For a change of pace between woodworking projects, I have been restoring and tuning up some Golden era, vintage saws (Disston and Simonds). For me saw tuning is a fungible skill, little like shooting – if I haven’t done it for a while, it takes a little bitto get back into the swing.
A few weeks back I posted a thread on restoring/sharpening a Western rip saw. I believe this is a link that will take you there:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?227083-Saw-Restoration-and-Sharpening-Pics
It seemed like ther ewas some interest on another post focused on crosscut saws so here goes.
Disclaimer: I have a bad hand saw problem. At this stage it’s probably terminal. This is just the way I sharpen/tune saws. Certainly there other ways that work just as well if not better. This is just what works for me.
I apologize upfront if it seems I am talking down to any my fellow neanders who know more about the subject than me. I find the recent conversation about “experts versus newbies” here on the creek unsettling. I recently had the pleasure of helping a fellow creeker serving his country as a member of USN sharpen his first saw. My intent here is to cover the things he found helpful (thank you Steve for your service!). There is a fair amount of “saw geekery” here that you don’t need to achieve the first time around. Just getting the teeth in rough shape will make a huge difference in performance.
The initial steps of sharpening a crosscut saw are identical to those for a rip saw. I won’t rehash these here. A couple friendly reminders: check the tooth line and current set to see how much of the original tooth line you need to remove to get a straight/breasted tooth line and your target set.
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After initial jointing, work from one side of the saw to get uniform profiling, spacing and tooth height. Here are some before-and-after pics:
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At this stage, you’re gonna be removing a lot of steel so remember to keep your file clean. It’s also helpful to slope the first tooth, to reduce the risk it “catches”, which can tweak the saw plate
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