Veritas gent’s saws – a new offering

Veritas Gent’s saws

In the history of things made, gent’s saws are common, small scale saws made for more refined gentlemen who enjoyed working wood. A range of different saws were designed for the enjoyment of class-separated woodworkers of distinction and the most common of all was the classic type shown here.

Fine saws can be hard to come by and I recently tried two new Gent’s saws designed by Veritas’ designer Steve Jones and made by Veritas. The saw has the characteristic inline handles and are made from sustainable Padauk, which I really liked the look and feel of as well its highly durable qualities.

The overall design is uniquely innovative resulting in a comparatively less expensive saw that goes through the wood like a hot knife through butter. The saw is in no way cheap and that’s really important to me. It’s really a fine saw that enters the wood smoothly without grabbing right from the start and then progresses more deeply into the wood with remarkable speed and control. Now when I say fine I mean fine in quality of construction standards and materials and also fineness of cut. These two new saws have both.

Joseph Sellers tried the saws before I did and found them highly satisfactory in the hand and though he was working them in stock thicker than ½” (12mm) they cut well in both pine and mahogany. In ½” stock, which Veritas says they are more specifically intended for and suited to, they really motor into and through the wood and because of the number of teeth per inch (not points per inch) the rip cut will work in both directions for work such as dovetail cutting.

Note: I use a fineness index to size teeth of saws which means we can visualise and categorise the size of saw teeth more easily when we consider the number of teeth or points there are to the per/inch length of the saw. See saw sharpening section, Working Wood the Artisan Course with Paul Sellers for precise details.

I used them in ¾” pine. oak and mahogany without any problems. With finely toothed saws you can set up a series of vibrations resulting in negative harmonics that prevent cutting but I experienced none of that, indeed, these saws surpass all others of their kind and can be used on any fine work you are involved in.

I don’t want to go over their material tolerances and construction methods as this information is well covered in their online catalogue, but these saws are very refined and can be used for very exacting work.

The handle is removable, which may seem of minimal consequence, but the advantage is twofold: You can reshape to personal preference by chucking in a lathe and returning; or you can create a new handle altogether from some other wood.