Zahid Naqvi
10-10-2005, 12:02 PM
After encouragement from fellow creekers I finally garnered some courage and tried my hands at saw filing. I had done it a few time before as well, but wasn't concerned about the quality as I was just experimenting on a cheap Buck Bros. saw.
I went through my inventory of files and found out that I had none that would fit the tooth size of the gent's saw I was planning to sharpen. But I did have a feather file for Japanese saws. I have a couple of identical Xcut Dozukis, so I decided to victimise my HF one.
The sharpening process was rather tedious, as expected the metal was much harder. I found out that a 14 TPI saw has a lot of teeth to sharpen :eek: and a thin blades creates a lot of nerve wrecking vibration :mad: . But the benefit of hard teeth is that it is more fault tollerant, i.e. difficult to screw up due to one stroke of the file going off track. After about 30 mins worth of careful filing the first part was done. I noticed some burr on the sides of the teeth so I rubbed both sides of the saw on an oil stone until I got rid of almost all the burr.
The field trial was rather pleasing, the most improvemenet was in how well the saw tracked compared to the Lee Valley Xcut Dozuki. It made rip cuts about 25% faster, so that was't as dramatic as I thought it would be, maybe that has to do something with filing. But it tracked real streight and the cut was much cleaner than the Xcut Dozuki.
I am still digital camera-less so I can't post any pictures of the saw and the resulting cuts side by side.
I went through my inventory of files and found out that I had none that would fit the tooth size of the gent's saw I was planning to sharpen. But I did have a feather file for Japanese saws. I have a couple of identical Xcut Dozukis, so I decided to victimise my HF one.
The sharpening process was rather tedious, as expected the metal was much harder. I found out that a 14 TPI saw has a lot of teeth to sharpen :eek: and a thin blades creates a lot of nerve wrecking vibration :mad: . But the benefit of hard teeth is that it is more fault tollerant, i.e. difficult to screw up due to one stroke of the file going off track. After about 30 mins worth of careful filing the first part was done. I noticed some burr on the sides of the teeth so I rubbed both sides of the saw on an oil stone until I got rid of almost all the burr.
The field trial was rather pleasing, the most improvemenet was in how well the saw tracked compared to the Lee Valley Xcut Dozuki. It made rip cuts about 25% faster, so that was't as dramatic as I thought it would be, maybe that has to do something with filing. But it tracked real streight and the cut was much cleaner than the Xcut Dozuki.
I am still digital camera-less so I can't post any pictures of the saw and the resulting cuts side by side.