Saw sharpening project of the week: competition crosscut racing saw.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, Maine

For our project of the week from the saw sharpening shop, this week we had:

This is a 5 1/2′ 2 man crosscut competition saw in an M-tooth pattern belonging to the Colby College Woodsmen’s Team. The saw came in badly worn and with almost no set (the set on this saw was originally created when the saw plate was ground). It’s now well set and razor sharp (I got my fingers bit several times ).

I told them I want a plug if they win a meet with it!

Touring the saw sharpening shop: The anvil and hammers.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, Maine

I thought I’d give everyone a little tour of the saw sharpening shop, starting with the heart of the operation, the anvil and the hammers!

What we have here is a 196lb English anvil. The anvil is 26″ long and the face is 16″ x 4 3/4″.
Family history suggests this anvil was brought over from Canada, then spent the next 100+ years doing heavy forging in the old family blacksmith shop. This weight of anvil is a little heavy for saw work, but the long face is just right for laying out 30″ cordwood saw blades on. Since I’ll never be doing any hot forging on it, the stand is much lighter.

The anvil is used for straightening bent, warped, or twisted crosscut saws and handsaws, as well as for setting the teeth on crosscut saws and large circular saws such as cordwood saws.

I use 3 heavy hammers for this. The first in a vintage 3lb cross peen blacksmith hammer, recovered from the old family blacksmith shop and restored. The second is a regular 3lb hand sledge. The third is a steel cutter, also recovered from the old family blacksmith shop. The steel cutter has been modified with a flat face for use with the 3lb cross peen for setting teeth and straightening (hitting the saw blade directly would leave tool marks).

Finally, there are three vintage light hammers. First is a ball peen with an unusually small ball end. Second is a small cross peen hammer for work on handsaw blades. Third is a hammer with one flat and one rounded dome face. The various hammers give me total flexibility to deal with almost any damaged saw blade!

Risking your life with damaged circular saw blades.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, ME

I’ve just been reading a report online about injuries to a serviceman in Iraq from the structural failure of a diamond circular saw blade. I’m going to talk a little in this post about the high risk from saw blade damage.

Circular saws are dangerous enough to deal with, having one come apart, spraying high speed shrapnel, is REALLY dangerous. Fortunately, it usually takes a lot to cause structural failure of a saw blade.

In this case, cracks that started in the expansion slots of the blade caused a section to break out and be thrown, injuring the operator.

The remaining sections of the blade show the cracking clearly on every single section.

The real problem here isn’t the cracking however. As this picture shows, the teeth and plate of this blade were severely eroded, probably from extreme amounts of abuse and operation well past the point the blade was worn out. This blade has worn the diamond coating off the teeth long ago and been cutting directly on the steel tooth, which the steel was never designed for.

Cracks from other sources such as overheating or hitting metal in wood are one thing. Cracks because you operate the blade far beyond any sensible life span and wear the whole structure of the blade thin is just silly. I’ve also seen this done with carbide table saw blades. I had a customer bring me in a 10″ carbide blade that he had knocked every single carbide off of and he was cutting directly on the steel teeth. DON’T DO IT!

Imagine this kind of failure happening with a 30″ cordwood saw blade or a sawmill type circular blade!

The takeaway from this is not only to inspect your circular saw blades (big and small) for general damage such as cracks but also to know when to call it a day on a worn out blade.

If the diamond material is all gone, if your blade is missing carbides, if the teeth have eroded and are not capable of being properly sharpened, it’s time to throw it out before it becomes a spinning hand grenade.

Saws and other old tools and “patina”, when do you stop cleaning.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, ME

There’s a lot of debate in the antiques world about removing “patina” from metal objects. I’m going to talk a little bit here about patina and old tools.

The first thing to keep in mind is not to try to turn a nice vintage tool into a new one. Vintage handsaws, planes, and other woodworking tools can keep the signs of their use that give them character and still be put in condition to be perfectly usable. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive.

Let’s take, for example, handsaw cleaning. The first thing to come off any old neglected or abused handsaw is the surface rust. Rust is always bad, period, and should never be left on any tool you care about. It’s that simple. Get rid of the rust.

The next layer down after taking off the surface rust is usually a smooth, dark brown layer, mistakenly referred to as “patina”. Really, this is just yet another layer of rust. Handsaws may also have a layer of old pitch mixed in with the rust too.

A lot of people like to remove pitch from a handsaw by chemically softening it. In my opinion, this is likely to just make a mess. If the pitch is hardened, scraping it is usually the fastest way to remove it.

The last layer is the dark stains that rust leaves as a shadow when it’s gone. This is the signal to stop cleaning. Rust shadows don’t hurt the blade at all and any attempt to remove them will sacrifice steel from the blade, just the thing you don’t want to do to a nice vintage tool.

It’s also worth noting that rust and old pitch will impact the performance of the blade, since they add drag. A blade nicely cleaned down to just the rust shadows will be smooth and have little friction, making a better user saw.

Clean, but know when to say when.

How to straighten your bent handsaw.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, ME

The unthinkable has now happened. You got a little to aggressive with the down force on your handsaw, dug the teeth in, and then pushed. Now your formerly straight handsaw looks like the ocean waves or a banana. In this post, I’m going to list some dos and don’ts about straightening a bent handsaw.

1. Get a real anvil. Yes, you could probably get by with makeshift using a piece of I-beam or a steel plate but trying to do this without the right gear is going to be frustrating at best. Don’t even think about trying this on the little “anvil” on the back of your bench vise!

2. Forget perfectly flat anvils. There’s a common wisdom about that anvils need to be perfectly flat to be useful. The reality is, a bent saw can never be straightened on a flat surface. Since saw steel is generally pretty springy, it has to actually be bent past straight so it will spring back to straight. Best thing for straightening a hand saw is a fairly heavy vintage anvil with a well worn face and a few depressions (aka negatives).

3. Take the handle off the saw. Don’t even think about trying this with the handle on.

4. Don’t ever strike the saw blade directly. Place another tool against the saw blade and strike that tool with the hammer. Strike the blade directly with the hammer and you’ll leave tool marks on the blade, among other things.

5. Don’t over hammer the blade. A bent saw blade will never go back to factory perfect. The object here is to get the blade straight enough to cut a straight line with minimal correction.

Over hammer a blade and you’re likely to thin out the metal, especially if you’re violating #4 and hammering directly on the blade. This is guaranteed to ruin the blade.

These are just the high points to watch for on straightening bent handsaw blades. Most bent handsaws can be put back in shape with care and practice. Or you can bring them by and let us bring them back to life for you .

Finding old tool treasures: Disston National Hardware saw.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, ME

Sometimes it’s hard to see much of anything worthwhile in old tools. When you get a tool that’s been unloved for some time, rust, accumulated crud, and damage from lousy maintenance can hide the charms the tool might have had. Sometimes they can be worth digging for though.

I had a handsaw in rough condition brought into the shop for sharpening yesterday. It was dull, the composite handle was severely abused, and the blade was caked with hard pitch.

Lo and behold, when I cleaned the blade up nicely, I found an excellent, legible etch.

This saw was a commemorative issued by Disston for the 1950 Nation Hardware Show! 60+ years old (and a very cool piece!), this saw deserved a little TLC so I cleaned the blade up extra nice, straightened it, put a great edge on it, and spent a little time repaiing enough of the handle damage to make it solid again, altogether a darn nice saw. Certainly far ahead of most of the Chinese junk being sold today.

Clean up 20 tools and 19 will be nothing special, just decent user tools. It’s the one that has the story to tell that makes it worth doing.

The top 10 mistakes setting, sharpening, and operating a cordwood saw (buzz saw).

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, Maine

The tractor PTO powered cordwood saw (aka buzz saw) can be a speedy and efficient way to work up stove length firewood, especially for those doing homesteading and off grid living. There are a number of videos on YouTube showing the setup, operation, and sharpening of these saws. Unfortunately, most of these videos show some horrendous errors that range from the silly to the absolutely dangerous, so here’s my top 10 mistakes made with cordwood saws (aka buzz saws).

1. Using the wrong kind of file on them.

I just watched a saw sharpening video that used a half round file. The only kind of file that should ever be used on a cordwood saw blade is a single cut mill bastard file, preferably with rounded sides to eliminate the possibility of creating notches that may lead to dangerous cracks.

2. Using a pipe wrench on the saw nut.

Never ever ever use a toothed wrench on a flat sided nut, the teeth will damage the nut. For the saw nut, a monkey wrench, open end or box end wrench, or socket is all that’s appropriate.

3. Creating more smoke than sawdust.

Smoke when cutting equals extremely dull blade. Shut down and get the blade sharpened before you damage it by overheating.

4. Over tightening the belt.

For flat belt driven saws, over tightening the belt actually gives you LESS grip. With a belt set up with an appropriate dip, applying load to the cordwood saw will make the belt “suck in” around the pulleys, giving maximum belt contact and maximum traction.

5. Running a dirty blade.

In addition to making it impossible to inspect the blade for damage, excess pitch and rust on the blade just increases friction, makes it harder to saw, and increases the chance of kickback. A clean blade is a happy blade.

6. Running without even minimum guarding.

Buzz saws can be a dangerous thing to operate if not respected properly. The easiest way to tip the odds in your favor is to make sure all guards are in place or that you add at least basic guards if there aren’t any.

7. Standing in line with the blade.

There shouldn’t be any reason to stand lined up with the blade. Stand on line with a cordwood saw blade and wood chips or broken teeth can be carried around the saw and coming flying off the top at high speed.

8. Unstable base.

Believe me, a running cordwood saw is NOT something you want moving around on you.

9. Operating with one man.

A cordwood saw is far safer to operate with a second person to hold and remove the cut pieces. Dropping the cut pieces on the ground makes it tempting to try to reach under the running blade to get them.

10. Messing around with tractor speed.

Cordwood blades are tensioned to run straight at a certain speed. Set the tractor speed right and leave it alone.

Pictures from the saw sharpening shop.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, Maine

2 man crosscut saw laid out on the anvil, ready for setting. This saw belongs to the Colby College Woodsman’s Team

Vern setting the teeth on a 2 man crosscut saw with a 3lb blacksmith hammer and a modified steel cutter. This saw belongs to the Colby College Woodsman’s Team

Vern straightening a bent handsaw on the anvil with a 3lb blacksmith hammer and a modified steel cutter.

How to choose a handsaw or crosscut saw for restoration.

Vern Burke, SwiftWater Edge Tool Works
Biddeford, Maine

Recovering and Restoring Old Hand and Crosscut Saws

How To Tell If The Old Saw Is Worth Restoring!

So, you have a family heirloom handsaw or crosscut saw, or maybe you’ve been eyeing the tools at the local flea market looking for a great vintage saw for your workshop. Vintage handsaws and crosscut saws are usually superior tools to most anything being made new today.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to determine if the old saw is worth restoring for use.

Blade condition:

Vintage handsaw and crosscut saw blades are usually high carbon steel. These saw blades are tougher, more flexible, and hold an edge far better than anything being made today. Unfortunately, high carbon steel also has little to no rust resistance. This usually results in very ugly blades coated with a layer of surface rust or worse.

If the rust layer is even, without signs of deep pitting, it’s probably just surface rust and can easily be cleaned. Heavy pitting may be a disqualifier for heavier crosscut blades, but it’s an absolute disqualifier or thinner handsaw blades. Black residue from rust and old pitch from green wood can typically be cleaned off fairly easily.

Pitting on the teeth means more effort getting them back to sharp and heavy pitting on handsaw teeth can lead to the teeth snapping off when they’re set. Crosscut blades can be recovered with pitting on the teeth as long as the tooth shape isn’t eroded. Handsaws with missing teeth can be re-toothed but in most cases, it isn’t practical.

Handsaws and crosscut saws with bends or kinks can usually be straightened enough to work satisfactorily. Even the dreaded end to end twist can usually be straightened. Blades with sharp bends, cracks, or other obvious visible damage should be discarded as unsafe.

Handles:

Loss of one or both of the horns from the handle is not uncommon and usually not a disqualifier for a andsaw or a crosscut saw. Cracks from the wood getting wet and drying out repeatedly can often be glued satisfactorily. Intact handles that are missing their finish may be perfectly usable as is and are generally an easy fix if not.

Missing saw nuts may or may not be a problem. Many saw and handle combinations will work just fine missing one or even two of the saw nuts. If more than two saw nuts are missing, pass it up.

On one man crosscut saws, the second, auxiliary, handle is a definite plus. Make sure the auxiliary handle is intact and that it screws down tight and solid against the top of the crosscut saw blade. The same goes for two man crosscut saws with loop style handles.

For crosscut saws with Climax or western type handles, as long as the hardware is intact, it’s easy to replace the wood so rotten or deteriorated wood handles aren’t a disqualifier.

Decoration:

Handles with wheat pattern carving or older handles with the thin “lamb’s tongue” underneath are always a plus on vintage handsaws and crosscut saws. Having an intact medallion saw nut is also a plus.

Many handsaw and crosscut blades are beautifully etched and that’s a big postive. Unfortunately,
many times the etch is hidden under the layer of rust and it’s impossible to tell it’s there without cleaning the blade. Sometimes the lower area inside the etch will cause a lower area in the rust, showing all or part of the etch before the blade in cleaned.

Disqualifiers:

• Heavy pitting on handsaw blades making the teeth weak.
• Eroded teeth that have lost their shape.
• Broken or rotten handles.
• Severely bent, visibly damaged or cracked blades.
• More than 2 missing saw nuts.
• Climax or western type crosscut saw handles with deteriorated hardware.