Setting the teeth on a bow saw blade

[Denny Boyce]

Hello, first post here. I've made a small bow saw around 15 inches or so in length. The blade I was able to find in my area is 3/8 wide 5tpi. I wanted less width and more teeth so I filed them down to the bottom of the gullets then brought the points back up.

The teeth cut fine but as you can imagine have no set. My standard saw tooth setter can't do the job due to the narrowness of the blade.

Any suggestions on how this might be done? Thanks, Denny.

[harry strasil]

get another blade and file or cut the back side off. tin snips should work for the bulk of the removal, saw a kerf the depth of the blade width you want with it first in some hard wood so you can file the back off smooth. reinstall it in the frame put in the kerf and draw file the back, then the edges at an angle.

[Ray Gardiner]

Hi Denny,

Welcome to SMC, you will find there is a wealth of knowledge around here. What Harry is suggesting (Harry is a bow saw expert by the way) is to start over with a new blade. I suspect that will just get you back to where you started.

I have set teeth on 1/4" blades with a Somax and a Stanley 42x, it's a bit fiddly and you have to adjust the height of the blade in the saw set so that the angle in the anvil is just above the gullet.

The old way of setting teeth was to use a wrest, but getting it uniform and stopping the blade from twisting would be a problem.

Hammer setting, won't work unless you can come up with a way of clamping the blade, and unless you have a lot of experience, uniformity is also going to be a problem.

The Somax I have is a blue one from TFWW. They also sell bow saw blades, not sure if they have 15".

After watching this video, I am thinking of making a bent turning saw blade

http://popularwoodworking.com/klausz

Regards
Ray

[Denny Boyce]

I have some extra blade material and I'm going to give Harry's suggestion a try.

My saw set is a Dunlap with the circular anvil. I found a nice picture on the net of the Stanley 42X and I think I see how it could work on narrower blades. There are a few carpenters in my town and I believe I have seen them use the Stanley type setter. I'm going to go check on it this afternoon.

Thank you both for your help, Denny.

[Don Orr]

I'll go out on a limb and suggest something I have done before that worked reasonably well for me. It may be what Ray mentioned as hammer setting. I learned it from an old camping friend of our family. I did it on an old bow frame camp saw with the blade still in the frame. You know, the kind with a metal tube frame for cutting up campfire wood. Anyway, I laid it on a cross cut round section of a tree, (the flat end) wide enough to support the blade and handle at the same time. Using a punch and mallett I gave every other tooth a tap or two down onto the wood. The wood was soft yet firm enough to limit how much set was obtained. Turn the saw over and do the other side the same way. You could do this on a bench with a piece of wood under the blade. Clear as mud I'm sure.
Does it work? Yes. Precise? No, but you can get a feel for it and be fairly close. I've also done it on pruning saw that came with no set when purchased and bound badly in a cut. Introduced a little set kind of crudely and it works great now.
You have already made significant modifications to your blade, so why not give it a try. You can always get another blade and start over the way Harry suggested. Maybe you could practice on an old camp saw first.;)

Good Luck !

[Stephen Shepherd]

illustrated in Moxon works to hold thin blades and a wrest is used. Now I use a wrest to set all of the teeth on my saws, don't like the plyer type (not in my time period of interest) and I think they crush the teeth and bend them at the root.

Hammer setting would seem to have the same problem, as the blade is unsupported, but a tooth swedge would work but you need one sized for the tooth.

Stephen