Handsaw Comparisons | Paul Sellers

I've been looking at saws because one of the concerns I've had is that if you buy a secondhand saw you can be buying problems in that saw that if you're a novice wood worker and new to woodworking you might have some problems when it comes to knowing how to sharpen the teeth how to you don't just sharpen saw teeth you actually shape them and you shape them for different cuts and as you mature in your craft and your ability you can start reshaping the teeth at angles and pitches rake of teeth and so on to give you an optimum cut so I just wanted to look at some of that but in my investigation I started realizing that not everybody can spend 200 pounds on a handsaw that may be the extreme end but you get those that are 60 to 100 pounds that's still a lot of money so I picked up some saws that I bought for around 22 pounds and I wanted to see what the difference was between these saws and maybe more expensive saws so this is my way of helping new woodworkers to get their hands on a saw that might just work for them so I bought these 3 spear in Jackson saws now these have little hints on them like it says here spearing Jackson traditional skew back now why they put that on there I don't really understand it's not really a necessary it's not really anything of any substance but what they didn't give they didn't give the number of teeth to the inch which used to be stamped on the heel here they didn't say whether it was a cross cut or a rip cut because they want both they want the saw to do both and actually surprisingly this does do both fairly well so what I want to do is take one of these saws I'm gonna set this aside this is a 10-point print these are both seven points prints but one is longer than the other so the size of the teeth are the same and I'm just going to take a look at this this is got a cross-cut tooth on it which means we have to understand what the difference is between crosscut and rip cut tooth pattern so this is going to be my way what I did with this is I cut these teeth into sections of Steel here to show the contrast so when you see the bottom one the rip cut tooth when you see that face on let me lift it above the other when you lift it there if you face on when you're looking at a saw you'll see that you can't see the facets on either side of each tooth there is no there is a facet there but you can't see it directly on which means it's cut 90 degrees to the length of the saw to the long axis of the saw on the other hand when you look at the crosscut saw on this saw when you look from your side here you can see no angles on this tooth here no angles on this tooth here but can you see right in here you can see a facet here and you can see a facet here that means that the file when it's placed in each of the gullet the file is placed at an angle like this can you see there so that where placed at an angle we file this tooth then we have to skip this tooth because you can see this is contrary to this it's an exact opposite we skip a tooth and file at this angle skip a tooth file at this angle and so on all the way through the saw plate that's how you create a fleeing tooth to get the other aspect of it we then have to come from this side of the saw so to do that we turn this around and now we're coming in from this angle here so we've gone in at an angle this side this side and this side and that's how we create these pinnacle teeth and that's what helps us when we're cross cutting the grain because these pointer teeth cut much better because when you see wood in its natural condition the grain is running this way these are like strands of fiber all strung along in this direction so these teeth are designed to cross cut those teeth with super sharp pinnacle teeth that's what we call a fleam tooth a rip cut saw on the other hand is not really the best strategy for cross cutting the tooth it's ideally designed because it has a chisel point it's ideal to go in and out of the saw kerf this way and that's what it's designed for because this one is sharp and square across so when we sharpen the rip cut saw we sharpen here this file is not the right size just so you know so we file across each of these teeth but we're square across this time we're going square across and that's how we sharpen rip cut teeth much easier than the cross cut teeth my next session I want to do a comparison between the spear and Jackson seven-point cross cut saw and a seven-point rip cut saw the difference between the two is the finish the handle the shape different things are more refined on this saw but that's also reflected in the cost roughly I think this one is about eight times the cost or seven times the cost of this one so we're going to do a little bit of ripping here first of all just to do a comparison in the same type of wood same aspect of the wood and everything I just want to see how one saw compares to the other I'm going to do a rip cut then I'm going to do a cross cut so here we go now this saw then that took 26 strokes I'm trying to even out I'm trying to feel for a comparison here so 1, 2, 3 took 24 strokes so very comparable one's rip cut one's cross cut looking at the cuts there is barely any difference so one of the issues that I was concerned about with the the premium saw was the Flex in the cut I noticed sometimes when I'm cutting with this if I didn't have my whole body aligned perfectly that it didn't happen when I we was sawing I noticed that the saw would tend to buckle and Bowl now you could say that's human error but this is a very thin plate so I wondered about that because this place is quite a bit thicker so let's take a look at that now and see what the comparison is because a lot of times people will say that a thin plate will go through the wood much more readily than a thicker plate so but in actuality what makes the difference is the amount of set on the tooth this is a taper ground saw apparently so that means that this point here is usually thicker than this point here the same here so what happens when they manufacture usually they'll take a grind off here another grind off here and a grind all the way back into here that will have a triple three or four level where this ends up much thinner than this point here this should be the thickest point on the saw this should be the thinnest point on the saw on this saw on the back of the saw we have 0.62 millimeters and on this part we have 0.77 millimeters on this saw when I tested this one I was surprised this one is 0.79 so this is well hang on 0.81 on the back of the saw we have0.84 which is actually thicker does that affect the sign the saw and the cut it doesn't and the reason it doesn't is because of the amount of set that's on these teeth the set is here he's registering at 1.13 on this saw I'm expecting it to be thinner and it's 1.12 so it's very similar that's why the saw kerf is very comparable one with the other when we look at the soccer so in reality this saw has a little bit more spunk to it a little bit more energy to it but that's because it sharpened to a rip cut saw on this one is sharpened for a cross cut let's take a look at that comparison now if I take the rip cut saw first and cross cut here it cuts just fine if I'm careful as long as I don't press on the rip cut saw I was it felt fine I didn't have an issue so you can rip and cross cut with a rip saw which is my favorite thing to do I don't really like crosscut saws and rip cuts to be separated out here's my crosscut saw comparing the two this one is definitely easier to put through the cut it felt much easier so I'm going to finish off the cut with this one here now this one does feel smoother there's going to be some drag on this saw you can can you see in the plate here it's got that cloudy look to it on both sides that's varnish that's on the saw, it's some kind of finish on the saw so this one came from here and this one came from here so these two cuts are comparable can you see the contrast there if I do this this one is definitely a rougher cut than this one this is the cross cut the flame cut cut this saw this one is definitely a much cleaner cut so I hope you can see that so that's the difference but this is not apples for apples because one's a rip cut it's not designed to cross strip but you should be able to use a saw for rip and cross cut so what would I do with this 7.4 inch saw I would prefer with a seven points print saw to have one saw dedicated for cross cut and then one saw dedicated for rip cut so in other words I would keep this as a crosscut saw I would buy a second one and then sharpen it for a rip cut but what I'm going to do for your benefit is I'm going to now convert this to a rip cut saw and then I'm going to do a comparison between the two saws again I'm going to take this crosscut saw and convert it to a rip cut just so I can do a comparison because strangely enough spoon Jackson don't do a rip cut saw anymore which I found very odd but that's because they dictate to you what you can buy and don't really give you what you really need so we're going to sharpen this normally I think I said earlier that a crosscut saw would be sharpened in this direction skip it to this direction skip a tooth but now I'm converting this to a rip cut I'm going to go square across so I start on the first tooth here this is 90 degrees can you see right in here this is 90 degrees to this it's not critical it could two degrees in any direction it's not going to make any difference but try to be consistent so square across start the file on the first tooth one so I'm taking two strokes in each tooth I'm pressing hard down into the gullet because this tooth is already defined the angle is perfect I don't have to do any changes to it this is to get you started this is a basic start up that's why I like this saw I'm thinking this would be a great saw for somebody to start sharpening to learn how to sharpen on so that's why I'm doing this so each one of these teeth each one of these teeth now is becoming more like a chisel rather than the pinnacle point or the pyramid point I would comment on the steel the steel feels great you can usually tell when you're use two sharpening saws whether you've got good steel or bad steel and this steel is feeling great so what do I mean by this steel is great it means it's not too hard and it's not too soft it's giving me enough resistance in the file and it's not filing half a tooth away every time I file so it's getting me exactly where I need to be and it's getting the saw in top condition for a rip cut keep it nice and solid so you move it to optimize the amount of pressure you have on the steel either side feels really good only thing is I did lose my place Here I am these strokes need to be the same length the same amount of pressure try and be consistent with every stroke you're looking good lost my place again nearly there just another quarter of the saw to go I can't get any nearer than that because the saw handle is wider than my support so I'll have to go continue on this part these are so prickly sharp now it feels like a hedgehog for those of us who know what a hedgehog feels like before I'm completely done with this I should point out this file is level across when you take your stroke it's not tilted up or tilted down this level and it's still square just about get these last two teeth but if you need to put a clamp across here if you can't get it in the vise so now I have a rip cut saw and let's do a comparison between the rip cut and the rip cut the higher one and the lesser one so same piece of wood just going to stick some lines on here and here I'm going to count again just to see so now I'm going to start counting one 24 so there that there is that distance between the teeth from the teeth here to the top of this saw so this one's thicker but I'm going to go down to the same line 24 did I say that's 22 but what a difference that saw made it it was really as good as any saw that I've ever used and it gave me the same size kerf with the same saw so I think I would say yes this saw is made in Taiwan but it is a functioning saw it will resharpen and you you can get into your woodworking quite economically just using that one saw so I like this saw now I think it's a good saw it gave me what I wanted I've got similar sized kerf this is very very nice really there's no wavering this is slight waver in the the finest saw the out cut on the finest on this saw here is actually looks like it's less and I think this one did have a little bit of reverberation coming back into the cut that means when you pull it back watch what happens here which one was it this one here when you pull it back can you see the end of the saw is vibrating I'm not sure if I got that much vibration with this one I don't think I did so there are some physics to this that are slightly different but I think that yes this will get any anybody new to woodworking wants to spend a little bit of money on a good saw this will get you going and actually you don't actually need to rip cut it yet if you wanted just to use it for a while then go in and file it but you saw how simple it was to get that sore to become a quality rip saw reshape the handle if you want to it's not a complicated thing you could make the handle shape a little bit different here you could do some things to this that I would probably do I would refine this a little bit but actually it's got a very nice handle it's a pretty good saw both of them are good saws there's nothing wrong with this saw both saws will work you

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 261,996

Rating: 4.9435568 out of 5

Keywords: Woodworking, Hand Tools, Saws, Handsaw, Paul Sellers

Id: hrqGxRsO1NE

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Liquidlino1978]

Basically, a 20 quid saw is just as good as a 200 quid saw.

[u/wolv]

Does anyone know of a list of brand names or models of inexpensive saws that can be resharpened (preferably available in the US)?

I, like many others here, tend to use Japanese saws for joinery. For me, they have a good balance of cost vs. performance.

I've always wanted to try out some western saws, but everything I find is either prohibitively expensive (80 bucks or more for a saw) or has impulse-hardened teeth.

Ive almost pulled the trigger on one of the Veritas saws, but that's an expensive gamble if I end up not loving it.