Course Rip Saw reccomendation?

[Tony Shea]

I was just recently resawing some 8/4 Zebra wood I've had kicking around the shop. I tuned up a 5.5 ppi Diston for the job and after some serious sawing for two nights I finally got through a peice 20" long. After that battle I've come to the conclusion that I need a more dedicated coarser rip saw.

My issue is finding one. I was thinking somewhere in the neiborhood of 3ppi would be perfect but I just don't see where such a saw exists for ripping. Is there such a saw or is this something I'm going to have to pay to get specially made? I remember recently seeing a thread by David about a similar saw but can't find the thread. If my memory serves me correctly it was asking about a back saw though.

[Jim Koepke]

I think about 4 ppi is about as coarse as it gets for carpenter type hand saws.

Not being familiar with zebra wood's difficulty to saw, my thoughts may not count for much.

If this is normal for zebra wood, then my suggestion would be to find a saw and repurpose it by filing it with 3 ppi. You might also find a more aggressive rake angle could speed the cut without changing the tooth count.

Before doing that my thinking would be to look at the cut and saw to see if there might be something there to indicate why this didn't go quicker.

Looking at the saw dust with a magnifier can indicate whether the saw was cutting as well as it should. A rip saw should leave little fine curls of wood.

The feel of the saw in use can also help to understand what is happening.

Many of my problems with saws have not been solved until understanding how the particular saw is acting during the cut.

Stalling, stopping, bouncing or rough feeling in the cut can mean a few different things from a few tall teeth that need jointing to a section that is set more than the rest.

A rolling feel during the cut can mean dull teeth or too much rake.

Most recently one of my back saws was cutting nice, but at times it seemed to grab in the cut. It all came down to the very first tooth not having any fleam. Since it is only a half tooth at the front of the saw, I didn't give it much thought until it started causing trouble. It only caused trouble if the saw was pulled back in the cut enough to catch the first tooth. My lesson from that was that just one tooth can be the cause a lot of trouble.

Slow cutting on a rip saw can be from a few tall teeth doing all the work.

Sometimes a light rejointing of the saw teeth will reveal such a problem.

jtk

[Andrae Covington]

I was just recently resawing some 8/4 Zebra wood I've had kicking around the shop. I tuned up a 5.5 ppi Diston for the job and after some serious sawing for two nights I finally got through a peice 20" long. After that battle I've come to the conclusion that I need a more dedicated coarser rip saw.

My issue is finding one. I was thinking somewhere in the neiborhood of 3ppi would be perfect but I just don't see where such a saw exists for ripping. Is there such a saw or is this something I'm going to have to pay to get specially made? I remember recently seeing a thread by David about a similar saw but can't find the thread. If my memory serves me correctly it was asking about a back saw though.

According to the disstonian institute website, in the 1918 catalog Disston listed a 28" 3½ ppi D-8. Could be a challenge to actually find one though.

This guy reshaped the teeth on a logging crosscut saw to turn it into a coarse rip saw:
http://www.timberframe-tools.com/natural-timbers/rip-sawing-an-old-log/

I think he needed Acharya Kumarswami's duo saw vise (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?156733-Duo-Saw-Vise).:D

[David Weaver]

I saw the same listing (the disstonian site). I bought the richardson saw that sandy moss had (a 4 1/2 ppi 28" saw). I would've loved to find a 4ppi 28" number 12 or 7, but the odds of that aren't great, and the odds of finding one at a price that wasn't out of this world with good teeth, a good tote, a clean plate and no kinks etc are even worse.

I wanted a coarse saw to rip 8/4 material. As much as I like using hand tools, resawing is best left to a bandsaw unless you're looking for an exercise regimen.

[Chris Vandiver]

A 5 1/2 ppi rip saw should easily handle a 20" piece of 8/4 Zebra wood, in short order. The problem has to be in the sharpening and set of the saw.

[Marv Werner]

I totally agree with Chris. It's all about the filing of the teeth.

A saw may feel sharp, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is at it's optimum sawing ability.

Here's a picture of a Disston No.7...28" 5-1/2PPI Rip.... sawing through a 4 x 6 very dry, coarse grain Douglas Fir with ease. I think I filed it with 4 degrees rake angle and no fleam. That's about two minutes of sawing.

Use just enough set so the blade will not bind. Too much set and the saw will actually cut slower and require more effort to push the saw.

177281

[David Weaver]

I think you guys are misreading, it's resawing the zebrawood that's trouble and not ripping, at least the way the text reads. Whether or not it should take two sessions depends on sawing fitness of the sawyer and how wide the board is. If it's 12 inches wide, ...where's the "barf" icon smiley?

even with a saw file down to two teeth an inch (3ppi), it'll still be a lot of work, and in a wide board, there will be more teeth in the cut than idea for hand work.

There's probably a good reason saws aren't often found in that coarse of a profile, two maybe:
* anyone resawing something in the shop may have used a frame saw like george uses in the CW violin and harpsichord video on youtube
* any cabinetmaker without power tools would probably make sure they got wood in a thickness they could use by dressing the lumber, unless the pieces were very small.

There's a video of marcus resawing a board on one of roy's shows, and i recall it was small and marcus was using a fairly fine saw (no doubt for good finish quality) and he said that it might take about 20 minutes to resaw the board, but that it was enjoyable work. If my memory serves, roy almost choked when he said 20 minutes.

[Acharya Kumarswami]

Chris and Marv are absolutely right.

Here's a photo of a 5-1/2 pt rip saw freshly filed.
Hope this helps.

[Mike Siemsen]

If you want a coarser ripsaw find a 6 or 7 point saw and remove every other tooth. The frame saw is also worth looking into.

[Adam Cherubini]

I was just recently resawing some 8/4 Zebra wood...

Tony- I'm all for buying new saws. I have a Wenzloff rip saw and I like it. Like all newly made tools, I feel I could improve it's performance with a certain anmount of fettling. And keep in mind I'm a saw maker and comfortable with such things. But I can recommend this tool without hesistation.

But in this case, I'm not sure a new saw is the solution to this particular problem. I have no personal experience with zebra wood. It is my understanding it is very hard and very dense. These are certainly not characteristics of 18th c anglo american cabinet woods. So it may be just the wood you are cutting.

My experience cutting woods like kiln dried hard maple has led me to believe sometimes a thinner, finer toothed saw can sometimes be faster cutting in harder woods.

You want a coarse saw for ripping thick, softer woods. I set mine up with very little rake. A finer toothed saw with a little more rake will actually outperform this saw in maple. Zebra wood may just be the wrong choice of a hand tool project.

Adam

[Roy Lindberry]

If you want a coarser ripsaw find a 6 or 7 point saw and remove every other tooth. The frame saw is also worth looking into.

Wouldn't that leave you with every tooth set the same direction? I can't imagine that working well.

[john brenton]

What we're missing is the width of the board. You say resawing, so I imagine you don't mean ripping through 2". I had some spanish cedar that was about 8" wide that I quickly realized was just not doable with what I had. By the time I had made some headway on sawing it I had totally skewed the cut.

Although I haven't yet done it myself, I think every professional here would tell you to take it to a cabinet shop, or a lumber supplier with a custom milling service. Being stupidly committed to doing it the hard way and not letting the old timers beat me, I even wrote an a neander guitar builder who is kind of my yoda of woodworking to ask what he would do and he wouldn't even waste his time trying to resaw something that wide. For some reason that made me feel better about it. Kind of a WW( )D.

[Joel Thomas Runyan]

like george uses in the CW violin and harpsichord video on youtube


Thank you so much for mentioning this. I was unaware of these videos, and as a beginning (unplugged) luthier, they are an absolute gold mine. It's rather depressing to find that this shop is no longer active at CW.


As for the zebra wood, I'll echo what Mr. Cherubini said: in very very dense woods, as far as thick material is concerned, finer (not necessarily fine) saws might expedite the work, or at the very least give the illusion of doing so. I couldn't begin to explain why this is, but I believe it has something to do with diminishing returns. If you take the "coarser is faster" line of thinking to an absurd extent, say, 1 tooth per inch... well, I can't imagine that cutting very fast. There's a decent balance between what we're capable of doing, what we're working with, and what has historically been used.

So I think for easy/frequent re-sawing, a frame saw is best, and a lackey is even better. The thinness of the blade makes the work much quicker than an equivalent coarsing of teeth.

[David Keller NC]

To expand on what Adam and Joel said - there are many woods that are commonly found in today's modern woodworking stores that aren't suitable to be hand-worked. Zebra wood is an excellent example, but there are others such as Honduran rosewood, cocobolo, and purpleheart. The telling characteristic is that the woods are either harder than granite, dense as lead, heavily cross-grained, or some combination of all of these.

In particular, while a coarser saw will always cut a bit faster than a finer one, that doesn't mean that a really coarse handsaw will be effective on some of the harder wood species. The simple reason is that to make a saw that can be set, sharpened with a file, and won't shatter when force is applied, it must be made considerably softer than very hard edge tools, such as carbide router bits & carbide table saw blades. This means that the fibers of some of these woods are almost as hard as the saw teeth, and will very quickly dull them.

Take Honduran Rosewood as an example - this wood is unbelievably hard, and just doesn't work well with handtools, period. I've been successful at hand-planing it, but it takes a lot of futzing around with the balde projection to get a shaving thin enough that you can actually push the plane through the wood without chatter. And even when you succeed, the grain is cross-linked enough that it tears out horribly.

That doesn't mean that all hard woods are impossible to work with handtools, though. Brazilian rosewood works wonderfully with handtools, as does gabon ebony. Unfortunately, Brazilian rosewood is unobtainable in the modern era.

[Tony Shea]

David Weaver and others are correct in their assumption that I am not trying to rip the board to proper width but am resawing the 8/4 stock down to a more suitable thickness for my project. I was able to eventually get through the board to the thickness desired with the 5 1/2 point saw but thought that there may be a better saw out there for the job. Which I believe is going to have to be a homemade frame saw for the time being until I can afford a bandsaw.

And I agree to an extent that not all woods are well suited to working with hand tools. I don't agree that these are completely unworkable with hand tools and think there are ways around this notion. Whether or not it is worth the efforts is a different story. The Zebra wood is very dense and planes terribly with hand planes. But again I believe I can overcome these downfalls as I believe this peice will fit perfectly into my project.

Now all I need are some good tutorials on making a frame saw, most importantly how to cut a blade off an existing saw without ruining the temper. And also, what are my best options for having this blade retoothed? Thanks for help.

[David Weaver]

I would get a piece of 1095 spring steel from anywhere you can get it, it can be thinner than a handsaw since it will be under tension. George knows a LOT more about this than most of us, because there's video proof he used one!

And I would check with someone like mike wenzloff and see if you can get the teeth punched on it. (you do not want to file teeth of that size by hand if you can help it, it's a waste of files and a tooth puncher makes very short work of something like that).

Actually, mike uses 1095, so you might want to call him and ask him if he can make it and skip trying to find it yourself.

You can make a frame for it. I would refrain from using huge teeth on a frame saw, though, and in the end, you may even want to make two - one for coarse work, and one for finer work.

I have never planed zebrawood, but I'm going to try it this evening. It seems dry and splintery from the blanks I have, but it's not particularly dense compared to some other woods that plane quite well.

There are a lot of woods like that that plane OK with infill planes, certainly acceptably, but are really hard to work with some other types of planes. I would say from very recent experience that persimmon is a jarring experience with my standard angle muji made out of ebony, but both of my infill smoothers plane in any direction without issue.