Tension bow saw with fishing line

[John Coloccia]

I use several turns of Berkley Gorilla fishing line. It's 80lb line. I use 4 or 5 wraps with a traditional tensioning "paddle" in the middle, and find it much easier to tension than the more traditional twine. I also have finer adjustment. And it's cheap! I have hundreds of yards of the stuff...pretty much a lifetime supply for me, my offspring, their offspring, and so on :)

So am I the first one that's figured out the fishing line thing or are the rest of you doing that too?

[James Scheffler]

I use several turns of Berkley Gorilla fishing line. It's 80lb line. I use 4 or 5 wraps with a traditional tensioning "paddle" in the middle, and find it much easier to tension than the more traditional twine. I also have finer adjustment. And it's cheap! I have hundreds of yards of the stuff...pretty much a lifetime supply for me, my offspring, their offspring, and so on :)

So am I the first one that's figured out the fishing line thing or are the rest of you doing that too?

I happened to read today that TFFW suggests using fishing line for their bow saw.

Jim

http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merchant/merchant.mvc?Screen=NEXT&StoreCode=toolstore&nextpage=/extra/bowsawdesign.html

[John Coloccia]

I happened to read today that TFFW suggests using fishing line for their bow saw.

Jim

http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merchant/merchant.mvc?Screen=NEXT&StoreCode=toolstore&nextpage=/extra/bowsawdesign.html

Well there's some synchronicity for you! I picked up a bow saw last year from my wife's uncle, Jorma Vennola (slightly famous Finnish glass/industrial designer). The last time I was in Finland, I wanted to pick up a nice bow saw, and for some reason I thought I'd be able to find one in Finland. Nevermind. It turns out that they have crappy tools just like we do. LOL. Anyhow, Jorma mentioned that he had one that he made in high school as a kid and he gave it to me, but all the twine was falling apart....it was 50 years old, after all.

When I got it home, I just wanted to try it out so I randomly picked up some fishing line just to try it, and it was by far the easiest way to tension a bow saw I'd ever tried.

The one thing I'd caution against is that it's very easy to over tension the blade using the fishing line. You need to forget everything you know about tensioning with twine because it's SOOO easy to twist the fishing line! Tension by feeling the blade. Once you get the feel for it, it really makes tensioning and relieving the tension, a pleasure because it's so effortless.

It's nice to hear I'm not totally off my rocker with this.