Gloat?

[Tom Winship]

A neighbor who makes garage/yard sales every weekend picked up these two saws for $1 each for me. Both saws have Disston medallions and the "needle nose" saw still has Disston on the blade. The newer saw doesn't have the Disston etching that I can find. It is a good user even though it is possible not a Disston.
I'm thinking of shortening the older saw into a panel saw as Bob Smelser did in his article in FAQ's in this section.
Does anyone have any comments on the ages of the saws?

[George Sanders]

The shiny one in the pic looks just like my Disston Townsman saw made around 1953. I have a saw like the other one but I don't know which one it is. Go to the Disstonianinstitute.com and look up the medallion to get the age of it.

[Marv Werner]

Tom,

I think I saw Smalser's method of shortening a saw blade. If I recall, he ground it off on a grinder?

You can cut a hand saw blade using a hacksaw. You have to clamp the blade to a solid surface. I use my RAS table. I clamp the saw to the RAS with a board on the underside of the blade that I'm going to cut off, with it over- hanging the RAS table. I also clamp a board on top of the blade right up close to where I'm going to make the cut. I also clamp the other side of the cut. When I saw the blade, I'm also sawing through to the board under the blade. You have to push down and force the hacksaw to dig in and cut. You can make a nice clean accurate cut this way.

Marv

[Jonathan McCullough]

The bottom one seems like a D-23. I wouldn't shorten it. Once a saw gets used up like that the taper grinding is all out of whack and the handle hangs wrong. I might suggest that you save the handle and nuts to repair the horns on other saws, and use the blade for scrapers if it's not too pitted. Others may disagree.

[Marv Werner]

Hi Jonathan,

You can only use so many scrapers.:)

The tapering is the same angle in relationship to the tooth edge, even though the thickness will be reduced as the saw is filed to a narrower width, the angle is still the same. There is less blade in the kerf as the blade is filed smaller so it will still perform well. If it becomes a problem, just add a little more set in the teeth. The hang of the saw changes, but think of all the different make of saws that have different hangs even when they are full size. Hang is something we easily adapt to. I prefer a saw with lots of blade width, but a skinny saw comes in handy at times in tight places. The oldtime carpenters liked to include a saw like that in their till, along with their wider saws. A pointed saw like that would be used for sawing large circles or sawing even a rectangular opening after the saw cut was started using small drills.

Marv

[Jonathan McCullough]

I'm not sure there's an angle per se. I think the taper grinding wasn't uniform and that a cross section of the saw plate at any point along the length wasn't a perfect triangle when the saw was new. The width of the plate at the toe--which was the top of the saw when the saw was new--is going to be the smallest it was ever intended to be on the entire saw, and the width of the saw plate at the heel--which is mostly still there, is going to be the thickest. I'd be happy with the $1 price as a cheap source for saw nuts for a better saw that might need one. Everybody needs those from time to time. As for sawing circles, that's what a compass saw is for.

[Marv Werner]

I hate compass saws. They are evil cutting little beasts. If I had my druthers, I'd use a regular handsaw any day. However, not having a pointed handsaw, I have resorted to the dreaded compass saw or keyhole saw way too many times. Plumbers and electricians on the other hand, can't do their job without one. If there was a saw that could make a worse cut, that's what they would prefer. :D

The taper grinding was and is uniform, but varies continuously from bottom to top and from toe to heel. It's not much, but is in fact an angle, equal on both sides of the blade.