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practice saw

I’m way behind in my goal of two posts a month. I have had a few ideas but mostly they were heading towards rants so I decided to keep them to myself. Today I’m feeling quite smug. That is in direct contrast to some of the time I’ve spent on the ukulele build lately. There are so many things to watch for all at the same time and in three dimensions. Suffice it to say, that it has brought the concept accuracy to a whole new level and I’m not there yet. So today I decided to try something entirely new in a situation where making a mess of it on the first try wouldn’t matter.

I’ve shied away from sharpening my own handsaws because I thought it was going to be too easy to screw up a perfectly good saw. I was prompted to give it a go the other day when I seemed to be struggling through a cut with my favourite dovetail saw. I picked up a different dovetail saw and made the cut smoothly and quickly. Wait, aren't you supposed to be able to go several years before you have to sharpen a good handsaw? Then I thought back and realized that several years was probably closer to 16 years. I’ve been using the saw extensively since I got it and not only in good quality hardwood. I’ve used it in softwood which sometimes has resin in it and even (shhhh) in plywood. That is anathema to some of my woodworking friends.

So the light went on: I have a dull saw. A couple of years ago I picked up a handsaw for nothing. It was sitting out near the sidewalk with a ‘free’ sign on it so I took it. I had it earmarked to practice on thinking that it would probably take quite a beating in the process of my learning to sharpen. It had a couple of kinks in it and, although I’ve tried to straighten it out, it will never be a first class saw again, so I wasn’t worried about ruining it. I was just dreading the time I thought it would take me to get it right.

Three of my favourite YouTube woodworkers have assured me that sharpening a handsaw isn’t hard. I’ve heard that one before about cutting dovetails and that skill eluded me for years. The first thing I needed in order to try sharpening the saw was a way to hold it while I worked. The simplest way to do that is to put a stick on each side of the blade with a small margin between the top of the stick and the top of the teeth. Then you clamp saw and sticks in the vise. Okay, I got that part. In accordance with one suggestion I stuck a popsicle stick on the end of the file so I could more easily tell when I was tilting the file. I also went over the teeth with a sharpie so I could see when I had taken material away from the teeth.

I thought it would be prudent to see how the saw was cutting before I started to sharpen it. The answer was ‘not well. Not much to ruin then, I told myself. I clamped the saw between the two sticks in the vise, put a strong light on it and donned my magnifying visor. I oriented the file to the saw plate and made the first cut. There was the rather satisfying sound and feel of metal coming off. Being careful not to change the angle of the file I moved onto the next tooth, and the next. Pretty soon I was in a rhythm.

setting up to sharpen

When I finished I touched the tips of the teeth. One person described that feeling as the points on ‘cat’s teeth.’ The saw felt a lot more like a cat's teeth than when I started. I ran my hand very gently down the tips and some still felt like they could use a bit more attention. I decided to go over the saw once more.

This time the teeth were nice and sharp so I took the saw out of the vise and went back to the piece of 1” ash on which I had previously tried the saw. This time the saw went through the wood quickly and easily, and it didn’t pull to one side. Sometimes if you don’t get your angles right you can end up with one side of the saw cutting more aggressively than the other.

Okay, time for the dovetail saw. The advantage of my dovetail saw was that I knew it had been sharpened well when I bought it. I figured if I followed the angles already on the teeth I should be okay. More sharpie, a couple of thinner sticks to account for the brass back on the saw and into the vise it went. After giving each tooth two strokes with the file, I checked with my fingers to see if it felt sharper. It did. When I tried it in the piece of ash, it cut twice as quickly as it had before I sharpened it.

When I’m learning something new I never expect to get it on the first try. When it happens I have my own little party. Before, when my saws became dull, I took them into a place that sharpens blades for power saws and they sent the handsaws to a guy in Edmonton to have them sharpened. The saws came back nice and sharp in about two weeks.

sharp dovetail saw

I know not every saw-sharpening will go smoothly and the two that I sharpened today were both rip saws, meant to cut with the grain of the wood. Crosscut saws, meant to cut across the grain of the wood, are more difficult to sharpen because they have a different tooth geometry. I’ll tackle a crosscut saw eventually, but for now, I think maybe I can keep the rip saws in my collection sharp and that’s good enough.