How to Restore an Old Hand Saw Crosscut or Ripcut

testing testing okay there we go so these are two saws you would commonly find at most garage sales or estate sales and or resale shops and I kind of like to show you two different methods of cleaning up sauce this particular one is a distant that's it fairly nice you can tell with the lambs tongue that has been done the handle is fairly well done has a nib on here it's a seven-point crosscut and it doesn't need a whole lot of work there is a little bit of an edge I'm going to try and say that but I don't know if I can this one is a much more recent post-war distance you can tell the Lambs tongue hasn't had a lot of work done on it and the handle is pretty cheap it's got this flat face and it's it's not it's not a very comfortable saw it has been sharpened a few times it does have a sway back but it's got a lot of rust and the beginnings of some pitting on it and so this one's going to take a lot more work so I want to kind of show you two different methods on restoring these and getting them up to running shape let's start by taking these apart I use this a right-angle screwdriver it has a very thin slot head makes it very easy for loosening these and putting a little bit of leverage onto them once I've loosened up all the nuts and I'll come back with a regular screwdriver and tighten and take them out I'm being very very careful not to strip them out nothing's worse than stripping something out right off the bat and then I'll use a chisel edge or a card scraper to clean up all the surfaces trying to get off all the old lacquer and shellac that has a chapped tipped over time and take it back down to a surface that I can then finish the card scraper is great for a lot of the large flat areas but the tight curves the chisel edge actually works very very well for cleaning them once that is all been taken down I give them several coats of boiled linseed oil let that soak in completely and then do paste wax too to seal it and give it that nice finish I did a whole video recently on boiled linseed oil and paste wax finish so if you want to see more on that you can look at that video for the nuts on the saws I use them on a sanding block to take most of the crud off and down to a nice surface and then I'll use the strop to actually smooth them out and buff them to a nice shine it's actually very easy with the brass ones steel a little more difficult to get a nice shine but you can in the end for the actual plate I use wd-40 and I start with about a sixty grit sand block and just grind on it I'm trying to get through as much of the grime and old rust as I can this saw plate isn't that bad and so that's why I'm not putting in a vinegar dip but I'll do like sixty grit and then like at eighty or a hundred grit and then I'll finish up with like a hundred and fifty grit sandpaper each side ends up taking me about twenty to twenty-five minutes it's kind of slow work but you end up with a really nice surface and it's a great way to try and save an etch if it's on there you start to be careful not to sand through the edge but this is one of the least destructive methods they get left with this nice finish for the plate that has a lot of rust it would end up taking me an hour or more per side so I actually soak it in this bath of vinegar and water fifty-fifty vinegar and water and I'll let it sit in there overnight and then I'll take it over the tub and rinse it off using a wire brush you can actually scrape off most of the scale and junk and this makes it a fairly quick process after this two to finish up and make it shiny I'll take it over to the bench and quickly apply at wd-40 so that I doesn't want to rust after having that water on it and just like before I will sand it from a sixty to a hundred to a hundred and fifty but it only takes about five minutes aside with this because the vinegar has loosened ever anything up and you're really just kind of putting a shine back on to the the finish of the saw so this is a fairly quick process in comparison when you wipe it off you get to see the nice look and I really like the finish that the vinegar leaves after that I take it over to the other end of the bench insert sharpen AM I've done several videos on sharpening handsaw so I'm not going to bore you with all the details from this if you want to you can go see those they have a lot more detail on that but that's about it for the finishing it's just putting the handles back on and you have just restored a handsaw it really is not that difficult and anyone can do it with after the time and patience to just put into it so there's a quick look at how I restore saws and every saw is going to be a little bit different if the saw is in good condition rule of thumb do as little as you need to do the more you do the more you're just going to be kind of pushing things around especially if there's any stamp or etching on the plate you want to do as little as possible if there's any stamp or etching I don't mess with vinegar because it will eat through that if you let it sit too long but vinegar is great for cutting through a lot of stuff and even on this saw I had a good amount of pitting which was able to remove almost all of it which is rather impressive I can actually see the a previous owner and his name into the plate up here and that was kind of cool to come across and see and also this one has been refiled it says that it's a five and a half PPI but it's actually about us and let's see about a seven I'm guessing so that's why it is so thin someone has refiled it and made it a lot less but that's kind of Lee idea between refinishing saws there isn't a whole lot to it the hardest thing is probably sharpening it but if you can clean off the handle plate goes pretty quickly and yeah you have a great I value saw that you can pick up for five or six bucks at a garage sale actually a lot of my saws I pick up for a dollar apiece because people have no idea what they want so the more you get to know your saws the more you know what you're looking for and you can know what is a good value and what is a throwaway so even saws like this that aren't that old it's still good steel and it's a a good tool that you can resharpen and use for quite a while so that's about it for this week I hope you like this video it was a fun one to put together had a lot of people asking about it so I'm glad I can finally get the chance to put it out if you have any questions let me know in the comments below I would love to hear those and answer them I want to say a huge thank you to the patrons on patreon I cannot say how much of an encouragement you've been to me thank you for that now if you want to be a part of that feel free to check out my link right down there and if you did like this video check out one of my others you might find something you like there and until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 115,291

Rating: 4.9248271 out of 5

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Hand saw, Handsaw, Ripsaw, Rip saw, Crosscut saw, Sharpen, Rust Removal, restoring saw, Vinegar bath, refinish handel, Clean, saw plate, save saw etch, etching

Id: sjbM9sttRjA

Length: 7min 43sec (463 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2016