A $20 Dovetail Saw that might be able to compete with the Premium Boutique Saws?

so for the longest time as people ask me what so should I buy I've always had kind of a smart-aleck equip that really I saw as only as good as the last person who sharpened it so it really doesn't matter how much you spend on it find when this carpet comfortable you get it sharpened well and you'll people would be the best of the best well I don't know if that is just Dogma I read so far or long ago and I've repeated so often that I now believe it as my own where it's just a little confirmation bias I've never been able to afford really nice expensive ham sauce from boutique markets anyways I'd started a new series of videos where for the new woodworker we are starting with very very basic tools so I thought I'd just put this to the test I went out and bought me a $20.00 handsaw this was actually $25 to get to my door yeah and this is a model that some of the people I respect most in Texas woodworking have used for years as their main dovetailing saw the ones they started out with or they just kept using for decades on end because it returned good results because they were the ones that were sharpening it what is it it's just a classic it's got a wood handle nice standard shape not gonna say anything special about it it does have a folded brass back nice spring steel 15 teeth per inch I don't have my glasses on so let me see looks like it is thank you folks yeah I would say that's Bob rip maybe with a little angle to it it's a handle straight and maybe it's a little bit off we'll see about fixing that so what I thought I'd do is I will cut a few dove tall tales with it as a base take some just general measurements then I will sharpen it up myself and test it out again and see if I've made it any better or if it can compete with the dovetail saw I've been using for the past probably eight years there are both eight inches this one is 20 TPI this one's going to be set to 15 just because that's where it came from the factory and I'm gonna stick with that same tooth TPI I'll probably just change up the geometry a little bit cuz man does he do these look like they're wow they just look like they're straight V's not canted at all anyways I will get that baseline we'll get my test area I can make my comparison but really that doesn't say much because as I said earlier I don't have much experience with the high dollar boutique saws so I'm gonna ship this off to an expert in the field so to speak Shane Rogers from the Renaissance woodworker if you're just getting in into hand saws which you know if you're looking at this I assume you are he'd be a great person to fall the Renaissance woodwork on YouTube he has a lot of free content in addition he runs a hand tool dedicated woodworking school online you might want to check out well he's been playing around with saws forever it seems like but he also has a lot of experience with these boutique sauce the classic saws adjusting him changing that kind of stuff so I'll stand off Mike tuned up version of a $20 saw let's see how it stacks up with his good stuff but first let's get some baseline measurements okay we're doing going to do a baseline test and basically this is an exercise I did use to teach students that a properly tuned saw you do not have to put pressure down it has enough weight in the back to do all the gravity force it names so we're actually going to saw it holding the saw like this right here so that there's no way I can put down or pressure on the only thing I can do is move it back and forth now complete honesty I did this test one time this is the very first cut we did on this I just forgot to turn the camera on so I'm going to label that a that took me 173 strokes in order to bottom this plate out so here's how I did it I put it in the solve ice I started sawing even just like I'd normally would 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 % wait 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 % three sixty seventy eighty five six seven eight nine to ten well let's just call it to ten so I think it's fair to say that this brand-new saw is so dull it wouldn't register on the IQ scale so let's see what happens if I simply sharpening now this isn't gonna be a sharpening tutorial I actually have an entire video out there on saw maintenance and stuff like that where I'll go into a lot of detail on sharpening saws but what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the indentations of the Duce tooth pattern readjust the geometry to ones that mr. Rogers Shannon Rogers told me that would probably work for him and a saw this size dedicated to a dovetailing purpose and then we'll see what the results are what same tests [Music] [Applause] [Applause] to give you an idea of how dull this saw was right now I'm just setting all the teeth rake to zero meaning they're gonna be straight up and down well I can run my finger along this right here no damage whatsoever I come over here and it is gripping my finger so much because of the thing if it was active slide I'm sure it would cut me see the difference this one his slides this one it grips this way but slides this way grips this way slides that way that's how sharp it is just from setting the rake to zero got a long ways to go probably take me ten minutes to get through the whole thing so hopefully this will give you an idea what I'm doing right now I'm just resetting the all the rake to zero we're right about there I found all these are on this side this is the toe side that is the heel side so from about here forward it looks kind of the teeth kind of like look like the edge of this cutting this knife whereas they are pretty much straight up and down and on the backside is sloped fairly low whereas all the other teeth over here the V is right in the middle so the front slope and the back slope is exactly the same I imagine that's just easier to cut that way but it is not a crosscut saw in that the teeth are spouts straight across so it is a rip cut it's just very very relaxed so that it's easier for newbies to start but once again it takes forever to solve because it's not really a cutting action it's more of a scraping action so it has to be perfectly sharp to do that [Music] so now I've set the rake to zero on all these teeth and I'm gonna go then jointed the edges so I could see a little bit of silver on the top of each of these black painted teeth i repainted them and now I'm going to set my the rake to about five degrees that's what Shannon asked for I'm also going to rotate the file so I'm on a fresh edge Shannon also said that he likes a little bit of fleen in his dovetail saws so on I'm every other tooth I'm going to slightly move my body one way or the other just to give him you know two to five degrees as he asked for and this time I'm just taking some light strokes because I don't have to remove as much metal now the song it came with a whole lot of set on either side I was kind of hoping that all this filing would get rid of most of it but I'm first gonna stone both sides of it a little bit that'll remove remove both sides you know also even out in case there's a Berber will be higher than one of the other and that took care of most of it my other option was I was gonna put it between two pieces of brass just kind of tack it down to kind of rebuild them up if I next time I saw I will have to reset them with a little tool that sets them go to both sides but that should be okay so now let's fix this kind of crooked handle now I don't want to bend the back but just want to kind of realign it cuz then the only the hole that they drilled for this to sit in wasn't completely straight so if I just figure out which way it is drop it in my vise some I'll be working on that part of the handle then just a little trial and error bend it the other way good and if the blade was somehow bent a little bit but you know that's gonna be straight know what they would do to bend that in manufacturing well the blade is not actually glued in or you think that it's just held in with friction so you just give it a good solid whack it will reseat at the bottom of that brass thing Noemie it straightens it right out so let's go back to our test board to draw a line right down to separate the first section so we'll label this side B now let's see how long it takes to bottom out this all we've got our two nut finger grips so I can't put any weight down here we go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 3 by 4 25 26 27 28 29 29 compared to 173 or 210 I'd say that works a little bit better but here's another thing take a good look at the quality of the cut see how much cleaner and straighter that one is compared to that one those two how much rougher they are how about the backside cleaner straighter thinner kerf so I guess the real test is will it cut a dovetail I got two boards let's cut us a duck quick duck tail mark one side and the other side flip it over one side the other side coping say [Laughter] [Music] [Music] chisel out the waste clean up the baseline drop it in try not to pinch your fingers off you'll mark a pencil line on this side so I'd know which way it goes [Music] [Music] these are pencil line so they are not my plan but I'm just doing a utilitarian dovetail it doesn't really matter blog just tells you the shoot chisel is not sharp enough once again don't worry clean it up it's the lines let's knock it down yeah we're utilitarian joint good enough but the saw now works just fine now for me that's all spine there's nothing special about it I particularly don't like the kind of tell me finish on the handle but I have a feeling a little lacquer spirit would take care of that one the shape of this handle I just like the way my fingers fit on it but it's also cuz I've probably been using this thing for better part of a decade but this thing cuts just fine 20 bucks versus I think these are going for 70 or 80 right now yeah I don't think the wood can tell the difference so I guess that means I get to find out if my quick little I'm not even gonna call it tuning up I really did just sharpen it and you know bend it around a little bit something you would do that's an average sharpening Nothings but I didn't even set the teeth on it so let's send it to Shannon let's see what he thinks about a twenty dollar saw compared to his hundred two hundred three hundred dollar plus sauce now put a link in down below not only to his Renaissance Channel but to his hand tool school website and the video he puts out about this thing and in the end remember that it is always worth the effort to learn create stuff and share it with others so that maybe you can save a little money too y'all be safe and have fun

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 12,938

Rating: 4.9233227 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, renaissance woodworker, dovetail, saw, sharpening, tuning, repair, restore, restoration, DIY, beginner, craft, woodworking, wood working, crown, lie-nielsen, bad ax

Id: ajWIvBEsNKY

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020