How to Sharpen a Hand Saw | Ripsaws

I can tell you right now this will not be a dull video hey y'all I'm James right and welcome to my shop while ago we built this saw vise and it's time to actually put it to use and sharpen up some saws I've been holding off I'm sharpening my solid for a while to put this to use and they have gotten extremely dull so it's time to put them to work I want to take this through kind of step by step I'm gonna do two different videos one of them is going to be on the ripsaw what do you need for actual basic saw sharpening and how does that translate to a rip saw which is really the easiest saw to sharpen and then in the second video I'm gonna go into the crosscut saw it's basically the same thing but with slight modifications and differences so in this video we're gonna be talking more about the basics of saw sharpening what do you need to go into it what are the tools how does it work and then I'll demonstrate on the first saw and then in the next video we're gonna come back and talk to a little bit more of the difficult parts of things that kind of confuse people and go into the crosscut saw so this should be kind of a fun series and if you have any questions as normal leave them in the comments below I'll try and get to them otherwise you can email me anytime you'd like and I can answer them there so let's dive in now first things first I want to talk about the types of saws and particularly the plates now a traditional handsaw is going to actually be something that is a little bit of a softer steel it's not quite as hard as your plain iron and it is much softer than the files that we'll be using to actually sharpen it so a simple file can reduce the metal off of this very nicely one thing you wanna be careful of is nowadays if you buy us off from the store the teeth are actually going to be hardened so the very tips of these will be much much harder than the file or just as hard as the file and in doing so you can actually ruin your files by trying to sharpen hardened teeth the way you can tell the difference is the natural ones just tend to be the same color steel all the way down to the tooth whereas these ones from the store you'll notice that the tips of them almost look blue and they have a disc coloring on the tip that means that they have been flame hardened and the tips of these are much much harder grade steel than back on the plate now I have seen some people who have ground off that hardening and then cut in new teeth and you can use that and resharpen that plate but most of time these sides just aren't worth three sharpening their disposable saw and that's what makes the older saw is great is that you can reach sharpen them over and over and over again next I want to talk about the files and you might think that this is a triangular file it's actually not it's actually six-sided the tips actually have another flat side on them and the reason they have a flat side on there is when you cut down into that groove you don't want a sharp point to steal that sharp point is a place that the steel can then terror whereas having that flat spot on there means that it's going to be a stronger tooth there's less chance of the tooth is going to want to break off now the set of files I have is this one it comes from Lee Valley it's a really nice kit it gives you a good selection of files the handles don't come with it I have those on my own and getting a handle is always a good idea you can usually pick them up at flea markets and things like that I also have this angle gauge that goes on to the tip of the file and that allows you to know what angle you are with the saw I'll be covering that more but this is a great tool there's other ones that also go on to the handle but sometimes they're not as easy because all of the tangs are different sizes so you might have a handle that doesn't fit some of the tangs so that's why I like this one that goes on the tip it also gives you a second handle because a file is a two-handed tool it's not a one-handed tool it's always it's always intended to be hold both ends as you work it now you'll notice that all of these have different markings on them like this is a seven regular seven slim a six slim a six extra slam a six 2x slim and so on down and a lot of people really get bent out of shape about the names of the files and making sure you're using this name file on this particular saw tooth and I really want to tell people don't worry about them the names of the files mean absolutely nothing they just go from big to little as long as you have assortment of them from big the to little you'll find that you have a file that works for every saw as to the quality of the files these ones that Lea Valley sells are from Bunco they're from Portugal I really like them there they're a good file the last long time they're really nice and hard as long as you take care of them they will sharpen many many saws in the past I've used the cheap ones that you can get from the hardware store or the big box store they work fine they will do the exact same thing they just last as long so you can buy a cheap file and go to town in it and learn to sharpen but you can have to replace the file more often eventually you're gonna want to get yourself a nice kit that holds them all together and I really like this because it keeps them all safe and clean and I can roll them up and I have it ready to go okay so now let's talk about vices as I have many of them having a good saw vise is a valuable valuable thing because what you want to be able to do is hold the plate very tightly up close to the top and this will stop the plate from wanting to vibrate wanting to slap back and forth as the file runs into it you can usually pick up these antique ones at flea markets and such for a decent price usually like 25 to 30 bucks but most of the time they're only like eight inches to a foot long and anytime you're doing a large thing like this you're gonna have to constantly be moving this vise along the saw what I've done for years is I just got two sticks two random sticks and I'll flip the saw plate between them and then I will clamp that into my bench vise and this actually works really well I can just put that in there and clamp it down and now I can do the saw working the problem is I'm way down here and I'm bent over it I want to have it up here where I'm looking at and number two it's a pain to put them together it takes a minute or so per saw it's cheap it works well but it's not the best and so that's why I recently made this beast which I love I've got a chance to use it a couple times already and I'm looking forward to showing this because now I can take the saw I can put it in here and if we can very quickly set up the saw and go to town and now the saw is up at my height I can get very close to the teeth I can work along it and it's a really nice stiff frame so that there's not going to be any vibration in it so getting a big massive saw vise is nice is it necessary no there are a lots of cheaper ways you can do it and simpler ways but this is nice if you're going to be doing a lot of saw sharpening making your own saw vise is a good use of your time another thing that I've recently started doing is putting masking tape on the saw vise it protects the plate when you squeeze it between it also protects the saw vise from the steel chips that are falling out is it necessary no but the more I use it the more I think I like it who knows in the future I might just skip that step but a lot of people like to do it and now I'm one of those so let's talk about tooth geometry for a moment there's a difference between PPI and TPI so you have teeth per inch and and points per inch so this one has one two three four full teeth in one inch so it's four toothbrush but it is one two three four five points per inch so this is a five PPI saw so now let's talk about file size now that I know this is a five PPI saw I could go to a chart and find out oh I need this file or I can take the file and I can just set it in the gullet now if you notice here the tooth actually sticks up a little bit past halfway on this file that's not a good thing because what I'm going to end up doing is I'm going to be wearing out the middle of this file much faster than me wearing out the the sides of it so I need a bigger file so that I stick this one in there and if I notice this one the tooth only comes up about halfway into the file it's actually ever so slightly less than halfway so I know that this is the correct file for this tooth geometry because I'm not going to be wearing out the middle of my file faster I'm wearing out the ends of it so next time you're tempted to go get a sizing chart don't miss don't waste your time just grab a file set it in there and see how it fits you just don't want to wear out the middle of the file faster than you wear out the science and then you will have a good file for the saw now unfortunately I'm a pilot and so and I think about the angle of the file I think about roll pitch and yaw but this is actually a little bit different moment it comes to filing a saw you have different names number one you have the slope and that's the angle this way on it so if I want to make it match the angle on this this is a cut at 45 degrees I can bring it down here now a 45-degree slope now no one ever is going to cut a saw with a 45-degree slope and well unless they really want to but slope is a one that is not used very often some people swear by putting slope into it and some people say that's absolutely the worst thing you can do don't mess with it so experiment see if you like adding some slope if you do great if you don't then find usually slope is only going to matter on your crosscut saws or any software you put in fleam now fleam is when I rotate the blade this way and what that's actually going to do is create a knife blade on the top if you don't know the difference between a rip saw and a crosscut saw I have a video on that that describes the the main difference but basically the main difference is do you add any fleam so if I rotate this at an angle like that and I'm always filing at that angle then I'm adding a fleam into the saw and that usually makes it a crosscut saw where with most rip saws especially the larger rip saws we don't have any fleam in it so I'm just going to be going straight across so the file will be at 90 degrees to the plate and then the last one is the rake and the rake is actually the rotation of the file then you see on this one I have a bit of a rake it's this would be zero rake the top of this is perfectly flat and I'm just cutting a straight V down and this one if I match it to the tooth it actually rakes forward a bit at an angle like this for most rip saws you're going to want a fairly aggressive rake for most crosscut saws you're going to want less aggressive or no rake at all depending upon how hard or how fast you want to be cutting more rake you cut faster but it's harder to push he takes more force and his better chance of jamming less rake it runs through smoother less chance of tear out but you're gonna cut slower because it's less aggressive if all of these numbers and names really get confusing I'm going to leave a link down below to Kennebec saws he has a great guide that kind of puts all this together and learn place otherwise you can always google them and you find different charts they'll be talking about what is REO rake fleam and slope what are the different PPIs once you've done it a few times all those things start to make sense and become a lot clearer so just dive in and have a little bit of fun now for this song I'm gonna have about a 10 degrees of rake zero flame and zero slope so I'm not going to be leaning this way with the slope I'm not going to be turning it this way I just want to roll this forward in a rake pattern and then I have this little guide setup on here that has a bit of rig so I'm going to put it in this this is flat and so I have a visual guide keeping this flat if I ever noticed that this starts tipping that means that I'm rolling my saw too far one way or the other I can keep it flat the other thing to know is if the saw has been filed decently in the past the last person has a pretty good idea of the way it should be filed and so all you have to do is match the file to it put that in there and then adjust this guide until everything fits and matches and looks good so now it's time to start sharpening and the very first thing I want to do is I want to grab my mill file and I want to come through and I want to level out all the teeth and basically what I want to do is cut a flat spot on the top of every tooth what this allows me to do is see some of these tooth might be warned that some of these teeth might be worn down a little bit farther and some of them might be up a little bit higher I want all the teeth to have the exact same height all the way across so I'm gonna grab the file hold it on here 90 degrees and just slide down this off I'm not putting a lot of pressure on there I'm just trying to keep it even in flat and you'll find a lot of jigs out there that you can hold out of this and will run down it and so I'm going to look at these teeth usually takes about two passes in order for them yeah you can see some of them have a really good flat spot and some of them don't have any flat spot at all so I'm just gonna do one more pass [Music] let's see how that looks so here you can get a good idea of what that flat spot looks like I know - it's like this one is a very heavy flat spot this one is a very light flat spot and as I move this along we should see a couple more yeah like this one really doesn't have much of a flat spot so I want to keep going until I get rid of all of these sharp points and make sure there's all a flat shiny spot on the top of each one so now these are all flat and shiny across the top we are ready to actually start cutting the teeth now basically what I want to do is I want to cut those teeth so there's a flat spot on top and I want to file down both sides until they just hit that flat spot and so I have a really sharp corner at the top of each one and all of them are the exact same height because that flat spot has been disappearing on all of them the other thing to think about is some people are going to swear by filing from the heel to the toe and some people are saying no no no no you have to file from the toe all the way back to the heel and in all honesty it really doesn't matter that much when you get into crosscut saws it matters a little bit more because what happens is as you're filing you're pushing all of the steel and material over onto the far side so you have a burr on the opposite side of where you're pushing and that burr can cause the saw to cut a little bit faster on one side or the other and so that matters some people get very picky about where they push the burr sometimes I will file every other tooth so I push all the birds that way and they'll flip the saw around and then I'll file every other tooth in the opposite direction so I'm pushing half the birds one way and half the birds the other way so that both sides the two teeth are just as fast but for a rip saw like this I'm not even going to worry about that right now I'm just going to file every saw every tooth in the same direction just makes a little bit faster and then I'll come back later and clean up that side so that it doesn't have as much of a burr on there so now the question is what am I looking for now you can see how this one there's no flat spot on top and I don't see any shiny on top of this one here whereas this one here I the flat spot in here so I've sharpened up to this point and you see I have that flat spot there I want to get rid of that so I put this on here and try and do it without bumping the camera cuz it's so close and I'm going to basically I'm not putting any weight down on this I don't want to put any force into the plane I just want to let it run its course and then I got a hair of a flat spot still left there now that flat spot is gone now I can move on to the next tooth and mostly is it's taking to stroke this saw has been kept fairly clean and you can see two strokes there I still have a little bit of a flat spot there there we go so now I can move on this one if your saws stay in good shape it should only take two maybe three strokes per piece sometimes it might take more so then we can is March all the along this thing and it is sharp and ready to go now the next thing we have to talk about is set so each of these teeth are what every other tooth is leaning out farther one way and the other and this makes the actual cutting edge of the saw slightly fatter than the plate so that the plate isn't being bound on now I don't always set the saws because most of time if you put set in there it'll last through four or five sharpening and so most of the time I set it every four or five times depending upon how it is this one actually has a decent amount of set so I'm going to be talking about how to actually set a saw when I get into the crosscut saw because this one does need to be set so we'll cover that then so now let's give this a test and to give you an idea this is a piece of 3/4 inch hickory so not an easy saw to cut and especially to start with rip sauce I'm just going oh I love the feeling of a sharp saw so I'm just gonna see does this wanna veer one way or the other [Music] and now that one's actually pulling a very nice and straight line so every now and then you're filing work will find that that won't be a quite straight line you're having to force the Saudis try to stay one way or the other it will want to kind of veer a little bit on you what you can do is fix that by first figuring out which way that earrings so if I'm viewing this way and that means that I need to take down this side of the plate a little bit this side is sticking out farther than this side that making it wanting to turn this way so what I can do is grab a diamond plate or a stone or anything like that this is just a medium course it'll just slide it along the plate one or two times that's all it needs just one light pass not putting a lot of pressure on it and then I'm gonna try it again and usually with one or two passes you'll straighten out a saw now that's saying that the saw is a problem and not the hand running it a lot of times the problem with a saw staying straight is the hand running it but sometimes it is the saws fault if the saw is always veering to the same side you know you have a problem with the plate and if you just take a stone and I like to use these diamond plates and just one or two passes down the side you'll find that it starts to come back to where it needs to be if it doesn't then try it one or two more times but usually with just a couple strokes you can keep a saw really nice and straight and to file it out basically all it does is it takes off the very tips especially if you have any birds from a freshly start sharp and saw it gets rid of those burrs so that is basically all you need for a rip saw next time we're going to talk about a crosscut saw and to go in a little bit more of the specifics and some of the other things that I may have skipped on this that make it a little bit more confusing but some of those technical items that other people like to know so I hope you like this video I would love to hear your questions your ideas what thoughts do you have what would you like to see created in the next one is there anything particular I missed or something you'd like to correct me on I'd love to hear it so that's about it for days until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 761,199

Rating: 4.54702 out of 5

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Paul Sellers, Woodworking, hand tool wooodworking, saw sharpening, sharpening a saw, hand saw, woodworking saw, how to sharpen, paul sellers sharpening, How to sharpen a hand saw, how to sharpen a rip saw, how to sharpen a crosscut saw, rip saw, ripsaw, Crosscut saw, cross cut saw, file selection, how to chose a file, how to, howto, how-to

Id: e7YsjKhqk-w

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018