I bought an eBay Disston last week, amongst some others I had bought. It looked a little rugged with larger teeth than seemed natural for so fine a saw, but £10.50 didn’t seem too much for an original 10” Disston #5 brass-backed saw. I own one of these already and have had it for 20 years and I must say that it’s still my favourite saw of all. It’s also the best saw I own and so buying this seemed a good idea.
This saw proved to be a good rip saw but teeth at 7 tpi can be a bit big on so small a saw. It ripped OK but precision wasn’t in it. Too much set by far. First I removed 90% of the set and it cut much more efficiently and kept good course with a thinner kerf. I needed to recut the teeth to a smaller size and as 14 tpi is ideal for this length I decided to double the amount of teeth. Sometimes I recut the teeth on saws because teeth are too wildly shaped or have too many or too few teeth. Often in such cases it’s simply easier to file off all of the teeth. In this case it’s easier to halve the size of the teeth and thereby double the quantity.
Shaping teeth
A prerequisite to creating a saw is to shape the teeth. Regardless of the tooth type; fleam cross cut, passive or aggressive rip cut or whatever, the shape is critical to subsequent setting and sharpening. All dovetail saws are sharpened to a ripcut pattern.
Topping teeth
To convert two teeth to one is one of the simplest of conversion sizes and the simplest to cut. I begin by first topping (jointing USA) the saw and halving the height of the teeth. Any single-cut, flat file 8-10″ long will quickly cut the teeth down to half height with about ten strokes depending on the thickness of the saw plate and the evenness of the teeth etc.
The teeth will look like this.
Now it’s simply a case of cutting the new teeth by filing with a 6″ extra slim tapered saw file. Nicholson files work well for this but are not too readily available in the UK. Draper saw files work fine and I have used them here in the UK.
3 Comments
Paul,
Thank you for your Blog, videos and all the time you put into your teaching!
I had an old Disston and “attempted” sharpening it for my dovetail saw – unfortunately I ended up at 11 ppi and not a very good sharpening job at that! The saw seemed light to me and I had held a brass backed saw and thought I had to have one! I got one on (a PAX) on EBAY advertised as a dovetail saw – $45 delivered. I thought I had done pretty well even though it was sharpened to 20 tpi – that is until I tried to use it and it skated across the end grain – I looked and see it is sharpened as a cross-cut saw… so I have a BRAND-NEW un-useable saw… I thought about simply sharpening it and creating a deeper gullet (using a Nicholson XX slim taper file) but I was afraid I would end up with a 10 tpi saw. My “Real” question is – do I joint it and sharpen it for 15 or 16 ppi or are there other options?
20ppi saws are near impossible to sharpen unless you are used to sharpening and have very young eyes. This is why, for general daily work, I rarely recommend them. They are nice to have and keep for very fine work however and I keep them around for that reason. That said, you can pick up an US made Zona with 24-32 ppi for under $15 that does that type of work exceptionally well. Its not pretty but it cuts like no other. My first thought is to recut the Disston to 14-16 ppi. Find any hacksaw blade with the right number of teeth and after filing off all the teeth from the saw, clamp the hacksaw blade to the saw and use it as a guide for new teeth. dont press the file too hard into the hacksaw itself. It will ruin the file before you are done but you will end up with a newly cut saw that will be near perfect.
Thank you for your quick and (as always) helpful response!
I may joint and file the PAX to 14-16 ppi since the blade is very thin and I hope when sharpened correctly a pleasure to use…
That said – maybe I take the steel-backed Disston and practice on it first…
Whatever I do (and when I finally do it) I will post results here!
Thank you again for all you do for us (weekend “woodworkers”) and the craft as a whole!
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Paul,
Thank you for your Blog, videos and all the time you put into your teaching!
I had an old Disston and “attempted” sharpening it for my dovetail saw – unfortunately I ended up at 11 ppi and not a very good sharpening job at that! The saw seemed light to me and I had held a brass backed saw and thought I had to have one! I got one on (a PAX) on EBAY advertised as a dovetail saw – $45 delivered. I thought I had done pretty well even though it was sharpened to 20 tpi – that is until I tried to use it and it skated across the end grain – I looked and see it is sharpened as a cross-cut saw… so I have a BRAND-NEW un-useable saw… I thought about simply sharpening it and creating a deeper gullet (using a Nicholson XX slim taper file) but I was afraid I would end up with a 10 tpi saw. My “Real” question is – do I joint it and sharpen it for 15 or 16 ppi or are there other options?
20ppi saws are near impossible to sharpen unless you are used to sharpening and have very young eyes. This is why, for general daily work, I rarely recommend them. They are nice to have and keep for very fine work however and I keep them around for that reason. That said, you can pick up an US made Zona with 24-32 ppi for under $15 that does that type of work exceptionally well. Its not pretty but it cuts like no other. My first thought is to recut the Disston to 14-16 ppi. Find any hacksaw blade with the right number of teeth and after filing off all the teeth from the saw, clamp the hacksaw blade to the saw and use it as a guide for new teeth. dont press the file too hard into the hacksaw itself. It will ruin the file before you are done but you will end up with a newly cut saw that will be near perfect.
Thank you for your quick and (as always) helpful response!
I may joint and file the PAX to 14-16 ppi since the blade is very thin and I hope when sharpened correctly a pleasure to use…
That said – maybe I take the steel-backed Disston and practice on it first…
Whatever I do (and when I finally do it) I will post results here!
Thank you again for all you do for us (weekend “woodworkers”) and the craft as a whole!