OldTools Archive

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274425 Nichael Cramer <nichael@s...> 2021‑08‑27 Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
From: "Brian Ward" 

 Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 11:01 AM
To: oldtools@g...
Subject: Re: [oldtools] No saw painting here
 : As a side note perhaps related to the "rookie" bit mentioned by Greg:
: I've been plodding through "The Woodworker Volume I" published by LAP, and
I've come across
 : a common theme in the articles about saws. They say that sharpening a saw is
a
 : job "best left to the professionals," saying that the worker shouldn't do
anything more
 : than a touch-up between sharpenings.
:
: To this, of course, I say: "HUMBUG"
:
: I've been considering writing a post on my dumb blog about this statement,
 : but haven't really figured out an angle. It doesn't fit my style much, as I
try to be practical,
 : refraining from posts on, uh, religious and political matters.

While I much appreciate the sentiment and the spirit here I'd only offer a small
comment
 that "Well, there are saws and there are saws."
 And, ditto, "There are situations and there are situations."

 For example  I would certainly trust-and certainly have trusted- myself to
sharpen my beloved 5pt rip saws and my 7pt crosscuts.

 (In these cases 1] all my "training" was gained "second-hand" I.e. by way of
reading and watching videos, primarily because
 I've never been near enough to anyone I could ask for hands-on help or advice;
and 2] in these cases I have
 enough back-up saws to help me get over the initial learning-curve, as well as
to enable me to survive
 the -still- occasionally botched job)

 .nonetheless, I still think it would be money well spent to turn over my
18(+)pt dovetail saws exclusively to the hands of
 a knowledgable, seasoned pro -again, at least were I ever to be lucky enough to
find access to such a wizard.

 (And, again, my past efforts at trying to sharpen such fine -in both senses-
tools have made it more than clear to me the wisdom
 of following such a  path.   And while I readily, and humbly, acknowledge that
there are those here on the Porch who could whip off
 such a job without breaking a sweat, there are also those of us -well, at least
one of us- for whom this is just ain't never
 meant to happen.)

 N
In hot, sticky southern Vermont.
274443 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2021‑08‑28 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
Yeah, 12 points and above... you either must have ‘young eyes’, or good
magnification.   Maybe both.  And bright raking light.

On a 16 pt saw, a single erroneous stroke can ‘disappear’ a whole tooth,
especially if you are using a ‘too-big’ file.  Yeah, I’ve done it.  But, if
you know how to sharpen a 7 point, you can certainly do a 12 point.  It
ain’t rocket surgery, and the only way we get better at anything is by
practice. Make mistakes and learn from them.  So start with a junker, and
sharpen it.
  I’ve even totally removed all the ugly teeth (all “sergeants and
sappers”)  on a junk $1 saw and cut in new teeth, using a home made
template to cut in new gullets with a (gulp) mini-hacksaw (Paul Sellers has
a free video on how to do it that is worth watching ...and trying).  This
saves your file- the corner of the saw file is the part that breaks down
first, especially on old saws with irregular tempering.  When you look at
used saw files under magnification, you’ll see that the file teeth are
broken off only along the very corner, and no where else.  There’s actually
a tiny flat along the corner of the file, otherwise you couldn’t sink the
corner of the file into the saw plate.  The smaller the saw file, the
narrower the flat.  Maybe we shouldn’t call them 3 sided files (since there
are six sides if we include these tiny flats)?
  Once you have the depth of the gullet cut, shaping the tooth is easy.
All galoots have junk saws lying around, right?  Just start doing it, you
can always bury your mistakes.  No one has to know.
But I’ll bet after a couple of hours you’ll be passable, and after a couple
dozen hours you’ll be pretty good at it.
Cheers
Claudio
274450 scottg <scottg@s...> 2021‑08‑29 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
If I could afford a pro like Bob Page to do my finer tooth saws I 
certainly would.
In fact I would hire him right on the spot if it weren't for ruinous 
postage both ways.

   Shipping is pretty cruel these days. I just returned an alternator to 
Rock Auto using their returns connection with Fedex. 10 bucks to ship a 
15 pound thing in a box across the country.
They'd have charged me 30-40. Even the post office would have wanted over 20

  In my dim age here I have to do fine teeth by feel more than anything 
else.
I use great light and magnification, but still it comes down to feel for me.
   I suppose that is partly "miniature training".  When the work is so 
small your fingertips or even a tiny tool completely obscure it, working 
by feel is all you have.
It can sometimes be surprising what you can do by not even looking.
  yours scott

-- 
*******************************
    Scott Grandstaff
    Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca  96039
    scottg@s...
    http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/sgrandstaff/
    http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/hpages/index.html
274452 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2021‑08‑29 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
One more small point (accidental pun) on anything above 12 points to the inch:
I’m not sure there is any benefit to filing cross cut?  I just go to a simple
rip pattern for the small teeth because even with magnification I ended up
missing the tooth space I intended and screwed it all up.  I had intended to
just file all the teeth at 90 degrees first (ie rip pattern) just  to start over
with  ordinary rip pattern teeth before filing facets into it to restore  it
back to the ‘factory’ crosscut pattern.  Then  I cross cut through a couple of
bits of scrap just to see how it cut before doing anything else to it (so I’d
have a baseline) and then realized, why the hell would I even want to?  It
worked just fine, since I was only using it to cut the shoulders of tenons
anyways.  So from then on, all backsaws 12 points or greater were filed rip
pattern.  On the bigger teeth, cross cut filing makes a big difference.  On
little teeth, I can’t feel or see any practical difference in performance, and
it’s a lot simpler to sharpen. Ten minutes and you’re done, even less on a
gent’s saw.  This follows the first of the basic principles of all sharpening:
It has to be a process that is fast, easy, and efficient, otherwise you won’t do
it when you should. As soon as you feel the tool isn’t cutting as sweet as it
should, you can sharpen up in a few minutes and get back to good condition
without making a big deal out of it and ruining your work flow.
  And it you are doing miniatures like ScottG, get a $10 Zona saw with small
teeth (I think its 24 tpi or something); (they don’t call them razor saws for
nothing- I sliced through the skin of my knuckle in a moment of carelessness
years ago).  They really cut well, and the form factor is excellent, especially
for model size projects (Jewellery boxes or doll house furniture and whatever)
or if you are using really thin stock.  Desktop dovetailed boxes made with 3/16
or  !/4” thick stock look delicate but are very strong.
Cheers
Claudio
274453 Brian Ward <bri@a...> 2021‑08‑30 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
Generally, I've not found much above 12TPI crosscut to be terribly useful,
though I have been thinking about making a 14TPI backsaw as an experiment
sometime. This does, however, bring out an interesting facet of saw sharpening:
I find the higher TPI saws easier to sharpen because all of mine are rip.

Regarding magnification: Yeah, it's necessary. 10-15 years ago, I could get away
doing it with just some reading glasses. That, uh, did not last.

There is one more thing I'd mention about sending your saws out for sharpening
that I'd like to mention in regards to that series of The Woodworker articles I
mentioned. This was during a time when you could just take your saws somewhere
to have them sharpened. I speculate (and nothing more than that) that our known
professional sharpeners are better than your average service of years past. The
people doing it today are focused on maximizing quality, but those in the past
would have likely been doing it as quickly as possible. Though the teeth might
look fine, it's easier to get uneven or not-quite-done teeth that way.

Oh boy, I have one more silly related tidbit to add on this subject. I have a
Pax saw (skewback, like a D8) that I believe was made in the 1990s or so. I
traded a crappy free computer conference T-shirt for it at one of our
BAG-a-thons (I don't know if any of the BAGs know that story); the owner was
unhappy with how it was (wasn't) working. A quick examination revealed that it
wasn't sharp, so I sharpened it, and now it's a champ that I use frequently,
ugly handle and all. Years later, I watched a Ken Hawley video showing how these
later saws were made, and I totally understand. The speed at which the worker
sets and files the teeth is jaw-dropping; the thing is, he probably didn't have
much of a choice.

I am as slow as molasses (and have video to prove it). I don't think it's such a
bad thing.
274468 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2021‑08‑31 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
Re “professional saw sharpening shops”
  Most of the busy shops of the last century had Foley Saw Filing machines
as well as Foley re-Toothers that could punch in new saw teeth.  I’ve had
bits and bobs or old machines in the past but the main drawback is that the
template bars are almost always MIA when these machines were sold by the
estate ( often only having the last used bar mounted in the machine when it
was sold.). There’s an active group around that provides support for people
interested in these old machines and someone was machining new template
bars (or whatever they were called) for restoration projects.  I doubt that
many saw shops spent much time hand filing anything.
 Cheers from Waterloo
Claudio
274469 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2021‑08‑31 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
>  I doubt that many saw shops spent much time hand filing anything. 

While YMMV, the shop I used to patronize (retirement closed its doors --
around 30 years ago) I often chatted with the owner (3rd generation or
so).  He once talked about hand filing, marathon hand filing.  On
Fridays after work ended, contractors would bring in all their saws. 
All were to be ready by Monday morning.  That was his family's weekend. 
I still mourn the closing of that shop.  They had sharpened every
conceivable tool with generations of experience! 

Mike in Woodland
274470 Brian Ward <bri@a...> 2021‑08‑31 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
Regarding Foleys and other saw filing machines: This is definitely true in North
America, but the articles I was originally referencing are English in origin. I
don't know how much we need to rehash it, but there's a historical refrain that
automation was of prime importance in the US/Canada because skilled labor was in
such short supply.

I don't know how common saw filing machines were over in England (and the UK in
general), but I sure can't seem to find any online listings for any, and all of
the big-name manufacturers (at least that I know about) were American. Now, I'm
only speculating here, but knowing how the general woodworking trade progressed
in both places, it might not be a stretch to suspect that saw sharpening by hand
might have been common in England at the time that the articles were written.

Perhaps someone over on the other side of the Atlantic can provide some actual
insight.

Anyways, I guess I should give my not-too-valuable take on the Foleys. They are
super neat to see in action. Was it Kirk's that I've seen? I don't know how much
I trust one to sharpen a saw, but again, that is speculation without actual
experience. (I'd need to run experiments, which is unlikely to happen unless
someone around here has one and an abundance of time and patience.)

Aside: For a somewhat related and perhaps amusing take on bandsaw sharpening,
here is a July 1909 article from "The Wood-Worker" (not to be confused with "The
Woodworker;" read a little and you'll see why):

https://books.google.com/books?id=GSNaAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA4-PA31&lpg=RA4-
PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false
274472 Don Schwartz <dks@t...> 2021‑08‑31 Re: Saws/pros/etc [was: Re: No saw painting here]
It seems that content may only be available to US users. I had to use my 
VPN to get a US IP address before I could view the content...

Don

On 2021-08-31 6:44 a.m., Brian Ward wrote:
> Regarding Foleys and other saw filing machines: This is definitely true in
North America, but the articles I was originally referencing are English in
origin. I don't know how much we need to rehash it, but there's a historical
refrain that automation was of prime importance in the US/Canada because skilled
labor was in such short supply.
>
> I don't know how common saw filing machines were over in England (and the UK
in general), but I sure can't seem to find any online listings for any, and all
of the big-name manufacturers (at least that I know about) were American. Now,
I'm only speculating here, but knowing how the general woodworking trade
progressed in both places, it might not be a stretch to suspect that saw
sharpening by hand might have been common in England at the time that the
articles were written.
>
> Perhaps someone over on the other side of the Atlantic can provide some actual
insight.
>
> Anyways, I guess I should give my not-too-valuable take on the Foleys. They
are super neat to see in action. Was it Kirk's that I've seen? I don't know how
much I trust one to sharpen a saw, but again, that is speculation without actual
experience. (I'd need to run experiments, which is unlikely to happen unless
someone around here has one and an abundance of time and patience.)
>
> Aside: For a somewhat related and perhaps amusing take on bandsaw sharpening,
here is a July 1909 article from "The Wood-Worker" (not to be confused with "The
Woodworker;" read a little and you'll see why):
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=GSNaAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA4-PA31&lpg=RA
4-PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
>
> 
>
>

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