Thread: Saw Reberth

As part of a job lot, I picked up a rusty Great Neck 26" saw with a plastic handle, probably from the 1950s/1960s. There was a kink in the blade so... I cut off the kinked portion, leaving 16.5". The steel seems ok, taper ground in both length and width. I thought a short panel rip might be useful. I did not take a before picture, however I found one on Web – this one is in better condition than mine was:
great neck.jpg

Here are pictures of the rebirthed saw. I like saw plate to shine, makes lining up the cut easier.
DSCF8491.jpgDSCF8493.jpg

The 3rd picture shows the portion of saw plate cut-off to give an indication of what it looked like. The notches on top are from my use of this plate as a file tester.
DSCF8502.jpg

So I cleaned up the saw plate, and it was not too bad under the rust and gunk. And ground off the teeth, a few were broken (it was hopelessly over-set, so not a surprise), and re-toothed to 11 ppi as a fine toothed rip saw. The plate was curved at the handle end (like a D-8. I cut-off the curve to avoid cutting a curved slot), and was significantly angled away from 90°. This made handle design a bit (very) difficult, so I worked from a general design, and winged it from there. As a result the handle is somewhat idiosyncratic, however feels good in the hand, and cuts well. I will make changes if I do another handle to this general design.

I reused the original nickel plated steel saw screws, after de-rusting (the saw screws are still sold http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000G33PA8/...ords=saw+screw, although are slightly different in dimensions - and very cheap at US$0.38 cents each - I have some of them, they are better than the illustration suggests). There are a couple of weak areas around the hand hold, so might not stand up to hard use. I will post my repair if/when it breaks.

The interesting curves to the saw plate below the handle are a result of cutting out the original lowest screw hole - adds some character to the saw.

I cut the handle slot using the Angle Mag to ensure an accurate cut, using a Japanese saw that cut just the right width. The slot goes a long way, and I noticed the saw wandered a bit towards the end of the cut, a problem with the thin plate flexing I guess on the Japanese saw - and it was very slow. I probably should have used the actual saw plate with no set... next time perhaps.

This handle is intended as a test run... but whether I re-design... I have a great Sandvik 1950s hand saw with a similar (but better and 4 screw) handle that I was thinking of re-handling, but will run into the same problem with the rounded and angled sawplate. Has anyone re-handled a vintage Sandvik?

Cheers
Peter