is such a good suggestion. I was toying with something similar, but I was locked into paper, which is too frail or cardboard, which is too thick. Do you recommend six cans for each saw? I have to bow to your greater experience in this area.

The issues with the timber itself were two fold as far as the hardware was concerned. The soft timber, being the Silky Oak, allowed me to pull one of the saw screws in too far while all the other hard timbers had no give at all and the brass was giving way with no sign of the timber yielding at all. So I still have a little bit of adjustment to do there.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Matt

The thin aluminium safety sheet is such a good suggestion. I was toying with something similar, but I was locked into paper, which is too frail or cardboard, which is too thick. Do you recommend six cans for each saw? I have to bow to your greater experience in this area.

The issues with the timber itself were two fold as far as the hardware was concerned. The soft timber, being the Silky Oak, allowed me to pull one of the saw screws in too far while all the other hard timbers had no give at all and the brass was giving way with no sign of the timber yielding at all. So I still have a little bit of adjustment to do there.

Regards
Paul

Paul,
Being as there are 6 saws, and I’m sure up your way beverages come in packs of six or more.
I would be inclined to go six drinks per saw 5 to drum up the necessary courage.
The reminder to cut up for safety sheets.

Cheers Matt,

Paul, I just accept that I'm going to have to finish (or re-finish) the cheeks after assembly if using the split-nut style bolts. There is no way I can think of that you can get a truly flush surface & preserve a pre-finish on the cheeks. Apparently, Henry D. couldn't either, as he mentions in his patent application for domed bolts that they save time vs the flush type by not having to re-finish the wood after assembly.

Early on, I was putting a rounded chamfer on the bolt heads & nuts for my saws, and having them stand proud by a 1/2mmor so, something between a flush fit & the domed type. However, it was a lot of fussing to get the counter-sinks exact, so there was the same amount of reveal around every head & nut, & in the end, I gave up & went the flush route, which is more certain! As long as it's just the cheeks that have to be re-finished, it's not such a big chore for a few saws.

If you use something like a 10 inch smooth flat file or 2nd cut cut mill file of the same length, it doesn't take long to get them very close to the surface. My point in using a finer file is that if you do accidentally graze the wood, it doesn't do any significant damage. Once you get them close, switch to sanding, starting with 180 grit (use a hard wooden block to back the paper). If you want to put a really nice sheen on the brass, work through to some very fine grade of W&D, or stop at 400 grit & polish with 0000 steel wool (which puts a nice sheen on the wood, too).

Any old saws in original condition that I've seen had pretty coarse marks on the bolt heads, so if you want a 'genuine' look, just stop at 180 grit.....

Matt: Was I suggesting Studley & Seaton are elaborate hoaxers?? Nooooo, just pointing out that we never know anything with absolute certainty....

Cheers,

Paul,
I’m un sure if you realise some of us degenerates are waiting for an update.
I sincerely hope you haven’t stuck those beautiful saws up on a rack in one of those container boxes[emoji849],
I understand there was a little apprehensiveness about the flatting the last few saw nuts.

Cheers Matt,

Matt

Thank you for realigning my focus.

The truth is.....Actually the truth is very unexciting. I still have to adjust the saw screws and I do have to have somewhere to keep those saws and the other "users." In fact I have earmarked some timber for just that. I have done more work on the sharpening and the backs are very firmly fixed to the plates. In fact one saw was so firmly fixed to the plate that I damaged one of my work benches in the process, but I don't want to talk about that.

As my shed is a little on the al fresco side I really do have to keep the saws covered. While I am not in the humid coastal area like Ian, the weather blows into the shed and the roof leaks a little: Not much, but always where I have left a saw out on the bench: I think the leak has a saw tracking device fixed to it. I may do some work on the saws or the saw till tomorrow.

Regards
Paul

I tackled the adjustment of the saw screws today. A couple sat low in the holes and some sat proud, too proud. Small pieces of leather were punched out of an old pair of ladies' boots to pack out the saw screws and filed down where appropriate. The reason I was apprehensive about filing was my method of finishing. I use BLO first and when dry, I apply two coats of matt varnish. Then there is a drying time before rubbing down with steel wool and a light oil: I use teak oil. Finally a coat of wax is applied. I realised that the filing process for the screws would remove all three layers and I really did not want to repeat the whole process to repair the damage.

Consequently I only applied teak oil with steel wool and then used wax over that. Some saws were more noticeably blotchy than others and I have not got around to the handsaws at all.

This is after the filing stage:

P1040615 (Medium).JPGP1040616 (Medium).JPG P1040618 (Medium).JPGP1040617 (Medium).JPGP1040619 (Medium).JPGP1040620 (Medium).JPGP1040621 (Medium).JPGP1040622 (Medium).JPG

Now there was another issue, which I have not yet mentioned. I closed up the slit in the backs ready for fixing to the plates. I had originally tried closing up the slit by placing the brass back in the bench vice, but I did not seem to be able to apply sufficient pressure easily so I used the hydraulic press at work, but very gingerly being mindful of Ian's warning not to make them too tight. The backs I have encountered so far have been folded and I think this gives them a degree of spring despite the folded back normally "touching" once the back is removed. On old saws they are frequently very tight indeed, but the slot is deeper than will the milled slot.

Well, I think I got them pretty right: Except for one! The largest back saw with the Silky Oak handle and the massive back. I over cooked it and the back was very tight to slide on. I had the saw held firmly in my engineers vice and I used my largest mallet to hammer the back on. I got just over half way and it became clear that the mallet was not man enough for the job. This was after what seemed like hours but in reality was only half an hour, which is still about twenty five minutes too long. I grabbed a small club hammer and an offcut of 4 x 2 hardwood and attacked the back again. I probably had it about just over three quarters of the way on and hung up my hammer for the evening. Buggered!!

On returning the next day I twigged why it was getting progressively harder to shift. This is bearing mind that with each saw I had applied a liberal amount of grease to the plate where the back was travelling. I had used an old hand saw plate as the basis for this saw and it has a taper grind. As the back was being driven further on, as well as the compound effect of the frictional length, the plate was getting thicker as it approached the handle.
While this explained the difficulty I was having it didn't help the ease of attachment. In fact there was a problem which had escaped my attention. My engineers vice has a rotating feature and it kept rotating under the hammer's persuasion. I continually had to loosen off the vice and straighten the saw.

P1040625 (Medium).JPG

On one occasion I had not realised that the saw had made contact with the table to which the vice is fixed. I damaged the lower horn:


P1040623 (Medium).JPG

A repair is in progress:

P1040624 (Medium).JPG

The bench did not fare well either. It was not bowed before I started . I was hitting from the right hand side.

P1040627 (Medium).JPG

Tomorrow I will wax them and see how they come up.

Regards
Paul

Hmm, I think I would've just re-shaped the horn & accepted it wasn't quite the same as the original, Paul. It was only a small chip.

It was the SO version, I see, & to my mind, G. robusta is a little on the soft side for handles, but I do fear, even with the tougher woods, that the delicacy of the Kenyon style horns is going to be their undoing at some point during their lifetime. I'm certainly treating my example with even more care than I give to other saws, whose handles are based more on Mr. Disston's less 'refined' offerings..

I've occasionally over-squeezed a back or two, & the solution I applied was to file a knife edge on a short scrap of plate, hammer that in, then tap it along the slot. Using a slightly thicker bit of plate than the intended blade opened it enough without losing the 'spring'. With a shorter piece of plate, there's less drag, so it's a lot easier to move it along than trying to slide the spine along the entire back. Mind you, I'm talking about 1/4" thick spines, not the whopper-sized mutha you were dealing with, so that method may not have worked in your case. Murphy never leaves us alone, does he? It would've been far less of a drama if you'd over-squeezed one of the smaller, thinner backs!

Ah well, you've learned a few things about saw-making on this project. One, perhaps, being not to take on such an ambitious number & variety for your first serious saw-making foray? I'm only rubbing it in because I did something similar with my first dovetailed plane build; I wasn't content to begin with a straight-sided version & learn the ropes a bit. Oh no, through foolishness or hubris (or plenty of both!), I had to leap into a coffin-shaped style straight off. At one point, things seemed to be going very badly, & I just couldn't see my way forward, so I put the whole project aside & ignored it for a very long time. Eventually, I found the time & the courage to re-visit it, & managed to get it all together, but the experience scarred me & it was quite a few years before I summoned the courage to tackle a second coffin shaped body. Something must've clicked in my brain in the intervening years, because the second attempt went so smoothly it made me nervous. I was expecting disaster to strike at any moment, the whole way, but thankfully, it didn't.

In fact, I was just using said plane yesterday & thinking what a sweet little thing it turned out to be, the best I've managed to date, & a very definite 'keeper'. But I recently saw one of Konrad Steiner's gorgeous little rear-bun style coffin smoothers, with a strikingly-figured infill, & it started me thinking. I just happen to have a lovely chunk of Ringed Gidgee that I think would go a treat as infill, & it's just the right size, too! But the thought makes me extremely nervous, I reckon I have probably reached the top of my game, & there's only one way to go from there!

Cheers,

Ian

In the flesh, the horn ( I might have worded this a little better on reflection) was more damaged than it appears in the pix and one of my dislikes is seeing either top or bottom horn obviously cut down, most likely for the very reason we are discussing here. I agree that the Silky oak is a little on the soft side, but I am not sure any of the timbers would have survived the episode. The saw had rotated until the lower horn contacted the bench while at the other end I was literally flogging the back as hard as I could given a slightly restricted space in which to swing the hammer. The appeal and the weakness of this London pattern is the fineness of those horns. A partially flawed design, but I still like 'em.

Towards the very end of this spine process I could no longer move the back at all and I grabbed an old wide chisel, which had become sacrificial, and tapped it into the remaining portion of the slot gradually moving it along and slightly opening it as I went. This turned out to be sufficient to move the spine along the remaining 100mm or so. I can with a fair degree of certainty say this back is unlikely to fall off or suffer the dropped toe syndrome. This project was not quite my first saw build as I had made two before this, but it is certainly true to say that I learnt a lot and that the learning curve was steep.

I doubt these will be the last saws I make, but I will do all I can to avoid making a saw with more than 13ppi if I possibly can! I hate little teeth.



Regards
Paul

Ian

You already mentioned that the extra thick back would not have helped the issue with the tightness. I also suspect that despite the application of grease, the brass may still have "picked up" on the steel. 19" is good opprtunity for this to happen somewhere along the length compared to the other three shorter saws.As you know, and have pointed out to me, brass tends to grab when drilling if not very careful.s

However, I may be making excuses.

Regards
Paul

The repair continues:

P1040639 (Medium).JPGP1040640 (Medium).JPG

As you can the join is more visible from some angles than others. I am hoping it will be less visible as the finishing process continues.

P1040641 (Medium).JPGP1040642 (Medium).JPGP1040643 (Medium).JPG

Only BLO has been applied so far. Varnish, Teak oil and wax still to go.

Regards
Paul