Saw Kit Tutorial

**Sawduster** · 10-02-2006, 02:36 PM

Well, sort of, I guess. I took some pics while I was rasping my time away putting my Wenzloff and Sons Half Back saw in service. Yesterday, before and after Church, I put together a little expository on my experience and put it on my website. I didn't delve into the sharpening part as I that is covered quite well on several other sites and, besides, I didn't think to take any pics of that.

Anyway, [link:home.austin.rr.com/sawduster/Saw%20Kit/Saw%20Kit.htm|here's a link].

I had Mike cut 16 PPI Crosscut teeth on the blade and set and filed them myself. What most amazed me when I was testing the saw after I got it done was how quickly it cut through some white oak scrap I had when I put it into rip mode. And it left a quite smooth cut besides.

**DCarr10760** · 10-02-2006, 02:58 PM

Looks great!

Whaddayamean, "when I had it in rip mode" did you first file it as a rip saw and then later change it to crosscut?

Nice tutorial/Photo Essay on your site, BTW

Mike said my saws should ship sometime in October so I'm getting all antsy! :-)

David C.

**Sawduster** · 10-02-2006, 04:00 PM

"In rip mode" meant I used it to make a rip cut. With teeth this small, I think fleam or no fleam is all but irrelevant, for either ripping or crosscutting. And even with larger teeth, there is no indiccation that craftsman of the 18th century filed saw teeth with any fleam. These 16 PPI teeth maybe have 15 degrees of fleam as any more than that, you chew up the back of the tooth in front.

**rhull** · 10-03-2006, 08:21 AM

That looks great, Jerry! You must be really happy with how that turned out. Your tutorial makes it look very easy.

**Sawduster** · 10-03-2006, 01:33 PM

Heck, Mike had already done the hard part, cutting the kerf for the blade in the handle.

**MikeW** · 10-03-2006, 02:14 PM

Heck, that's the easy part, Jerry! That one was most likely cut on the band saw. Else we use the vertical mill and aweful skinny circular blades.

To fit the handle and in order to drill the steel, we gotta cut it. The give a heck is seeing how we don't fully do the mortise, it is a paring balancing act when y'all go to make it all work together.

Really, though, shaping the handle and prepping the steel take a lot of time. So the kits get us out of half of that work.

Again, many thanks for the pictorial of your build.

Take care, Mike

**Sawduster** · 10-03-2006, 03:29 PM

A couple of the handles I've made, I was able to get away using just the band saw, but on the Disston D8s and some others, part of the blade inside the handle is rounded and finding a small circular saw blade thin enough for the kerf was all but impossible. Ended up winging it with straight cuts that didn't capture the rounded parts of the blades. The saws have worked well enough even so.

**MikeW** · 10-03-2006, 05:01 PM

The closed tops are the worse. I made some thin circ blades for the ones I did early on:
http://wenzloffandsons.com/temp/saws/D-8/index.html

I only show one picture of cutting it--even putting the pictures up scared me! I've since had a few 45 thou blades made and use them on the vertical mill. I used up my last one and the place milling the cutters has decided they don't want the liability. I have another source for solid carbide and HSS 7" blades, but don't want to spend the cash right now. They're kind of spendy.

Take care, Mike

**Sawduster** · 10-04-2006, 08:31 AM

Cool!

I think Nordic over at WN managed to dig through some old stuff he had and found an old HSS handheld circular saw blade that was thin enough and just about the right diameter that he uses for making replacement handles for the closed top Disstons.

I think I probably threw away several when I moved a few years back.