I wish I had known this before!

[Matt Edwards]

I was flit-zing around the net a few minutes ago trying to increase my saw sharpening knowledge a little when I ran across this.

Hello: David

Hand saws are extremely difficult to sharpen correctly by hand, if not totally impossible. Mitre saws have tiny and closely spaced teeth, making it impossible to sharpen with a hand file.

Attempting to hand sharpen the saw blade with a file will ruin the saw teeth. The only safe and accurate method is to have a professional sharpener sharpen the saw.

A professional using a saw sharpening machine designed specifically for the purpose ensures to restore the teeth to there original sharpness.

Specifically designed hand saw sharpening machines use the indexing method of advancing the saw blade to each tooth and uses a file to do the sharpening.

Each tooth cuts on the opposite of the other tooth. Which means each tooth is alternate of the other. Therefore, every other tooth gets sharpened in one pass of the sharpening machine, then the saw is reset in the machine and the every other is sharpened.

After both these processes, the set has to be restored. Another machine for this purpose. Set is the outwards bend of the tooth. Another a process that can not be accurately done by hand and without a set tool.

Best bet is to have the saw professionally shaprened. Saw and tool sharpening shops are listed in the phone directories under sharpening services.

Regards and Good Luck,
Sharpening Forum Moderator


I only wish I had seen this BEFORE I bought all those saw files, saw vices and spent all that time learning to hand file and refurbish old saws. This in turn would have saved me the time I wasted making my own joinery saws from scratch, and all those hand formed teeth that have been doing the impossible :)

I'm surprised at the scam that has raged on for over a 100yrs in the sale of tools and hardware to perform an impossible task!

(I hope everyone is seeing the humor and light sarcasm in this post :) )

The bad thing is, there was a time before I started messing with old saws that if I had read this, I would have believed it, and missed out on learning a skill that I find truly rewarding.


Matt

[george wilson]

I wish I'd known this,too!! I even sharpen my Blitz backsaw,over 50 teeth pre inch? More,I think. I hope the moderator wasn't from this site!!

[David Keller NC]

That is amusing. In my relatively limited experience, no one can completely ruin a handsaw's set and teeth faster than a "professional sharpening service in the telephone book". Before I learned to shapren/set on my own, I took a dovetail saw to one of those services - I got it back with crosscut teeth!

[Bill Houghton]

why all those 17th-19th century pieces of furniture were all done with axes - no one had any machinery available to sharpen their saws.

Jeez.

Matt - I think your sarcasm was rather gentle.

[glenn bradley]

Thank goodness the "Sharpening Forum Moderator" has explained that hand saws are borne to earth by the gods and no mere mortal could possibly deal with one. I bet he owns a sharpening service ;-)

[Jim Koepke]

I'm surprised at the scam that has raged on for over a 100yrs in the sale of tools and hardware to perform an impossible task!

Gee, now that we have done the impossible, who wants to be first to walk across water?

jim

[george wilson]

As I mentioned before,we tried 2 different Foley saw filers when we had to file,and set all those saws. Both of them would invariably fail to index to the next tooth,and file twice on the same tooth,making it so much deeper that we had to cut the teeth off,and repunch new ones. We ended up filing them by hand,rather than waste blade width.