Maker
Most folk just call me; Orange Joe
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Very cool, I've been thinking about making a saw from scratch, nice tennon saws are bloody expensive! Have you tried ripping with it? The gullet is possibly a bit small for it but the square tooth profile is more suited to going with the grain rather than across it.A little over a month ago, I acquired a few tools from the Vintage Tool Shop in Stalbridge.
Amongst these tools was a hand saw that had, judging from the state of the teeth, had a very hard life. The edge was wavy (by about a millimetre variation when a ruler was placed up against it) and the teeth were all different widths, seemingly at random. The teeth were also different lengths, over and beyond the waviness of the edge. It was generally a mess. I bought it anyway, thinking it would be an interesting project to see whether I could do anything with it.
Turns out it's quite hard!
I definitely should have taken some close up pictures of the teeth to show what state they were in (the photo on my "Today I acquired" post linked above makes it look quite good, but it really wasn't).
Anyway, I started by taking it apart and filing all the teeth off.
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I then put a bit of polyunknownium (previously acquired by skip diving) in the lathe and used a little tool I made (out of an old hacksaw blade - originally intended for cutting circlip grooves) to put narrow grooves at 2 mm increments:
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I then milled a flat on one side and clamped the saw in the vice between the plastic bar and a bit of aluminium:
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I'd watched a few youtube videos about this and Paul Sellers (who had also gone for 2 mm pitch) had suggested cutting down with the hacksaw to about 1/8" (circa 3 mm). I had calculated it should be about 1.2 mm so I went with a compromise and set the aluminium about 1.6 mm below the edge. As you'll see later, I suspect he meant to say something smaller (or I misheard!).
I then used a junior hacksaw to cut square teeth. It probably would have been better with two of the plastic references (to help keep the hacksaw straight): my sawing skills leave a lot to be desired.
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Not bad though, even if the widths are varying a little:
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I then got rid of the plastic, stuck a bit of wood on the end of a triangular needle file to help me keep it aligned properly (an idea from a Rob Cosman video) and filed each of the teeth in turn.
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Certainly not perfect by a long stretch, but it's a lot better than it was:
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If I'm feeling like I can face it, I might have another go at some point, with two reference bars (or by cutting the one I've already made in half) and a shallower hacksaw cut.
I haven't used the saw setter I bought at the same time yet, but I had a go at cutting with it and even without any set it worked surprisingly well for my first attempt at making saw teeth:
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(Random pic from Google)