I really hope you find it useful. As to the production quality, I’ve done the best I could. I had to record it outside, so there is a bit of wind noise in places and some other background noises courtesy of my neighbours, but hopefully it won’t spoil your enjoyment.

It is best viewed full screen in 1080 high definition with external speakers or headphones. If you have AppleTV, you can play it on the big screen too. Alternatively, if your laptop has an HDMI connector, you can link it directly to your TV using your TV as an external monitor. So pop some corn, grab a cold one and enjoy.

This instructional video has been provided free of charge and I’m not looking to profit personally from it in any way whatsoever. However, every year my local community puts on a charity Christmas carnival, the purpose of which is to raise money for local charities by collecting donations from the general public on the day. If you find the video useful and would like to show your appreciation, please consider making a donation at http://www.highcliffecarnival.org.uk/

When you navigate to the site, you’ll see a link on the left called Make a donation.

Click that link and it will take you to the Donations page which will explain how you can help us make a difference to people’s lives. At the bottom of the that page is a Donate button.

Click that button and it will take you through to Paypal where you can make your donation in a secure environment.

Please give whatever you think is appropriate. 100% of the money you donate will go towards the carnival and help up raise even more money for charity on the day. If you have any questions, post them here and I’ll do my best to answer them. It would also be great to see some photos of the teeth you sharpen. Thank you for your support and good luck with your saw sharpening!

Just in case you don’t know how to play the video below in 1080 HD, click on the video to start it playing, then click the icon that looks like a gear and select 1080 HD. Then click the Full Screen icon in the bottom right corner of the screen as shown below.

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Now here’s the video. Enjoy!
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Some time ago now I acquired a 14” brass-backed backsaw and just by looking at it, I can tell it is the oldest backsaw I own.

This saw plate is very rusty and black. There are a few missing teeth and the handle is loose and ill-fitting. Funny how the seller never mentioned that. This one is definitely going to be a challenge to bring back into service, if indeed the saw plate can be rescued. When it was new it would have been a first class saw, since it is made from London Spring Steel and has a brass back. The trade mark is a weird creature that has a horses head and front legs, but the rear half of the body kind of morphs into a curly tail.

You can see the logo more clearly in the drawing below.

If anyone knows what ‘CAPS ANY.’ means, please let me know. The initials W H stand for William Henry Armitage and this is what I have been able to find out about him from various online records. On 4th October 1833 he got married to one Rachel Cookson.

The London Gazette dated 24th July 1844 has the following entry:

So prior to 1844 he was in partnership with William Blackford (also a saw maker). The London Gazette dated 2nd February 1849 has this to add:

So between 1844 and 1849 he was in partnership with Alfred Parkinson and Adam Knowles. In 1852, W H Armitage & Co was registered at a house at 41 Netherthorpe Street in Sheffield. The street is still there, but it now has a block of flats and a primary school on it.

Netherthorpe is a district in Sheffield. The photograph below shows how it looked in the 19th century with row upon row of terraced houses and cobbled streets.

This was the environment in which this saw was made. The smoke from the furnaces turned all the buildings black. It is said that the tilt hammers could be heard and felt everywhere and the town shock with every blow. The tables in the public houses had bars around the edges to stop the glasses vibrating off onto the floor. The working conditions were atrocious for the working men and women of the day. The ‘wet grinders’ (the men who ground the saw plates) started work when they were 14 yrs old and by their early 20s, suffered from chronic asthma after breathing in steel and stone dust. Isn’t it incredible that even in these conditions, they managed to turn out such high quality products that we now fight over on eBay?

I found an additional reference to confirm the Netherthorpe address at Backsaws.net who site Whites (a trades directory published in 1852) as their source.

If you look at the reference below the red line, it has William working out of the Burnt Tree Lane works in 1849 and the house on Netherthorpe Street. Burnt Tree Lane was only a short walk from Netherthorpe Street and just around the corner from a public house called The Saw Makers’ Arms, which incidentally was later owned by Joshua Ibbotson (brother of Thomas). The following entry shows that in 1852, William went into partnership with John Pacey (also a saw maker) and they worked out of 31 Burnt Tree Lane together under the name of Pacey and Armitage.

In the following advertisement, you can see the type of products that bore their name.

I also found this entry on the OldTools Archive which has Pacey and Armitage at Burnt Tree Lane from 1852-1855 and confirms Armitage was working there before that in 1849.

On 20th October 1858, the partnership was dissolved and Pacey carried on the business alone.

The only other references I could find to W. H. Armitage after 1858 were three advertisements.

The first is dated 1876:

The second one (which is the same advert) is dated 1882.

And the third is dated 1890.

These advertisements tell us that from 1876 – 1890 W. H. Armitage & Co. were working out of the Vesuvius works on Henry Street in the Portmahon district of Sheffield. Notice that in the last advert, they claim that W.H. Armitage had been established for 50 years prior to 1890, so this tells us that William started in the saw making business in 1840.

Then I found this entry in the London Gazette dated 8th December 1891, which I think indicates William was getting out of the tool making business:

So where does that leave me in terms of dating my saw. Well at this point in my research all I could say was that it wasn’t made between 1840 and January 1849, because W.H. was in various partnerships between those two dates. Also, it wasn’t made between 1852 and 1858 when Armitage was in partnership with Pacey, since it doesn’t bear the name Pacey and Armitage. However, it could have been made between 1849 and 1852 or any time after 1858 up until 1890. So although it was most enjoyable to sit in my armchair and play detective, all of the above information still left me wondering when my saw was made. I had to find another way of determining the saw’s age and just when I was starting to think it would remain a mystery, I came across an article on WKFineTools.com entitled The Nineteenth Century American Back Saw written by Philip W Baker. Although the title refers to American back saws, much of what he has to say equally applies to English back saws. The article presents a study of the shape and features of back saw handles from the 19th century and shows how this information can help narrow down the year of manufacture.

Consider the following two handles. The one on the right is from my Armitage saw and the one on the left is from another saw in my possession which might make an appearance at the end of this blog series. One thing I can say for certain, is that the handle on the left was made in 1887.

Now it is time to play spot the difference. Apologies for not having a better camera, you’ll just have to take my word for it as far as some of the features I’m going to point out are concerned.

The Nibs
Both handles have nibs between the base of the Hook and the base of the Top Horn. However, only my Armitage handle has a Bottom Nib. The article states that nibs started appearing at the top and bottom of handles around 1845, but at this time the nibs were rounded over and did not go to a point. Only after 1850, did they start to go to a point. In the photo above, the nib on the left handle goes to a point, but both nibs on my Armitage are of the rounded over variety. So this puts my handle between 1845 and 1850.

The Cheeks
On earlier saws, the cheeks were larger and covered more of the saw plate. The chamfer at the edge of the cheek was also larger. The cheeks started to become smaller around 1846. As you can see, the cheeks on my Armitage are larger than the handle on the left, indicating the saw is older. Notice too, how the Re-curve Break is more pointed and the shape of the lamb’s tongue is more squashed to accommodate the larger cheek size. These features also support the fact that the saw is older.

Thickness
Older saw handles tended to be thicker than later handles. The Armitage measures in at 19/32” whilst the handle on the left comes in at 17/32”, a whole 1/16” thinner.

When all is said and done, I believe Wiliam Henry Armitage made my saw around 1849-1850, just before he went into partnership with John Pacey. However, I would love to see a saw made by W.H. Armitage & Co at the Vesuvius works between 1876 and 1891 to be sure. Anyone got one? If so, please post a picture and put this sad Englishman out of his misery. 

I won’t be restoring this one for a while yet. When I removed the handle I found that it will need a new saw plate since it is cracked between two of the holes. Although I have the steel, I just don’t have the time at the moment unfortunately.

Thanks for looking!

Here is a list of what I consider to be essential items:

1) A 10-12” second cut hand file for jointing the teeth. You can use a shorter file if you are using a holder like the Veritas Jointer/Edger or one of the antique versions of a file holder. Some people also prefer to use a mill file for this operation.

2) The correct tapered saw file for the saw you intend to sharpen first. I suggest you start with a rip-filed saw. It can be a backsaw like a tenon saw if you wish or a 24”-28” rip saw, but you might find sharpening a dovetail saw a bit challenging at first due to the small teeth. It is probably best to start on a saw with teeth in the range of 5ppi to 11ppi so you can see the teeth easily. See below for a list of the files that correspond to different size teeth. You will also need a suitable handle for the file you select.

In the US and Canada, Grobet saw files are the best and are available from Lie Nielsen, Lee Valley and Tools for Working Wood. In Europe, Vallorbe files are the best and are available from Classic Hand Tools and Axminster Tool Centre.

3) A means of holding your saw firmly while you file the teeth. This could be one of the many vintage saw vises, the new saw vise from Tools for Working Wood, a home made saw vise (here's the one I made, but you’ll find many other designs if you google ‘saw vise’), or the most basic method which is to sandwhich your saw plate between two pieces of wood in a vise.

4) A suitable saw set. I would recommend either the Stanley No.42 or the Eclipse No.77. These are both vintage saw sets and are readily available on ebay.com for the Stanley No.42 and ebay.co.uk for the Eclipse No.77. If you intend to buy vintage, please research the saw set you intend to buy before bidding to ensure you know what you’re looking for. There are new copies of the Eclipse design available today made by Somax which are available in the US and Canada from Tools for Working Wood. If you are in Europe you can buy the Somax saw sets from Axminster Tool Centre or Workshop Heaven.

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Other items that are not essential but that I will be using in the video are:

1) A packet of cigarette papers or feeler gauges (metric or imperial).
2) A flat reference surface such as the top of a table saw or bandsaw, a granite slab (kitchen worktop) or a sheet of float glass.
3) A fine tipped black permanent marker.
4) A fine diamond stone. This doesn’t have to be as big as a bench stone that you would sharpen plane irons on. It can be a small diamond stone like you might use for touching up router bits.
5) A 4” long piece of scrap softwood (approximately 1” x 5/8”)

I predominantly work wood with hand tools because I really enjoy acquiring and honing the skills they demand. In fact, if truth be told, I probably enjoy the act of refining my skills more than the end products I produce with my tools. It is important that you understand that about me, in order to appreciate why I had to embark on this journey. Now, I’ve often thought that hand tool woodworking really comes down to four core skills. They are sawing, chiseling, planing and drilling. If you master the tools that perform these four tasks, you can do a hell of a lot with wood. However, as we all know, hand tools are useless if they’re not sharp. As Paul Sellers once said:

“Master sharpening and you master your tools. Master your tools and you master wood.”

Whilst I could sharpen chisels, plane irons and augers, saws intimidated me and I had to put that right. What I had not appreciated at the time though, was just how much I was going to learn along the way.

• How to clean up a saw plate.
• How to shape and re-finish a saw handle
• How to straighten a wavy saw plate
• How to straighten a bent saw back
• How to select the right file for the number of teeth
• How to change the TPI of a saw by removing the old teeth and filing new teeth
• How to joint, shape, set and sharpen teeth
• How to correct various sharpening problems
• How to reduce the set on a saw
• How to assess the amount of work a saw needs.
• What to look for when buying a secondhand saw that I intend to turn into a user.

• I’ve developed a feel (touch) for how much filing pressure is enough and how to bias the file to correct certain issues with particular teeth.
• I’m getting better at applying a consistent amount of set to each tooth so that I don’t need to dress the teeth afterwards with a stone.
• I’m beginning to understand from a practical standpoint, how the hang angle, length of plate, plate thickness, TPI and the weight of the back work together and how adjusting one of these factors influences the other factors.
• I’m starting to favour certain tooth geometries for rip and crosscut saws.
• I’m developing a better understanding of how to use my saws, i.e. which saw to select, how to stand, how to start each saw, the angle I should approach the cut, etc.

I could go on, but I hope you can begin to see how valuable this journey has been to me in terms of increasing my understanding of saws, what makes them work well and how to use them in different situations.

NOW FOR THE CONTROVERSIAL BIT
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I would share some controversial opinions that I was beginning to form about saws. Let me say right at the start of this section that what follows is JUST MY OPINION. I can only speak as I find. If you have a different opinion, that’s fine by me. I respect that.

Rant On…

Opinion No.1
Saw filing is not that difficult and most woodworkers could do it. To me, knowing how to sharpen your own saws and being able to do it is a fundamental skill for any hand tool woodworker. You wouldn’t send your plane irons or your chisels out to be sharpened would you, so why send out your saws? Once you have a saw that is sharpened and set correctly, it should take no more than 10-15 mins to touch up the teeth occasionally. After you’ve sharpened a saw 3-4 times, you will need to re-apply some set (add 5 minutes). You can either do what I did and buy a load of old saws, restore them and use them to learn to sharpen, or you can buy one old saw and just keep practicing on that. Try re-shaping the teeth, changing the rake and fleam angles, joint all the teeth off and try filing new teeth at a different TPI. I can guarantee that after you have jointed, shaped, set and sharpened a saw ten times, you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Opinion No.2
Fancy shmancy tooth geometries exist because people either don’t know or can’t be bothered to learn how to use a saw properly. Today you hear things like:

“I like to add a touch of fleam to the rip teeth on my dovetails saws”
“I file the first 1” of teeth on my dovetail saw with 8 degrees of negative rake, the next 2” with 4 degrees of negative rake and the rest of the teeth with 0 degrees of rake.”
“The first two inches of my dovetail saws have 20TPI, the next 2” have 18TPI and the rest of the teeth are 16TPI.”
“I file my saws with progressive teeth (small at the toe and gradually getting bigger towards the heel)”

Although some of these filings are historical, in my opinion they are just saw makers ensuring they can still sell their wares to woodworkers who can’t saw. Of course they will all cut beautifully, but anyone can start a dovetail saw with 15TPI and 0 rake along the entire length of the saw if they practice. Hell, it doesn’t even take that much practice to master it. I personally prefer 18TPI on a dovetail saw, but I’m just making the point that if you buy a dovetail saw with one of these fancy filings, you’ll be making more work for yourself when you come to sharpen it. They aren’t necessary and they won’t make your dovetails fit any better.

Opinion No.3
The quest to find the perfect rake and fleam angles is over-rated. Outside certain parameters, all this talk about adjusting the rake and fleam angles to suit certain woods has been blown out of all proportion. Sometimes you hear people who have had a go at sharpening their own saws say things like “the teeth don’t look very pretty, but the saw cuts beautifully.” Well you know what, they’re absolutely right! Rake, fleam and slope angles are NOT the most important things in saw sharpening. Assuming the back of your saw is straight and you don’t have a wave in the plate, here is what I consider makes a sweet saw in order of importance:

1) Sharp teeth.
2) A straight toothline.
3) Equal amount of set either side of the plate.
4) Rake.
5) Fleam.
6) Slope

I’ve said it before in this blog series and my opinion hasn’t changed as my saw filing has improved. SHARP TEETH WILL CUT WOOD. I’m not saying that adjusting the rake and fleam angles won’t have an effect, but it is nowhere near as important as the teeth being sharp.

Ensuring that the toothline is straight is important on a backsaw. If you can feel some judder or vibration on the return stroke when using a backsaw, then the chances are the toothline isn’t perfectly straight. You will find it easier to keep the toothline straight as you get more confident at saw filing and develop a ‘feel’ for using the file, but to start with, try standing the saw teeth down on a sheet of plate glass or a granite slab and seeing if you can get a cigarette paper under any of the teeth.

Having an equal amount of set either side of the plate is important to ensure that the saw doesn’t drift to one side. When applying set to a tooth, regardless of its size, the tooth should bend from approximately halfway down the tooth, not from the gullet, as that puts undue stress on the metal and you might break a tooth or crack the plate.

Opinion No.4
Filing slope on backsaw teeth is an unnecessary waste of time. Slope might make a difference on a big 5TPI or less rip saw intended for sawing wet wood, but common sense tells me that the difference would be so small for backsaws that it simply isn’t worth bothering with.

Opinion No.5
Thinner saw plates aren’t always better. It makes me laugh when saw makers today rave about how their tenon saws have thin plates and therefore cut faster because you are removing less wood. Thinner plates also bend easier and get very hot if you’re cutting tenon cheeks on workbech legs in hard maple. Hot enough that you can’t touch the plate for more than a second. In these situations a thicker plate with a heavier back is better. Thin plates have their place, but they’re NOT always better. It depends on the size and depth of cut and the type of wood you’re cutting.

Opinion No.6
Not all saw files being made today are equal. As far as I know saw files are currently being manufactured by Grobet, Vallorbe, Bahco and Nicholson. Grobet are the best quality, but hard to get outside the US and Canada. Vallorbe are a close second and are avialable in Europe. Bahco can be good if you get a good one, but they are a bit hit and miss. I’ve had more than one Bahco file where the teeth have crumbled away as soon as I started filing. Nicholson are no longer worth buying. Until they get their act together, they are best avoided.

…Rant Off

Having said all that, I don’t want to discourage anyone from experimenting with tooth geometry themselves and forming their own opinions. After all, that’s what I did. Just don’t let it intimidate you and put you off having a go at sharpening your own saws.

Here are my favourite rake, fleam and slope angles for rip and crosscut backsaws.

Rip Backsaws
0-5 degrees of negative rake, 0 degrees of fleam, 0 degrees of slope.

Crosscut Backsaws
15 degrees of negative rake, 25 degrees of fleam, 0 degrees of slope.

I’ve decided that combination filings aren’t for me. If I had to carry my tools around with me from job site to job site, then a saw filed for both rip and crosscutting might interest me, but I don’t. Since I don’t consider it a problem to put one saw down and pick another one up, I would rather work with two saws; one optimised for ripping and one optimised for crosscutting.

In conclusion, if you’re lucky enough to own a high-end saw like a Wenzloff, Gramercy, Bad Axe, Adria, Blackburn, LN, etc., then you’ll already know what a pleasure it is to use a nice sharp saw. Eventually though, they all require sharpening and it is then that you have to take the decision to either send them out to be sharpened and swallow the cost and the waiting time, or learn to do it yourself and put the saw back on the rack ready for tomorrow.

I find it encouraging that more and more woodworkers today are trying their hand at saw sharpening. I believe it would be a travesty if we let this important skill die and I hope you will all at least give it a go. Don’t expect too much from the first few saws you sharpen, but if you stick with it, I promise you that you will ‘get it’ and you’ll be glad you did.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the saws that taught me about backsaws. When I bought them, they all had their own issues caused by years of neglect, improper storage and/or use, but today they all cut beautifully (except for the leftmost saw in the last photo which is a 10” dovetail saw made by C. Garlick & Sons. I only got that one a couple of days ago and haven’t touched it yet).

So has restoring and learning to sharpen all these saws been worth it? Hell yeah! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything and I’d recommend it to anyone. I will be using and building on these skills for as long as I’m able to work wood. Saws no longer intimidate me.

The next post in this series will be a video post, covering the theory of saw sharpening and will take you step by step through the process. I hope you’ll all stay tuned for that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the best way to bring this Saw Talk blog series to a close and I’ve now decided that I’m going to do two more posts.

In the next post I will share what I’ve learnt and some conclusions I’ve come to regarding sharpening saws. The final episode will take me a bit longer however, because I would like to post an in-depth video tutorial on saw sharpening. It will be quite long because I want to show both the theory and a number of practical examples/alternative approaches. To my knowledge there isn’t anything like what I have in mind, offered for free on the web.

I want to go to the trouble of making this video for the following two reasons:

1. I feel as though I’ve learnt so much that it would be wrong of me not to share it with the rest of you guys.
2. The more I’ve learnt about saws and saw sharpening, the more passionate I have become about wanting to keep the art alive.

As I said, you might have to bear with me for a bit while I prepare, film and edit the video, but I promise it will be worth the wait.

I restored this saw in part 1 of this blog series. It had a number of issues and honestly, it still has a few of them.

1) The plate was heavily pitted in places.
2) The plate had a wave in it.

3) The spine was bent.
4) It was missing a split-nut.

5) The screws were bent and very little of the thread remains.
6) The spine doesn’t fit the handle very well.

The above problems mean that this will never be a pretty saw, but I didn’t have the heart to just throw it in the bin. As part of restoring this saw, I straightened out the wave in the plate, or so I thought. However, when I came to sharpen it today, I noticed that the wave had returned. Bummer! On closer examination, I found that the spine was also slightly bent. As I’ve said before, there’s no point in sharpening a saw with a wave or a bent back, you have to fix those problems first, starting with straightening the spine.

When I straightened the back of my S&J Carcase saw in part 4, I used the following method where I sighted along the underside of the back and placed my finger on the convex side where it was bent the most. I marked that point with a bit of masking tape so I knew where to direct my mallet blow.

This time I placed my combination square on the convex side of the plate and rocked the straight edge until the gap was equal at either end. I could then see that the fulcrum point was so many inches from one end and that’s where I needed to hit it. If the spine is stamped with the maker’s name, you can sometimes use the lettering to remember where the fulcrum point is. (E.g. Hit the ‘T’ of the word Tyzack.) Then I placed the back on the blocks and hit it with my deadblow mallet. You need to sneak up on the right amount of force and check it frequently with the straight edge until it no longer rocks. One point worth mentioning is that steel backs take a lot more force than brass backs.

Once the spine was straight, I sighted along the toothline. Although much improved, it still wasn’t straight enough. Usually you can hold the saw as shown below and rap the toe end of the back on your bench to straighten out a wave.

I managed to improve it a bit, but I couldn’t get it perfect using this method. This gave me the opportunity to try something new and that was to remove the spine and refit it. The act of refitting a plate in a spine has the effect of re-tensioning the plate. These days many makers use slotted backs on their saws where the slot is machined to the thickness of the plate. Some makers even glue or pin the plate in the spine. However a folded back is different. In order for the two sides of the spine to grip the plate the spine has to be sprung. This means that when you remove the plate from the spine, the sides close up.

I think there are pros and cons for both types of backs, but for me a folded back is preferable, as it allows you to adjust the tension and also to easily replace the plate should it get irreversibly damaged.
Anyhow, I gripped the plate in the vise and used a block of hardwood and a mallet to knock off the spine. It was a BITCH to get off let me tell you, but I got there in the end.

After cleaning the plate and spine, it was time for re-fitting. I used the method kindly documented in the following four videos by Tools For Working Wood. Notice how the saw maker positions the plate and spine to get it started and how he then turns the whole assembly over and bashes the teeth (yes the teeth) with a softwood bat shaped a bit like a little cricket bat. In the last video he adjusts the position of the plate relative to the spine so that the assembly will fit into the handle correctly and the holes in the plate will line up with the holes in the handle. Enjoy.

I watched these videos a few times before I plucked up the courage to try it for myself. I’m pleased to report that it was far easier than I thought it was going to be and the plate went straight back into the spine first time. Adjusting it was a bit more tricky than it appears in the videos because the Gramercy saw in the demonstration has a nice notch in the plate that comes to rest on the metal block in his vise. Old saw plates didn’t have that feature (at least none of mine do), so I had to keep tapping and offering it up to the handle to know when the alignment was correct.

The good news was that the wave had now gone and the back was still straight. HOORAH! Now I could do what I set out to do when I got up this morning and that was to sharpen the damn thing. Don’t you just love these little distractions?

After filing off all the old teeth, I retoothed it by hand to 12TPI and sharpened it with 15 degrees of rake and 25 degrees of fleam. This will be great for making crosscuts in softwood. So here she is folks. She isn’t pretty, but she cuts beautifully.

You know when I had almost finished sharpening her I had to smile, because although I haven’t sharpened a saw since I last posted here (145 days ago), I hadn’t forgotten either the process, the technique or the feel. And that my friends, is exactly the place I hoped I’d get to when I started this journey last year.

Well that was the last of my backsaws. In my next and final post (ok it might be two), I will try to sum up what I think I’ve learnt about restoring and sharpening saws. I have formed some surprising and somewhat controversial conclusions about tooth geometry, which I’ll also share with you.

TTFN.

Mark also recommends 10 degrees of rake, but he relaxes the rake on the first 30 teeth at the toe and the last 20 teeth at the heel to give each stroke an easier start and finish. He doesn’t say by how much he relaxes the rake, so I went for 12 degrees. Instead of the 10 degrees of fleam that I filed on the Drabble and Sanderson, I tried the 17.5 degrees of fleam that Mark suggests.

If truth be told guys, I’m playing now. My head tells me that there is no need to relax the rake because I don’t have a problem starting a saw with 10 degrees of rake. My head also tells me that when you start to consider ½ a degree of fleam, it is time to hang up your saw set. Does ½ a degree of fleam really make a discernible difference? I doubt it, but Mark is the real deal and his saws speak for themselves, so I had to try his formula.

Well now I’ve got two saws filed with different combination tooth geometries, but which one’s best? There’s only one way to find out….....FIGHT!!!

It didn’t really surprise me that Mark’s filing with 17.5 degrees of fleam produced a better crosscut finish and Matt’s 10 degrees of fleam produced a better rip finish. The problem is that now I can’t help wondering if 15 degrees of fleam would be a nice compromise between the two. :o)

Thanks for watching!

When I’m confused about hand tools, I turn to the people I respect in the hand tool world and when it comes to saws those people are Joel Moskowitz, Matt Cianci, and Mark Harrell. The excerpts below are taken from their web sites/blog posts:

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Joel Moskowitz (Tools for Working Wood)

Gramercy offer a 14” Sash saw. Here are some quotes from the accompanying text:

“From the late 18th until the mid 19th century the two most common backsaws found in a joiner’s toolbag would be a dovetail saw and a sash saw. The dovetail saw would be filed with fleam so that it could be used for all small work, not just dovetailing, and the sash saw would be used for everything else.”

“Length of blade 14”, 13ppi, depth of cut at the toe 2.87” depth of cut at the heel 3.29”. 5 degrees negative rake and 7 degrees fleam. Plate thickness: 0.020”.”

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On The Saw Blog, Matt Cianci recently wrote an article entitled The Venerable Sash Saw. Here are some picks from it, but I highly recommend you read the whole article.

“Of all the tool forms lost to antiquity over the last century, I think the sash saw is one of the greatest casualties. These traditional 14 inch backsaws are true work horses because they can rip and crosscut thanks to a combination of aggressively raked and moderately fleamed teeth.”

“Over the following few months, I started filing and using 12 and 14 inch backsaws with aggressive rake and moderate fleam to accomplish both ripping and crosscutting. I eventually settled on 8 to 10 degrees of tooth rake and 10 degrees of fleam. I found that saws with thinner plates and finer tooth spacing could handle more aggressive rake with great results (like 8 degrees) and conversely, saws with thicker plates and coarser spacing needed 10 degrees to keep them smooth in the kerf.”

In his reply to one of the comments on this article, Matt writes:

“I’ve found in 9 times out of 10, regardless of plate thickness, tote hang or tooth spacing, 10 degrees of rake and 10 degrees of fleam is the magic combination for sash saws.”

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Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Toolworks wrote an article entitled About my Saw Filing Technique which you can read in full on his site. It’s a great article which encompasses a lot more than just sash saws. In the article, Mark refers to his 14” backsaws as sash saws, regardless of whether they are filed crosscut, rip or combination (which he refers to as hybrid filing). Here are the salient points that are relevant to our discussion.

In his PPI table, he lists the 14” sash saw as being 12-13ppi and calls it a “general purpose saw.”

Regarding plate thickness, he writes:

“I find that a 0.020 gauge plate is best suited for dovetail and carcase saw work, less suitable for a 14” saw, and not suitable at all for 16” and above.” He goes on to say that “…length + depth = heat. When you’re ripping big tenon cheeks, the heat generated by the friction of a saw deep in that cut will expand the metal plate, causing warpage and drift along the cutline.”

“At the end of the day, 14” hybrid, 16” and 18” crosscut saws should have .025 plates: that’s just enough thickness to serve as a heat sink and prevent the warpage. 18” saws for hybrid and dedicated rip filings should always have a .0315 gauge plate for the same reason (length + depth = heat).”

Talking about his hybrid filing on his 14” sash saw, he says:

“…I typically recommend a filing of 12ppi hybrid-cut with the .025 plate. Here’s why: a 12 point pitch is fine enough for 3/4 work, yet coarse enough for 8/4 work (and beyond – but that’s where length becomes a consideration too). I’ll file this saw with 17.5 degrees of fleam (more aggressive than a 20 degree dedicated crosscut filing), and 10 degrees of rake (more relaxed than a dedicated rip angle of 6 degrees, but not as relaxed as a 12 degree rake for a crosscut saw). In rip mode, my hybrid filing cuts at about 80% compared to a dedicated ripper. The gullet remains five degrees. I will relax the rake 30 teeth in from the toe, and about 20 teeth in from the heel of the toothline. This eases the start and finish of the cut. … The bottom line with my hybrid filing is you get a crosscut finish – a great crosscut finish – with decent ripping action to boot.”

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Having read the above excerpts, you can probably begin to understand why I’m confused as to what constitutes a good sash saw. As I said earlier I have the greatest respect for all these guys, but you have to admit that there is quite a bit of difference in what they deem to be the optimum filing for a sash saw.

Here’s the information in tabular format:

In the past I’ve said that I didn’t really see the point of combination filing on saws. After all, you are effectively accepting less than the optimum for both crosscutting and ripping for the sake of being able to use one saw for both types of cut. This would appeal to me if I had to carry my tools and worked on different job sites, but when you’re working in a small workshop I don’t really think it is that much of an inconvenience to put one saw down and pick up another? The whole point of this journey though was to experiment a bit with different tooth geometries so I had to give combination saws a chance.

I have no doubt that the Gramercy sash saw is an excellent saw. I have their dovetail saw and both of their carcase saws and I like them a lot. However, I have to agree with Mark when he says length + depth = heat. When I built my breakfast bar out of hard maple, the only rip backsaw I had was my Gramercy 12” carcase saw which also has a .020” plate. I used the full depth of the plate to cut the tenon cheeks and I couldn’t touch the plate afterwards it was so hot. If I owned the Gramercy sash saw, I would look at it as a bigger carcase saw. I would either buy the two 12” carcase saws, one filed rip and one filed crosscut, or if I favored saws with a longer stroke and increased depth of cut, I would buy their 14” sash saw. However, I would still be looking for a saw with a heavier back, a thicker plate (.025” to .028”) and a greater depth of cut for larger tenon work.

I’ve never tried the Gramercy sash saw, but I can see how 5 degrees of rake and 7 degrees of fleam would work on a saw with a lightweight back and .020” plate. The saw I decided to try a combination filing on though is a very different animal. Enter stage left, the 14” Drabble and Sanderson that I restored in part 7 of this series. Remember this one?

This saw has a .030” plate and a very thick, extra-heavy brass back. It was filed 12 tpi (13ppi) when I got it. In part 11 of this series I presented a chart showing how I was going to file all the saws I’ve restored and I stated that I was going to re-tooth this one to be 11 tpi (12ppi). I intended to file it using the rake and fleam angles that Mark Harrell uses for his hybrid filing. I might still do that, but first I thought I would leave it at 12tpi and try Matt’s recommendation of 10 degrees of rake and 10 degrees of fleam. My reasoning here was twofold: 1) Matt knows what he’s talking about and, 2) I could easily change it to what Mark recommends if I didn’t like it.

In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best saw to try a combination filing on. It would have been better to make this one a dedicated rip saw with 11 tpi (12 ppi) and use one of my Tyzacks with a lighter back and .026” plate as a combination saw. Hey who knew?

Anyhow, you probably want to hear how it cuts. I’ve only had time to try it in a bit of quartersawn sapele so far, but I have to say it rips very well. I was particularly impressed with the back of the cut. In fact it was difficult to tell the front from the back as there was no fuzz at all. The surface finish was good too. Crosscutting at 90 degrees to the grain and at 45 degrees to the grain also worked well, although there was a little bit of tear out at the back of the cut. The surface finish on the crosscuts was also very good.

So am I any clearer on what characterizes a sash saw? I think so. Even though today the term sash saw is used to refer to any 14” or 16” backsaw, to me a sash saw is 14”-16” in length, with 11-13 ppi and filed with a combination filing for both crosscutting and ripping. The jury is still out on my preference for rake and fleam angles, but it should have a fairly aggressive negative rake angle and a moderate fleam angle.

In the next part of this series, I’ll try to get some video of this saw cutting. Then I’m going to change it to 17.5 degrees of fleam as Mark Harrell suggests and shoot some video of that too so you can see the difference between the two filings.

Thanks for reading my inane drivel.

COMMENTATOR: We go live now to the Sawing arena where Brit has just won gold. Sawing is a new Olympic event and is the only event where you get marked down for crossing the line. Brit, congratulations!

BRIT: Thanks John.

COMMENTATOR: You were up against Big Joe, a formidable opponent. Was there any doubt in your mind that you were going to win?

BRIT: Well John, nothing is ever certain in sawing. We’ve met a couple of times before and he’s got the better of me, but I had a chat with my coach and worked out what I needed to do today and I came out and delivered.

COMMENTATOR: Your supporters have come out in their hundreds. How much were you aware of the noise around you?

BRIT: Yeah the fans were fantastic John, I couldn’t have asked for more really. The noise was deafening as I sharpened the last few teeth. I still find it incredible that people will pay good money to watch me saw.

COMMENTATOR: What does it mean to you to win gold today?

BRIT: Well John it’s what I’ve trained for. The early mornings, the diet, it’s all been leading to this moment and to finally win gold on my home turf, well, it can’t get any better than this can it?

COMMENTATOR: It’s a terrific win Brit. Will we see you in Rio?

BRIT: Well first I’m going to relax for a few days John and enjoy the rest of the games. Sawing is a tough event and it takes a lot out of you, but there’s only one thing better than winning a gold medal and that’s winning two, so you never know.

COMMENTATOR: Great to talk to you Brit and once again, congratulations on gold. Let’s just re-live that winning cut again…

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to sharpen it. When I went to Paul Sellers’ saw sharpening workshop last December, I took it with me and tried to sharpen it rip.

It looks like I know what I’m doing in that photo doesn’t it? Au contraire mon ami. I made a right pig’s ear of it. You’ve heard of progressive filing haven’t you? Well ladies and gents, I give you eratic filing. Just remember when Lie Nielsen takes it up, you saw it here first.

Now you’ve stopped laughing, I’d like to point out that I actually sharpened each tooth to perfection, they just didn’t belong on the same saw. After I finished, Paul invited me to try it out at his bench. Whilst with such an uneven toothline it was anything but smooth, believe it or not, it actually cut wood quite well. It was at that very moment I realized that whilst I might never be the worlds’ greatest saw sharpener, with a bit more practice I probably could become proficient enough to maintain my own saws. At the very least, I was encouraged to persevere.

So seeking to restore some honour to Big Joe, I completely removed the teeth with a view to starting again. This time I decided to sharpen it crosscut with 12 TPI, 12 degrees of rake and 20 degrees of fleam. I drew one of my templates in Google Sketchup, stuck it on the saw plate with double-sided tape and filed in the new teeth.

Then I set the teeth and was 2/3rds of the way through my last pass of sharpening when the wife decided to engage me in conversation. I tried desperately to ignore her, but wives have a way of breaking your concentration. Before I knew it, instead of skipping two teeth, I skipped one and sharpened it as I answered her. Then I skipped two teeth and sharpened that one. I sharpened eight teeth incorrectly before I realised what I’d done.

Now at this point I should have packed up, opened a cold one, sat in a sun lounger and soaked up some rays, but I really wanted to get this saw finished. I jointed it down, sharpened all down one side again and then started sharpening the other side. The only problem was I forgot to turn my rake guide around, so I made a right mess of the first tooth. At this point I decided the saw was jinxed, kicked the sodding Workmate and put everything away.

Not wanting to waste the day though, I decided to tidy the garden. After cutting back some shrubs and pulling some weeds, I turned my attention to a Davidia (hankerchief) tree that we had bought a few years back with a view to replacing one of the Scott’s pines in our garden. All of the trees in my area have protection orders on them which means you can’t even trim them without applying to the council. We had applied to have the Scott’s pine cut down and the application was refused. We appealed and the appeal was refused. With no place to put it, the Davidia sat in it’s pot until it became pot-bound and died. Shame really, because the Davidia is a beautiful tree.

So I cut off the branches and dug the trunck out of the pot.

I was just about to saw it up and dump it when I found myself wondering what Davidia wood was like. I could see a plane adjusting hammer handle in that wood, so I grabbed my side axe (thanks Brad) and chopped off the root ball.

After telling the Workmate it was a shave horse, I grabbed my drawknife and removed the bark.

After a bit more shaving, I cut out my hammer handle from the rest of the trunk.

I then continued shaping it with my No.4 1/2 and my block plane. I didn’t have a shape in mind when I started working it, but the wood kind of dictated how it wanted to look.

After sanding up through the grits from P80 to P600, I had my basic hammer handle. It isn’t finished at this stage. I still need to shape the butt end and saw the tenon to fit the brass head (once I’ve made it), then wedge it in.
By the way, Davidia is a lovely wood to work. Very close grained, planes well and sands to a high polish. Shame it is such a rare tree as I’d love to get hold of some decent sized planks.

As for Big Joe there’s always tomorrow, although I’m convinced it’s not me, it’s the saw.

Laters Peeps.

This is how the saw looked when I received it.

On a saw this old, I didn’t want to do anything to the tote. I just cleaned it gently and gave it a coat of wax. There is a slight chip to the underside of the top horn, but it really isn’t bad enough to warrant a repair.

I don’t mind admitting that I felt an enormous sense of pride to finally sharpen this old girl and test her out. The teeth were quite unevenly spaced, a few were bent and the set was all over the place. I allowed myself a big smile whilst shaping and sharpening it because I realised that these problems no longer phase me. Even though I’ve only sharpened eight saws to date, I was confident I could make this saw sing again. I’m so glad I persevered at saw sharpening.

I decided to leave the saw at 7 TPI (8PPI) and file it crosscut with 15 degrees of rake and 25 degrees of fleam.

One of the main differences between saws made in the early 19th century and saws made in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century is the hang of the handle. Remember that the hang refers to the angle between the front of the grip and the toothline. Look at the photo below and imagine you are holding the saw with a three finger grip and your first finger is pointing down the saw. Follow the line of where your imaginery finger is pointing. It is the front of the toothline right? This puts all of the power behind the stroke instead of down through the toothline. This means that only the weight of the saw is keeping the teeth engaged in the cut. In effect, the saw does the cutting and the user simply provides the power. Saws with this kind of hang angle only work if the teeth are kept sharp. When they become dull, the teeth tend to skip over the surface instead of cutting.

This wasn’t a problem in the early 19th century because in those days craftsman knew how to sharpen their saws and they kept them sharp.

Now look at the hang of a Disston D8 and follow your imaginery finger again.

It points further back on the toothline right? It is at that point in your stroke (when your elbow forms a right-angle) that you are delivering maximum power. Here the hang angle of the handle directs the power down through the toothline as well as forward, thus keeping the teeth engaged in the cut even after they start to dull.

Having never used a saw with a hang angle like the S&J, I was interested to find out how it felt to use.

The following video shows the saw in action making its first cut in God knows how long. Come and explore the old lady’s curves. :o)

Enjoy!

Some months ago, I restored a couple of 26” Disston D8s. This one is 8PPI (points per inch) with a nice apple handle.

The D8 was a revolutionary saw when it was first released. Here are some of its features.

• Skewed back (concave) – reduces the weight of the blade and improves the balance of the saw.
• Taper ground plate (thinner at the back than at the toothline) – reduces the weight of the plate and the amount of set required. The plate is the same thickness along the toothline and at the handle end, but the thickness of the plate is gradually reduced from the teeth towards the back edge and from the handle towards the toe as shown below.

• Breasted toothline (convex ‘crown’ along its length) – arguably mirrors the natural swing of the arm, keeping more teeth in contact with the wood.
• Revolutionary ‘in the plate’ tote – instead of sitting behind the plate, the grip was brought forward. It was also the first saw handle to have the kerf cut with a circular saw blade. The top of the handle is solid wood and covers the top of the saw plate which adds strength.

So I clamped the saw in my saw vise and jointed the teeth taking care to follow the convexity of the toothline.

I decided to keep the saw at 8 PPI (7 TPI), but alter the tooth geometry from 15 degrees of rake to a more aggressive 12 degrees of rake with 20 degrees of fleam. Here goes my first attempt at filing a crosscut saw.
After jointing the saw to get my ‘shiners’, I re-shaped the teeth.

The following photo shows the teeth after shaping. Need2boat (Joe) has mentioned a couple of times on my previous posts in this series that I chose to learn to file the hard way by starting with backsaws instead of handsaws. He was SOOOOOOO right. I found shaping these teeth really easy, even without one of my templates stuck to the side of the plate.

Now it was time to add some set to the teeth prior to sharpening. I measured the thickness of the plate at the heel just under the teeth to be .041”.

I adjusted my saw set to give me .003” of set either side, which after sharpening and dressing the teeth will probably end up more like .0025”

Next I stuck a 20 degree fleam template to the top of my saw vise and went down the teeth from heel to toe sharpening every alternate tooth. I then sharpened the teeth in between from the other side of the bench. I was having so much fun that I totally forgot to take any photos of the sharpening process (sorry about that). I tried to take a close-up of the finished teeth, but the wife’s little camera distorts the image if you get too close. This is the best I could get I’m afraid. In my rush to beat the rain, I also neglected to brush off the wood fibers.

Anyhow, here’s the finished saw.

I only just got it sharpened before it started raining again, so no video of it in action for the moment. It cuts well though.

Sorry this episode was so brief. I was just glad to get a couple of hours in which to do something productive. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Following his lead, I took the opportunity to get outside and sharpen another saw. Next up is the W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner No.120. Fourteen inches long with a .030” thick plate and an extra heavy spine. This is by far the heaviest backsaw that I own. If you’ve been following this blog series, you’ll remember that this is the saw where I reshaped the handle and filed in a lamb’s tongue to give it a bit more character.

Originally, it was filled 11 TPI rip, but I decided to re-tooth it to 10 TPI with 4 degrees of rake and 5 degrees of fleam. Before I could do that though, I noticed that there was a slight wave in the toothline that had to be rectified before I could start filing.

There are basically two reasons for a wavy toothline. The first is that the saw plate has slipped in the spine and the second is that the spine is slightly bent. More often than not, old backsaws that you buy at flea markets or off ebay have one or both of these problems. Many of them have either fallen on the floor, been driven over, or trodden on. If you sight along the toothline and you can see a wave, always sight along the underside of the brass back to see if you can see a corresponding bend there. A bent back is the most common cause of a wavy toothline. Chances are it won’t be much, but you need to fix it if the saw is going to be of any use. There are a number of ways to go about it and this is the method I use.

Basically I just rest the back on two blocks of wood convex side up, hold it in place with one hand and hit it with a deadblow hammer at the point where it is bent the most. I start with a light blow then check it. If it isn’t straight, I hit it harder and harder until the bend is removed.

The nice thing about this method is that most of the time, you don’t need to remove the handle. You do need to sneak up on the right amount of force though as you don’t want to bend it too far the other way. This saw took quite a blow to straighten it out due to the extra heavy spine.

So I re-toothed the plate using my template method that I’ve gone over previously and then set the teeth and sharpened them.

After sharpening, I stood the saw up (teeth down) on a granite surface and tried to slide a very thin piece of paper under the teeth all along the plate. I’m pleased to say that this is the first saw I’ve sharpened where I couldn’t get the paper under any of the teeth. Hooray! Could this be progress or just a fluke I wonder? LOL.

I haven’t really said much about saw files in this series yet, so let’s talk about them for a minute. Both of the files in the next photo are 6” double extra slim tapered files. The top one is the one I bought first and is made by Bahco. I like these files a lot and would recommend them. Saw files don’t last forever though, especially if you are using them to file in new teeth from scratch and I now need to replace this file. So that I could sharpen my saw today, I bought a 6” double-ended saw file made by Nicholson at a local hardware store, together with the uncomfortable plastic handle that the file pushes into.

I don’t like these files much. I suppose they are Ok if all you want to do is touch up a saw in order to bring it back to sharp. If you are doing any re-toothing or heavy shaping however, they afford so little movement that it takes more than double the amount of strokes to file a new tooth. I noticed that the corners are slightly more rounded than the Bahco file too.

I hesitated to buy it when I saw it said Nicholson, because not so long ago Paul Sellers pointed out on his blog that they ain’t what they used to be. He reported that the edges were just crumbling after a few strokes. This one was fine though.

Funnily enough, when I sharpened my Disston No.5 with a Bahco 5” extra slim file, two of the three edges crumbled as soon as they touched steel, so maybe this issue isn’t just confined to Nicholson. You can see what this looks like in the following two photos.

I thought I’d mention this problem because it is pointless to continue filing when this happens. If the file feels like it is grating, stop and check the edge. If you don’t, your teeth will end up in a right old mess.

Anyhow, back to the No.120. Some people say that 10 TPI is too coarse for a 14” backsaw, but l believe Lie Nielsen’s large tenon saw is 10 TPI, so I wanted to see what it was like to use. It does take a bit of getting used to (and I’m not there yet), but I think I am going to like this filing with a bit more practice.

Here’s a little video of the saw cutting a tenon cheek so you can see how it cuts. Once again, please excuse the wobbly bench.

So this is where the journey started for this saw…

…and here it is reborn.

Since this is the last of my rip backsaws, I thought I’d leave you with a rip saw family shot.

T.T.F.N.

If you look at a section through a saw file, you’ll see that you have an equilateral triangle (ignoring the rounded corners that define the gullets) and we know that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. That means that the angle formed by sides a and c below will always be 60 degrees, irrespective of the rake angle on the front of the tooth. By the way, the white area represents the saw with the teeth pointing up.

You’ll remember from your school days that the area of the triangle abc = the base (a) multiplied by the height (b) divided by 2, so if a = 1 and b = 1.6, the area of the triangle would be 0.8units².

If we add 6 degrees of negative rake to the face of the tooth, you can see that the base of our new triangle (d) increases in length whilst the hypotenuse (f) becomes marginally shorter. If d = 1.2 and e = 1.6, then the area of triangle def is 0.96units². That’s an increase of 0.16units² per tooth. Multiply that by the thickness of the saw plate and you have an increase in volume.

If math isn’t your thing, the following illustration might help you visualize it better. Effectively, by adding 6 degrees of negative rake, you are losing the area shown in green and gaining the area shown in red. In practice, you are increasing the amount of space that the sawdust has to accumulate between the teeth. I say sawdust, but rip teeth actually create tiny shavings as opposed to the much finer dust created by teeth filed for crosscutting. This increase can be important because when the space between each tooth becomes packed with dust, the teeth stop cutting and bottom out. Now you might think that this increase in volume is insignificant, but if you multiply the extra space by the number of teeth on a saw, it soon adds up and could make a difference to the speed of the cut.

Some people find that a rip saw whose teeth have been filed with negative rake is easier to start because the teeth exhibit less of a tendency to grab the wood. Personally, I’ve never found a saw with zero rake difficult to start. If you hold the weight of the saw off the wood so that the teeth just skim the surface until you’ve established a kerf, it really isn’t difficult with a bit of practice. This led me to wonder whether late 19th century and early 20th century saw makers introduced negative rake into their rip tooth geometry to make up for their customers’ inability to saw properly? Could it be that what their customers really needed was not negative rake, but practice at sawing? Is it right for people who are not practiced at sawing to expect to pick up a rip-filed backsaw and get good results first time? At the risk of sounding like I’m hankering after bygone days, maybe it is just that we have come to expect instant gratification from our tools without wanting to expend the necessary time and effort to learn to use them correctly and gain an understanding of what makes them work well. Anyhow, I digress.

Never having used a carcass saw with negative rake, I was interested to find out for myself if adding negative rake was in fact a good thing, so I grabbed that lovely Disston No.5 that I restored in Saw Talk #2. Originally, this saw was filed with 13 teeth per inch (14PPI), but since my Gramercy rip carcass saw is 13TPI, I re-toothed the Disston to 12TPI.

Using a 5” extra slim file, I sharpened it with 6 degrees of rake and 5 degrees of fleam and added about .002” of set either side of the .026” plate.

These little teeth are fiddly to file, but I think I’m starting to get a better feel for filing now. I’m not quick by any means and I still have to remember to breathe while I’m filing, but I think the results are passable. I’m also realizing more and more the importance of getting all of the teeth the same height. Not easy, I can tell you! When I first tested the saw, there were a couple of teeth that were fractionally taller than the rest and the saw just stopped when they hit the wood. Sure I could have forced it to continue, but I wanted it to run smoothly.

I compared the offending teeth against those either side of them and I couldn’t see any difference at all. I tried feeling the difference with my finger, but I couldn’t detect any variation in height. Regardless, I marked the plate just above the teeth with a pencil and put the saw teeth down on a granite plate. The saw rocked very slightly along its length and shining a light behind it enabled me to identify where the fulcrum point was. Lo and behold, it was right where I marked the plate with the pencil. It surprised me how such a small variation can make the difference between smooth and juddery cutting. After I reduced their height, the saw ran more smoothly.
Since it is my intention to use this saw for cutting small tenons, here’s a little video of the saw doing just that. In my view, sawing tenons is more about accuracy than speed. In fact, as you’ll see in the video, I’m holding this saw back more than I’m letting it rip.

After that you’ll see me comparing it to my Gramercy rip saw which is filed 13TPI with zero degrees of rake and zero degrees of fleam. Actually to be honest, I just like sawing thin pieces of softwood with rip saws. It’s the sawing equivalent of planing thin whispy shavings. I should point out that the plate thickness of the Gramercy is .020” compared to the Disston’s .026”, so the Gramercy is removing less wood and should be faster. To make it a fair comparison, I touched up the Gramercy before I used it so that both saws were freshly sharpened. You might like to count the number of strokes it takes me to reach the line with each saw.

I noticed when sawing the tenon cheeks that it could do with a touch more set, so I’ll have to sort that out. At the moment I’d have to say that the jury is still out on whether I think rake is a good idea on a carcass saw intended for ripping, but I’ll live with it for a while and see how I like it. I will probably end up filing the fleam off of it though. Whilst it does enable me to make the odd crosscut with the saw, I don’t really need it to do that since I have other saws that will be filed specifically for crosscutting.

Here’s where this saw’s journey started…

…and here it is now ready for work.

Thanks for your support folks!

Anyhow, you can’t keep a hand tool junkie down and suitably chastised by the saw gods, I picked myself up and worked the problem. I found out that I’d mistakenly thought the problem was what is known as ‘Cows and Calves’. However that is when the bottom of the gullets alternate between shallow and deep. I believe my problem is correctly called ‘crowding’ where the teeth are of unequal width. I believe I messed up for the following reasons:

• Rushing it and not paying enough attention to what I was doing
• Filing too aggressively.
• Not applying pressure in the right direction

Here’s how I fixed it.

I had to go back to the shaping stage again before I could try to resharpen the teeth. At first I was going to file the teeth off completely, stick a new template on the side of the plate and file in the new teeth. In the end though, I decided to try and fix the existing teeth and even out the spacing again. In this way, I wouldn’t waste any more saw plate than was absolutely necessary.

I started by jointing the teeth until the file had knocked off the top of each tooth. You can see in the following two photos that the ‘shiners’ vary in width and in the first photo, there is one tooth that the file barely touched. What a mess!

Because I’m working outside on uneven grass, I started by making sure that my Workmate was level in both directions with a spirit level. Then I clamped the saw plate in the vise and made sure that it was level using my set square as a depth gauge. This may sound a bit obsessive, but when I’m filing the teeth, I’m holding the file horizontally and my jig ensures I maintain a rake angle of 9 degrees. If the teeth aren’t level in the vise, for example they sloped down from left to right, I won’t be filing a 9 degree rake angle at all. It could be as much as 10 or 11 degrees.

Now I concentrated on each individual shiner. The idea here is to file each shiner evenly from the front of the tooth and the back of the tooth alternately until you meet in the middle. With each stroke the shiner will get thinner and thinner. As soon as it disappear, you stop filing that tooth and repeat the process on the next tooth.

When filing the front of each tooth, I applied light sideways pressure into the front face of the tooth.

When filing the back of each tooth, I applied slight downward pressure.

I kept alternating my stokes 1 – 2 – 1 – 2 etc, until each shiner just disappeared. Using this method, each tooth ended up the same width and depth irrespective of how wide each shiner was to start with.

Once I’d corrected all of the teeth, I lightly jointed them again so that each tooth had the tinniest of shiners. I then repeated the whole process to fine tune the teeth and ensure my toothline was perfectly straight.

Then I set the teeth and coloured the sides and tops of the teeth with a permanent marker.

Another light jointing and then I was ready to try sharpening them again. When sharpening, you are actually filing the front of each tooth that is leaning away from you and the back of each tooth that is leaning towards you, whilst applying slight downward pressure. If you are filing fleam into the teeth, you need to ensure that the file is kept parallel with the lines on your fleam template when sighting down over the file. Then you repeat the process from the other side of the plate. It only takes a couple of strokes on each tooth. Don’t press too hard and let the file do the work.

In what seemed like no time at all, I was done. I checked the toothline with a straightedge and blow me if it wasn’t straight. That’s more like it I thought.

So here’s the finished saw, made in 1887 and now given a new lease of life.

Now I know you guys will demand to see it cutting, so here’s a little video of me putting it though it’s paces.

All my tools have to earn their keep, so I wasted no time in putting this saw to work making a tooth guard for the saw.

First I ripped the kerf for the teeth.

Then I made a rip cut to separate the guard.

Cleaned up the sawn face with a block plane.

Chamfered all the edges.

Job done.

P.S. – I used up 1/4” of saw plate by the time I’d finished with this saw, but the lessons learned are worth far more to me and I won’t make the same mistakes again in a hurry. Lesson well and truly learnt. :o)

This saw has an extra-heavy brass back and therefore there is a considerable amount of weight behind the cut. By adding 9 degrees of rake, the saw should be easier to start and result in a smoother sawing action. In other words, adding the rake angle should reduce the tendency for the teeth to ‘grab’ the wood. This is all new to me, so I’m interested to see if this is in fact the case.

Although this saw was originally filed 10.5 TPI, to shape the teeth I decided to joint the existing teeth off completely and use my method of applying a template to the side of the saw with double-sided tape, like I did for the S&J dovetail saw. This works well for filing new teeth.

With the template affixed to the saw, I mounted the saw in the vise and knocked up a jig to give me my 9 degree rake angle. It is easy to keep the top of the jig horizontal and this means that the side of the file cutting the front of each tooth must be angled at 9 degrees. As you can see, I stupidly wrote fleam instead of rake, but at least I knew what it meant even if I didn’t write it properly.

When shaping, the teeth are filed at 90 degrees to the saw plate. For this reason, you can shape all the teeth from one side. Fleam only comes into play once eveny spaced teeth have been established with equal gullet depth and a consistent rake angle.

So using a 6” double extra slim saw file (suitable for 10 – 11 TPI), I moved along the plate taking 5 or 6 strokes on each tooth. This went well and soon I had all the teeth shaped the way I wanted them.

At this point, I decided to ‘set’ the teeth. Some people prefer to do this after sharpening, but in this case I elected to apply the set now so that I could test the saw before filing in the fleam. This would give me a reference point so I could compare the effect of adding 5 degrees of fleam to the teeth.

I wanted to add about .003” of set per side, so I measured the thickness of the saw plate (.025”) and then adjusted my saw set until the added set gave me a measurement of .031”. The numbers on saw sets are just a rough guide and it is always advisable to test the set on the teeth at the heel of the plate (under the handle), since they don’t actually do any cutting. For each saw I sharpen, I’m noting down which file and saw set I used and how the saw set was set. This means that next time I come to sharpen each saw I’ll know what I’m doing.

Before setting the teeth, I dabbed a permanent marker on the tip of every other tooth. This made it easy to apply set to the marked teeth from one side of the plate and the unmarked teeth from the other side of the plate.

Now I could see how the saw cut without any fleam. First I made a cut as if I was sawing off a tenon cheek, then I made a series of vertical cuts to full depth. It took about 33 strokes to reach full depth (just under 4”), although in fairness the teeth are not all perfectly sharp at this point.

I selected Sapele as my test wood, because if a kerf looks good in Sapele, the chances are it will look even better in most other woods. Sapele is not the easiest wood to saw. It has an interlocking grain structure and often, internal stresses cause the wood to close around the saw as you’re sawing, causing the saw to bind. Anyhow, let’s take a look at the back of the cut. As you can see, there is a fair bit of shredding. Although this is easily removed with a swipe of a plane or sandpaper, in theory adding a little bit of fleam should reduce the amount of shredding and I wanted to see if this was true and whether there was any trade off.

Before sharpening, I lightly jointed the teeth (two passes)

The purpose of jointing before you sharpen is primarily to ensure the teeth are of equal height after shaping. However it also serves another purpose if you apply set before you sharpen the teeth. Setting causes the teeth to bend outwards and twist slightly. This means that the tips of the teeth are no longer perpendicular to the side of the saw plate. Instead they form a shallow inverted ‘V’ shape. Jointing after setting ensures the tips are 90 degrees to the side of the plate again. When ripping, you want the bottom of your kerf to be flat, otherwise when sawing a tenon cheek you will always be left with a little bit of ‘fur’ to clean up right in the corner where the cheek meets the shoulder.

The little flats that jointing produces are known as ‘shiners’ and you sharpen the teeth until you just remove each shiner. Then you know the teeth are sharp. A raking light can really help the ‘shiners’ stand out.

So now it was time to sharpen the teeth and I needed to think about getting a consistent fleam angle. Once more I turned to Sketchup and drew a template which was nothing more than a series of parallel 5 degree lines. Notice that the lines lean the other way on the far side of the teeth. Since I am left-handed, the saw handle is on the left. If you are right-handed, the lines on both templates would lean the other way and the handle would be on your right. I covered the paper with Sellotape so the iron filings wouldn’t stick to it and obscure the lines. By sighting down on the file, it is easy to keep it parallel with one of the lines and this ensures that your fleam angle remains consistent.

So I started filing all the odd numbered teeth from one side. Then after reversing my rake angle jig, I filed all the even numbered teeth from the other side. ”This is a doddle”, I thought. ”I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” Then I looked more closely at the teeth I’d filed. (You have my permission to laugh now chaps.) This is what is known as ‘Cows’ and ‘Calves’ or ‘Big teeth’, ‘Little teeth’ and it basically means you’ve messed up. :-(

At this point, I was pretty hacked off. After doing a great job on the shaping, I’d ruined all my hard work. But what had gone wrong? Time for some introspection and to wrestle with the devil inside.

See if you can spot the things I made in the footage. You’re looking for:

• a standup cutout of the Queen. She was a roaring success. Everyone wanted their photo taken with her, she was picked up and danced with and she even went surfing.
• a big display board with nostalgia photos and a map of the neighbourhood on one side and a magnetic form of ‘pin the tail on the horseguard’ on the other side. I defy anyone to keep a dry eye when the little girl who says here name was ‘butterfly’ has a go.
• a standup of a horseguard with a ‘Tickets at the ready’ sign underneath it.
• Two salad bars. The ladies loved these and they stopped the tubs of food sliding all over the place when they were serving.
• A Giant Buzzwire game. Although I didn’t get it on video, I actually did it first time with the smallest of the two rings. Lots of people played it, but the video shows a little girl trying to do it (it was meant for the adults and teenagers). The buzzer was sounding a lot, so she turned the buzzer off and carried on which I thought was hilarious.
• The Labyrinth game. Lots of people tried to defeat the labyrinth, but I didn’t hear of anyone succeeding. The two girls in the video came close though and I loved her reaction at the end.
• The Throne. Lots of people had their photo taken sitting on the throne. Only the very astute will notice it in Part 4 of the videos. It is in the distance when people are getting their BBQ.

ENJOY!!!

Part 1 – Lunch and The Swing Unlimited Big Band 2

Video removed by the author to protect the innocent. Sorry you missed it.

Part 2 – Raffle Prizes, Face Painter and the Labyrinth

Video removed by the author to protect the innocent. Sorry you missed it.

Part 3 – Space Hopper Relay Race and Pin the Tail on the Horseguard

Video removed by the author to protect the innocent. Sorry you missed it.

Part 4 – Childrens Play Area, Buzzwire game and BBQ

Video removed by the author to protect the innocent. Sorry you missed it.

Part 5 – The Songbirds Duo

Video removed by the author to protect the innocent. Sorry you missed it.

The residents helped set everything up starting at 8:00am and the party began at 1:00pm and went on until 8:30pm. Everything was packed away and we re-opened the road at 10:00pm. The day was a resounding success. Load and loads of food, a swing band, children’s and adult’s play areas, 14 barbecues on the go, table magician, dancing, face painter, loads of booze and live entertainment from a local duo called The Songbirds.

We had around 250 people of all ages. The weather was great and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

Video to follow.

From Vintagesaws.com:

Saw Filing – A Beginner’s Primer
The How’s of Setting Saws

From Wenzloffandsons.com:

On Choosing Saws

From Badaxetoolworks.com:

About my (Mark Harell) Saw Filing Technique

From Blackburntools.com:

Saw Tooth Geometry
Practical Cross Cut Saw Tooth Angles

From Matt Cianci on WKFinetools.com:

Rake and Rip Saws

From Toolsforworkingwood.com:

Elements of Saw Tooth Design

I thought it might be helpful if I pointed out some of the things I’ve realised are important when it comes to sharpening saws, so here goes:

You must use the right size saw file for the number of teeth per inch (tpi). The number of teeth is sometimes expressed as points per inch (ppi) and you should know that:

tpi + 1 = ppi (e.g. If it is written that a backsaw is 13ppi, then it is also 12tpi)

Online stores that sell saw files usually have a table that explains which file to buy for each tooth pitch.

It is also important to perform the steps involved in saw sharpening in the right order which is:

1. Joint
2. Shape
3. Set
4. Joint
5. Sharpen

However, depending on the condition of the teeth before you start and whether or not you intend to change the tooth geometry, it might not be necessary to perform all of these steps. For example, if the teeth are in good shape and all you want to do is touch them up so they are sharp again, then you only need to perform steps 4 and 5 and 10 minutes should see you done. You can usually sharpen the teeth on a saw 3 or 4 times before it is necessary to re-set the teeth.

One thing I’ve realised as I’ve researched saw sharpening is that there are as many opinions as to the right tooth geometry for a given saw as there are people who file saws. You hear things like:

”I like to add a touch of fleam to rip teeth.”
“A little rake makes ripping easier.”
“Adding slope creates more space for the sawdust and helps move it up the side of the plate.”

Now I’m not saying that these people (who shall remain nameless) don’t know what they’re talking about, because they do. What I would like to point out though, is that the most important aspect of saw sharpening is that the teeth end up SHARP. Sharp teeth will cut wood regardless of whether they have 8 or 10 degrees of rake, 0 or 5 degrees of slope, or 6 or 8 degrees of fleam. After you have filed a few saws you will start to appreciate how rake, fleam and slope influence the cut of a particular saw, and you shouldn’t get too hung up on the optimum degree settings for each of these parameters when you first start out.

On the face of it, a backsaw is a pretty simple piece of kit isn’t it? It consists of a saw plate, a handle, a back or spine and two or three bolts. Whilst that’s true, there are many additional factors that influence how well a backsaw will perform in a given situation. Here are some of them:

• Sharpness of the teeth
• Degrees of fleam
• Degrees of rake
• Degrees of slope
• No. of teeth per inch
• The straightness of the toothline
• Saw plate thickness
• Amount of set per side
• Hang angle of the handle
• Spine weight
• The balance of the saw
• Handle comfort and fit
• The cant of the saw plate (if present)
• The angle you approach the cut
• Your ability to start a saw
• Your ability to cut to a line
• The type of wood you’re cutting

After reading the above list, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is more to this saw sharpening lark than you first thought, but let me say it again – SHARP TEETH WILL CUT WOOD. Even if all the teeth are not exactly the same height or if the tooth geometry is less than perfect, SHARP TEETH WILL CUT WOOD. After you have sharpened a few saws, you can start to experiment with some of the other factors that can influence the saw’s effectiveness. I bought the backsaws that I’ve restored in this blog series because I wanted to learn to sharpen and maintain my own saws and play with some of these factors to see firsthand how they affect a saw’s ability to cut. I’m sure you can appreciate now why I bought as many as I did.

So armed with all this information and a good helping of commonsense, I created a spreadsheet. The column headings were:

• Make and length of saw
• Filing (i.e. Rip, Crosscut or Combination)
• Teeth Per Inch
• Rake angle
• Fleam angle
• Slope angle
• Plate thickness
• Depth of cut at the toe

I carefully measured these details on each of my backsaws and recorded them on the spreadsheet. Then I inserted a new row for each saw and after much consideration, recorded the details of how I intend to file each saw (shown below in brown text) in order to end up with a versatile set of backsaws that will cater for all my needs.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m new to sharpening saws. I hope I’ve got it right, but the nice thing about learning how to sharpen your own saws, is that you can always change them again.

Thanks for your support. As always, I welcome your comments, be they good or bad.

Happy sharpening!