Care of saws - making the jigs

Last week I decided I needed to resharpen my saws. I have a back saw from the US, obviously its a push saw and a rip saw. But my cross cut is indian and hence a pull saw. Both are about 2 years old and have done duty almost everyday and in everyway.

So coming to the rub, they needed sharpening. A lot of articles exist out there to help explain how saws work and hence how to resharpen them. Some are brief, some are verbose, I read them all. Read the Part 1 of this article.

While that article and the embedded link talk about the concepts and show how to sharpen, it doesn't quite explain the making of the jigs. I've read so many articles that the jigs are sort of in my memory now, but here goes

1. Saw clamp: A lot of sites suggest buying a nice iron one, but if you have 2 saws to service all your needs then you really don't need to put down that much cash. I built one its the easiest thing ever

Most saw you are going to use are 1 to 1 and a half foot so your saw clamp can be anywhere between 8 inches and a foot. I made one by cutting 3 pieces of 6mm ply that I had lying around.

The 2 large pieces are about 8 by 6 inches and the small one is 8 by 1 inch. The reason for the 1 inch piece is that when the clamps are applied to the saw clamp, the tops of the large pieces come together to tighten around the blade and keep it stable. without the small piece of ply in place you would have to clamp right on the saw to make sure that blade is stable.

One problem I did face with the back saw is that it is just about a foot long and hence the handle was in the way of the clamp. It took me nearly 15 minutes to figure out that I should just pull the saw back and clamp up only the first 6 inches and do that properly.

Since I don't have a vise, and I'm not going to get one, I simply clamp up a thick piece of wood to the underside of the table, at the edge, to act as a skirt. The saw clamp is then attached vertically to that. This is also how I plane edges or cut tenons.


2. Saw Jointer: The saw jointer is used to flatten out any inconsistencies in the height of the teeth. I made a simple jointer by chopping a groove in a thickish piece of wood and inserting the file

Here is the effect of the jointer. Notice how the top of each tooth is flat and shiny. Some of the teeth even have a burr formed with the action of the jointer.

I may have jointed a little too much, but these teeth are so tiny that it was difficult to see. I would suggest if any of you are doing this for a 14 PPI, then get a good magnifying glass, so you can examine the impact of your action.

The one thing to watch for is that all the sites say, that each top MUST have a little material knocked off. But common sense will tell you that if a few (1 or 2) teeth are really short or broken, there is no way that you should joint down to that level.

3. Rake guide and Fleam Jig
Here I used the section on Making a Rake Alignment Jig from http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html.

The fleam jig theory is from the same article but the jig or guide is from the section "Hand saw sharpening guides" at http://workshopcompanion.com/KnowHow/Tools/Sharpening/8_Sharpening_Hand_Saws/8_Sharpening_Hand_Saws.htm

One thing that I did wrong while drilling the hole to take the triangle file was that I made the hole too small and then jammed the file in there. After which it was a problem to adjust the angle of the file, which is kinda the whole point of the exercise. What you can do to get the size right. is hold the tip of the file over the shaft of the drill this will tell you how much of the file will comfortably go into the hole without binding.

Here is my rake guide. The rake guide should ideally be just one, because the rake angle for all the teeth will be the same regardless of whether they are bent away from you or towards you or whether it is a cross cut saw or a rip saw. The issue is actually with the secondary angle on the cross cut saw each, what is called the fleam angle. This is where the direction of the handle comes in handy. 

Now I've done this rake guide for the push, rip cut, back saw. I will have to make a different guide for the pull, crosscut saw.

And that's it folks.

Care of saws - A personal journey

First of all this is not a complete guide to care for saws, this is probably just a personal journey of studying and bringing that knowledge to bear on the real problem.

Problem statement: My saws take forever to cut.

Last week I embarked on a journey of learning and doing with this problem statement and I learnt a lot. A whole load that I already knew, and then some aha moments. So lets just call out the facts 

1. Ripping is different from cross cutting - hence a rip saw will cross cut slower than a cross cut saw

2. Number of teeth or PPI is important. Only 4-7 teeth should be engaged in the timber at any given point. More and the saw will bind, less and the saw will tend to jump and vibrate, but still cut.

3. Sharpening a saw is not difficult, it needs a few jigs and guides that you seriously can make in a few hours. I took an entire week of 15 minutes a day.

4. A back saw should ideally be a rip saw

5. All saws have a set. The set allows the saw body to move through the cut easily.

6. Pull saws make for economy of wood and of energy (effort)

7. Some people really explain saws beautifully, if you are willing to spend hours searching through the internet.

The meat

This article is much more than a primer. Its long but the explanations are beautiful

http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html

Yesterday, with no fuss and being only half prepared, I went ahead and sharpened my back saw. I mucked up a few teeth, but all in all it is cutting much better than it was. Faster and cleaner too.

SO SUCCESS.

Tools and jigs
Read about the Making of the jigs here.
The tools and jigs are easily available and I made all the jigs. One jig remains though, a jig to help me set the teeth. Right now that is not too important since the teeth have what seems like proper set, the blade does not bind, neither does the blade jiggle in the cut.

Tools
1. Mill file with a fine cut like a bastard cut or finer (Yes Bastard... look it up)
2. Triangle file

Jigs (I made them all)
1. Saw clamp
2. Saw jointer
3. Rake angle jig
4. Fleam angle jig for the cross cut saw.

Wedding vows reminder

Boxes are one of the most used pieces of furniture and the most useful.

Boxes exist in myriad types, dimensions, shapes and sizes.

I've been trying to make the perfect box for a long time now, ok actually I tried once, 7 years ago, and gave up. I also developed a healthy hate for the mitre joint at the same time.
Recently Jesal asked if I could make a box frame. A box frame is a strange frame, like a picture frame but depth about 3 inches deep.
So here are the project specs

Project name: Wedding vows reminder.

Requirement: A couple of sticky notes with the wedding vows would be glued to the back of the box. The box itself would be hung like the Sword of Damocles in a prominent place.

Technical requirement: A box frame either 6" x 4" or 6" x 6" with a depth of 3" to  4". It will have a back but the front will be a glass or acrylic. The box must be easy to open and the acrylic or glass easy to replace. I'm guessing easy to open so that "someone" can quietly change a few vows.

Materials: Solid Burma teak.

Joints: Mitre joints for the frame, rabbet for the back, dado for the glass panel

Tools: Hand plane, circular saw, router with straight bit for dado and round over bit for the front edge molding

Description:

Hand planing the board of burma was the most fun i'd had in a long time. If chosen well, planing a board is easy. The straight grain, the sharp edged plane iron, the perfectly set hand plane; these are all it takes to bring on levels of satisfaction normally attributed to the 7th shot or the 3rd orgasm.
We used the circular saw to cut the 4 pieces we required and Jesal ran a round over bit along the edges and then a straight bit to make the dado.

4 pieces with dado cut out and the round over molding done. Next step, shooting the mitre.

Next he spent a good hour at the mitre shooting board.
First he marked the 45 degree line on the end of the pieces. Both edges and the long line across the face is required. He then chiseled the excess material. This considerably speeds up the planing or shooting as its called here.
We then used the age old techniques of gluing up a box with mitre joints.

4 mitre joints simultaneously being glued up using a canvas strap and plastic tightener

Jesal used the laser cutter to cut the back and a piece of mdf which would fit into the box, making a lid of sorts. Ofcourse, he would glue this back to the box since this is a hanging frame and we cant afford it opening and falling.

The back face is made up of 2 pieces of veneer, laser cut to size

The next morning we cut the box in half. The board we had initially used was about 4 1/2". This is a delicate operation, running the circular saw over these faces requires extreme balance. Most woodworkers use a table saw or a band saw. We have neither, so I turned to the circsaw. I think I did a pretty good job.

That's it, the build is done.
The acrylic panel is glued up to one of the sides. This side is not glued up and slides open on the dados.