How To Sharpen a Rip Saw

using a sharp saw is such a joy to use my name is Frank Strasser with artisans working in this video we're going to talk about how to sharpen recondition the saw we're going to talk about different types of saws I'll show you I saw that most people might be more familiar with you can both see and hear the difference in this saw I think most woodworkers would be familiar with a saw like this maybe a saw that's been sitting around in the garage or the attic one that's hasn't been sharpened the key though is they must be sharp they've got to be razor sharp in order to cut like this and in this video I'm going to show you how we recondition and sharpen us all I'd like to start by going over some of the different tools that you'll need to sharpen a saw any saw can be sharpened in either one of two configurations either rip configuration or a crosscut configuration and I have different saws here a dovetail saw a tenon saw we have a couple different crosscut saws and rip saws and such again the only thing that denotes the difference between whether it's a crosscut or a rip is how the teeth are configured that is how they're sharpened in order to sharpen a saw we're going to need some files triangular type files depending on how bad the saw is we may need a flat file such as this to joint the teeth we'll go over that in a second and we'll need a saw set I've got two types of sauce sets here we've got one for small teeth and then one for larger teeth so two types of saw sets and last but not least we will need a saw vise something to hold the saw this vise enables us to hold the saw right up close to the teeth right up right at the edge of the teeth which keeps it from vibrating there are several steps to sharpening a saw rather reconditioning a saw if you're going to recondition a saw oftentimes you have to start by jointing the top of the teeth that is making the teeth level and straight as you look down if you look down this saw you can see that the teeth are not perfectly straight as you can see there's a high spot here it might lower a little bit right in there maybe come up there so that's the first step is to joint the teeth the next step is shaping the teeth after they're jointed I'll do an illustration here on the whiteboard to show you what I mean if we have a series of teeth like this I'm just going to draw some on here small ones big ones the first step as I mentioned is to joint the top of the teeth so you got to go across and bring them all to it consistent as bringing them all down to the lowest point sometimes you'll have to do this in multiple steps as we probably will have to do on this saw but as you can see now we've got all of the teeth all level jointed so as I mentioned the next step is to shape the teeth and that is to bring all the teeth to the even to an even size so when I file this I'm going to take off half of this tooth and half of this tooth so I'm going to bring this down to where this comes even then we're going to take half of this tooth and obviously here we're not going to take any off of this side so the shaping process is probably the most difficult process because what you have to do is alter the pressure with your file as your filing along essentially with this I would put fairly equal pressure with the file on both sides of the tooth on this one I'm going to have to put quite a bit of pressure on this side over here and no pressure over here because I'm going to take off this metal bringing this down even over here on this one we're going to have to bring this one down so lots of pressure on this side but no pressure over here again our goal is is to bring the bottom of the gullet this is the gullet down on the bottom bringing all of these level and all of the tops of the teeth all level across after you shape the teeth the next step is to set the teeth and that's where the saw set comes in every single saw whether it's a rip saw or a crosscut saw has set to the teeth that is where one tooth is bent one way and then the other tooth is bent the other way so essentially when you look down the saw it looks like this you have teeth bending in alternating directions all every other tooth is bent in one direction every other tooth bending back the other way the purpose for the bend or the set in the teeth is when you're cutting it allows for the back of the saw to go through it allows for the saw to be able to cut through the wood if you don't have any set in the teeth the saw will bind it depends what kind of wood you're going to be cutting and what you're doing with the saw will depend on how much set you put in the teeth if I was cutting green wood or softwood a fibrous wood I would want more set in the teeth if I'm cutting hard wood want less set if I'm cutting dovetails where I'm cutting in a hard wood usually and only cutting down a little ways I want very very little set that's going to give me a finer cut not as aggressive not as big a kerf once we set the teeth the final step is sharpening which is almost like shaping the teeth but when you sharpen the teeth what you're doing is you're going an even stroke on every single tooth for the shaping and the sharpening we're going to use files and I have here several different files again these are all triangular shaped triangular shaped files SiC two degrees three sided and we've got different sizes here from the small all the way up to the largest I'm going to explain what we have here we've got a four inch these are four inch files right here these are six inch files and these are seven inch files right in here the main difference between these two files is one is called a double extra slim and then one is an extra slim file so we have double extra slim extra slim in the four inch in the six inch we have a double extra slim and an extra slim in the six inch and in the 7 inch file we have I've got a read on here and C but I believe this is just a extra slim and what we would refer to as a slim taper file obviously the the slim taper seven inch file being the largest the double extra slim 4 inch file being some of the smallest the idea when choosing a file is for the file to fit about one third into the tooth when you sharpen a saw you want to be able to use all three sides of this file over multiple sharpening in other words the file is going to dull over time so I'm I could get maybe three or four sharpening zout of this side of the file three or four sharpening is out of that side of the file and turn it three or four sharpening is out of this side of the file that is if only one third of the tooth goes into the file let me do an illustration on the board help illustrate that point so here's the tooth right like this again that should be approximately sixty degrees here's the file setting inside of that tooth hopefully we can draw this correctly here so that's essentially not a perfect triangle but you get the idea so what we have here this is the top of the tooth this is the top of the tooth here obviously another tooth back here this way but we have one third of the file set inside of the tooth that way when we're sharpening we're essentially not dulling all of the file if I was using too small a file say the file came up to here I would be dulling this part of the file and I wouldn't get as much use out of the file I'd like to explain the difference between a crosscut saw and a rip saw there's a couple different angles and sometimes these angles can be a little bit confusing when you're looking at a saw when you're sharpening a saw the ripsaw is probably the least confusing of the two as you can see there's a little bit more geometry going on in the crosscut saw the rip saw has a couple different angles one is referred to as the rake angle and that's this angle right here if you'll follow along if you'll follow along right here you'll see this angle here that's the angle that leans back towards the handle that's referred to as the rake angle I can adjust the rake angle depending on the how aggressive I want the saw to cut so if I want a more aggressive saw I can raise the rake angle forward like this that is bringing it up to maybe zero degrees or so if I want a less aggressive saw I can actually lower the rake angle down to in most cases ten degrees I have found though that by changing the rake angle by just a couple degrees can really affect how aggressive the saw cuts so if you saw is kind of cutting too aggressive you can actually change the rake angle bring it down to maybe 12 or 13 degrees lower relax that rake angle down like this it'll make a more smoother cut this angle here obviously will follow this angle because it's essentially sixty degrees right inside here the other thing with a rip saw is that it's just filed straight across that is perpendicular to the face of the blade so it's just 90 degrees straight across like this so the only thing we really have to worry about here is the rake angle and then just filing straight across the rips the crosscut saw also has a rake angle the rake angle generally on a crosscut saws a little bit more than a rip saw it's generally about 15 degrees so you see here this angle is relaxed back again back towards the handle about 15 degrees the main difference between a crosscut saw and a rip saw is on a crosscut saw you have what we call the flame angle looking down on top of the saw you can see that there's this angle right here instead of it being filed 90 degrees you have a fleam angle that's filed at an angle like this okay that's generally that can vary as well it can vary depending on what kind of wood you're cutting if you're cutting a hardwood you don't need as much of a fleam angle you'd want a little bit less maybe 10 15 degrees if you're cutting a softwood you're going to want more of a fleam angle so maybe 20 degrees or so generally 20 degrees is fairly standard for a crosscut saw for the flea mangle the other thing when filing a crosscut saw is because the teeth are bent in two directions while obviously this one's going to be going this way this one's going to be going back that way you want the point to be facing out so in this case I would want this saw this tooth rather bent out this way this tooth bent out that way so when I file I'm going to file every other tooth on the crosscut saw so I'm going to file here here and here we're going to start by reconditioning a rip saw I think the ripsaw is the easiest of the two to start on to show you how to sharpen and with the RIP saw with the rip saw you actually file every single tooth and again just straight across like that one thing that you'll find different between each of these saws is the points per inch that is how many points measure to an inch sometimes that information can be found on the on the saw right down close to the edge and sometimes difficult to see if you catch it just right in the light in this case this is a 10 points per inch saw there's 10 points to an inch if I took a ruler put it on there you can count ten points that points per inch will determine what size file I use and if you look in the resources tab down below you will see the specifications for which files to use for points per inch I usually just do it by eye you can take a file and set it in the tooth and usually you can see it if you set it right inside there you can see which size file works well this might be a little bit large we might go back to and this was the six inch extra slim but let's find the six inch double extra slim that looks pretty close in fact I'm finding that that's maybe a little bit this file might be a little bit too small for this saw so in fact I may actually have to go back to the 6 inch slim taper file I would say that for most saws you'll find that the six-inch slim taper and the six-inch double extra slim taper files are going to do for most of your sawing the four-inch files come in when you're dealing with much smaller tooth patterns such as this one here you might be looking at maybe a 16 teeth per inch and as you can see the teeth are much finer and this is a dovetail saw so typically a dovetail saw is going to be sharpened for rib let's begin by sharpening or in this case reconditioning this saw as I mentioned earlier the first step is to joint the teeth before we join the teeth here I want to mark the teeth so I can know which two thighs some people use a magic marker I actually like to use this steel-blue layout fluid nice thing about this is it flows into the tooth so you can tell which tooth you filed as you're working along you've got to watch this stuff will stain everything that you're working on so I like to put it away from the bench so I don't stain my bench blue and we'll just brush this on again check out the resources tab below for a list of suppliers where these items can be obtained from I'm just putting a very little bit on there and I know it's dying the saw blue but a little denatured alcohol we'll take that right off this really helps in defining which tooth you have filed makes a big difference so let's put this in the in the saw vise and we're going to start by jointing the teeth there's a couple ways to do this you can simply run a file flat across the top of the teeth like this but you've got to watch because I have often been run the file along and if my hand falls forward and the file pushes it in it cut your finger doesn't feel very good so there's a couple things to aid in that you can use a block of wood with the file set in it and that'll that helps in a couple ways it helps keep it square just take a rubber hammer here tap it in place and that helps keep the file Square to the edge and you can run that along just like so always push the file and you'll see here the file is jointing the teeth if you look right on top you can see that there is some flat spots it's hitting right there right there and this is jointing there's one right there it's jointing the teeth you can see right there so ideally we'd want there to be a flat spot we're not going to take all the teeth all the way down but ideally we would see that the file had touched every single tooth and we would know that it was perfectly jointed all the way across this saw is in pretty bad shape so what I'm going to do is I'm going to probably joint it a little ways because again I don't want to take the teeth all the way off will joint it a little ways and then we'll start shaping it then we'll probably joint it again so let's just joint over here there's a high spot right up in there so we're going to come in here like this and just joint this sometimes you can find these on the used market this is actually a saw jointer its main purpose was for jointing the top of a saw it's aluminum nice little file holder here and it's designed to keep your hand away from the blade so we can just run that right along the top again I'm working over here because that's the high spot just work this right along just like so I'm gonna have to raise this in the vise just a little bit because the jointer is hitting the solve ice again that tooth we're going to bring that to way down there we go let's bring that down just a little bit more I go back to using this bag so I want a little bit bigger file I prefer to use an 8 inch flat file because it's obviously a longer file this holder will not hold an 8 inch file just hold a 6 inch file so really a homemade saw a giant err might be better we're going to bring this down and that tooth right there is what's high again working it down let's inspect the progress here we can see flat right there obviously a higher spot right over here let's continue to work it down again work this all the way down like this let's sight down this saw and see what kind of progress we're making it looks like when I sight down this saw you can see that there's a curve right inside there I don't really like that most of the teeth are coming down pretty level which is which is nice but I would prefer there not to be a curve in the saw like that I'm going to go ahead and shape the teeth now instead of jointing it perfectly flat the reason why is if I keep on jointing I'm going to start losing the teeth which in this case are my point of reference and then I'd have to re tooth the saw and we'll save that for another video I'm going to use a six inch double extra slim taper for this saw this is about 10 to 12 points per inch for this saw and I've got here a little simple little holder that I made to help me to note the perfect rake angle all this is is essentially a block of wood with a 10 degree line drawn on this piece so I've got a 10 degree angle that's going to point back towards the handle and all I've got to do is put my file inside there line up this edge of the file with that 10 degree line and tap it in now when I file along this will actually help keep it perfectly flat as long as I keep this perfectly flat I know that that rake angle is going to remain at 10 degrees so you can see right here we filed quite a bit away almost taking the teeth away so in this case I'm going to come in and I can see a little tiny faint line there let's just kind of work there we'll start by shaping the teeth now when you've heard of salt sharpening a saw you've probably heard well you've got to go an even stroke on each tooth this is true when sharpening a saw but as I showed earlier in that illustration when shaping the teeth we may have to take more than one stroke oftentimes multiple strokes on one tooth and maybe the next tooth we may not have to take any strokes on again our goal is is to take those flats away getting rid of those flats I'm going to adjust that the pressure of the file based on which flats I'm trying to remove you can see right here where we have a flat right there and a flat right there in that case I'm going to put equal pressure on either side of the file just straight down and we should be able to remove half of the flat over here half of the flat over there now you can see there's a little bit of a flat a little bit of a flat let's work this one down just a little bit more this part right back in here I'm going to take a flat file and just take it at an angle right in here like this bring it off so now you can see we've got that work down and we're going to keep on working across these teeth shaping them as we go this one here I don't see any flat on the top but I see a little flat over there so I'm going to take gentle pressure putting pressure on this side of the file just light pressure now there's nothing there this one here we're going to have to work it because there's a flat on this side but not on that side so let's work it a little bit more now I'm only taking half of the flat off because I'm going to move to the next one and take half the flat on this side this is the next two and all the way down you can see clearly which teeth I filed because when you file it files away that bluing that we put on there that steel-blue layout fluid when I'm shaping the teeth you can see right here there's an even flat on this tooth and an even flat on this tooth with that when I file this I'm going to put equal pressure on both sides and go straight down essentially only taking off half the flat of course I've already taken off part of the flat on this tooth so I'm only going to take off half the flat on this one and try to take off the rest of the flat on this one this next tooth you'll see we're going to have to file half of this and then half of that so that's fairly equal pressure straight down next one you can see here a little bit of a flat there more of a flat there so I'm going to put a little more pressure on that tooth less pressure on this one so more forward pressure with my file that way this tooth here we're going to put a lot more forward pressure this way because there's not much of a flat on the top there but more of a flat on the top there you can see when we worked when we top the top of these teeth the file didn't hit it all right there but a little bit right on that one so again we're going to put pressure leading this way and not much back here and our goal here is to bring all of these teeth down to a consistent height that is to where they're all leveled out sometimes I'll work alternating teeth I'll work this tooth a little then I'll come back to this tooth especially when there's a large flat on there because I want to make sure that we bring it down evenly on each side putting put pressure this way to get rid of that flat we're almost done with this preliminary shaping you can see we're just nearing the last few teeth and then we're going to go back and rejoin tit this last tooth I want to come back with the flat file and just come along here flat like this now we're ready to remark it we're going to use the layout fluid remark the teeth and then joint it again one thing to keep in mind when hitting a file make sure you use a rubber mallet files are very hard and they can break they're brittle so tap it lightly now will joint the top of the teeth I've marked it and will joint it it'll expose which teeth need to be shaped again there's a little bit of a concavity to the saw and I want to work that out so I'm going to focus my attention on either end of the saw site down the saw that's looking better or working more over here I can see quite a bit of flat spots there and again as I mentioned earlier I don't want to take the teeth all the way out because then I've lost my point of reference with the teeth so I want to join it a little ways and you can see more flat spots here now that we've shaped it and we're getting it flatter so let's work this down just a little bit more over here flat flat actually we've got a flat on most all the teeth let's take a look at it that's much better I've done the final jointing and I'm quite happy with how it looks it's much straighter now nice and straight all along the length and what you'll also see is you'll also see that the flats on the top of the teeth are more even so they're nice and even as you look around you'll see right there all the whites are all the same so we're going to shape it one more time the real the only difference between the shaping process and the joint and the sharpening process is with the shaping we're taking each individual tooth down to match the others in other words we're trying to take away the flats to bring it equally so really what we're doing is we're taking maybe more strokes on one tooth less strokes on another tooth whereas with sharpening we're taking an even stroke on every single tooth so essentially shaping the teeth and sharpening are the same the key here is to keep the file 90 degrees to the face of the saw also we want to keep the file perfectly flat to the top of the of the saw as well you'll want to make sure that you use a sharp file when sharpening your saw the files do wear out and they become dull over time and it's frustrating using a dull file so make sure that the file is sharp it'll cut much better we're on the last few teeth of this shaping process I'm just going to continue on and we'll move on to the next step when you file a saw you're creating a burr with the file that means you're pushing a burr that's when when one surface meets the other you form a little metal burr I want to take that burr off but the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to coat the saw again with the with the layout fluid and then we're going to take that burr off I'll show you how that's done I'm going to go ahead and remove the burr by cutting in a piece of hardwood it's not going to cut very good because the saw is is not sharp and it's not set but I'm just basically running it in a piece of scrap hardwood and a few strokes will remove the burr in fact what we'll be able to see is if we site on top of the saw will be able to see little white reflection right off the top right there you can see that the white reflection that means that I have not gone all the way down with the file in other words we actually have to shape the teeth again and at this point depending on how bad those flats are these flats I might just come back and the flats that are wider will just shape those and we'll leave the rest for the sharpening process it actually doesn't look too bad now that we've done the final shaping we're now going to move on to setting the teeth the reason why we have to reset the teeth is because we filed so much away the teeth are like this and we have actually filed it filed it filed it down to where we removed most of the set so I'm going to come back and reset the teeth using a saw set we've got two types of saw sets the only difference between these two is the plunger you can see the little plunger you can see the little plunger right in here this is a bigger plunger that's what pushes the tooth and this one here is a smaller plunger right there that's what pushes the tooth to the side so let's see which saw set fits this saw if you look down in here you can see that the plunger is somewhat larger than the tooth in that case I really want to go with a smaller saw set you can see right there the plunger is a little bit smaller than the tooth and that will allow me to be able to bend the tooth over first of all we got to set the amount of set that we want using the saw set I'm adjusting the saw set the saw set is a is numbered from four all the way up to 12 so we're going to raise this up maybe to around a seven those numbers really don't denote a specific teeth per inch necessarily that all that these numbers are suggesting is a size so essentially we're going from large to small so if you want more set to the teeth you're going to set it on a four or something like that if you want to set less set on the teeth and you're going to go with something in the upper number ten or twelve I'm going to shoot somewhere in the middle let's look and see how how a seven looks it doesn't in this case it doesn't on a ripsaw doesn't really matter which tooth we push to one side or the other generally I try to look at the saw and see if the tooth is already going in one direction then I'll just go ahead and follow in that same pattern we filed this sauce so much that we've pretty much lost all the set so it really doesn't matter which tooth we start on we just want to do every other tooth so we'll just begin here and start pushing these teeth to one side I have had some of these older saws where a tooth will actually break off and that's always a uncomfortable feeling when you're setting the saw and you hear a little break that's oftentimes from the saw just being brittle the teeth being brittle it's because it's been sitting out or getting a bit rusty it'll tend to be more brittle now we're ready to set the saw and I'd like to talk about the difference between these two saw sets this is a fine saw set and if you look on the inside you can see the little plunger difference between the two there's a little plunger right inside there that pushes the tooth to one side there's the plunger right there and that pushes the tooth and then there's this one this plunger is just a little bit larger so there's also numbers on here these are adjustable by loosening up this part right there you can see this wheel right in here turns and that denotes how much set you'll put into the saw I believe those numbers run from four all the way up to around twelve or so all those numbers are it's just a grading system so essentially four is going to be more set twelve is going to be much less set so we're going to go with somewhere in between let's try both of these and see which one looks best in the in the saw if I put the small plunger on there it works I could actually get away by setting the saw using this saw set but on a couple teeth there may be a problem where the you might find that the plunger may actually push to the side of the tooth so maybe a bigger plunger would be a little bit better something that covers the whole tooth as long as it's not too big and doesn't interfere with the other teeth so in with this I think I'll go with this one just because it's a little bit bigger and it's going to cover that whole tooth and enable that whole tooth to push to the side as opposed to the smaller one where it could actually slide off of the tooth may be the other thing when you're trying to set this saw is make sure that the pressure is down sometimes the saw set wants to ride up a little bit yeah the plunger inside there is actually angled like this so what happens is sometimes the saw set wants to ride up like this make sure there's pressure down on the saw set and then of course there's a little a little clamp that engages first so that little clamp will actually go against the saw so I'm putting pressure down clamp against the saw and then the plunger then comes and pushes the tooth to the side well we're finishing up this side of the setting of the saw and we'll now flip it over and set all the teeth every other tooth going the other way so when we set it the first time we set every other tooth going this way now we're going to flip the saw round and do every other tooth going the other way I've set my saw set here on a number eight which is somewhere in between it'll actually do its a finer set and this saw is a nice fine tooth pattern so it'll make a nice fine kerf and I can feel it there it's a it's a nice gentle set it so ideal once you start setting the teeth not to stop it's easy to go cross I doing this as well but you don't want to lose your place I'm nearing the end here of setting the second side the last few teeth and we will be ready for sharpening before I sharpen the saw I'm going to coat it one more time so I can tell which tooth that I've filed away so again coating it with the layout fluid now we're ready to begin sharpening as I mentioned earlier the shaping process is much like the sharpening process the main difference being when sharpening we want to have an even stroke on every single tooth even stroke even pressure an even number of strokes too so if I choose to do one stroke I want to do one stroke on every tooth if I choose to do two strokes which in this case I think I'm going to go ahead and do two strokes because there are still a few just a little bit of a flat left and I want to get rid of that essentially if you've watched my other videos on chisel sharpening you know that what defines a sharp edge is having two highly polished points coming to infinity in this case it's not going to be highly polished it's just the use of a file but we still want both of those points coming to infinity so we don't want any flat spot on the top of of the tooth again I'm lining up the rake angle with the the back with the handle and we'll do two strokes per two one thing you want to keep in mind when filing the saw is that you want the file to be perpendicular to the face that is 90 degrees to the face of the saw also we want the file to be level with the top of the saw as well so I oftentimes look to the side to just make sure that the file is indeed level 90 degrees to the saw both in this plane as well as this plane don't apply too much pressure just allow the file to do the work okay we're almost done with the sharpening process last few teeth here I've tried to maintain even pressure even number of strokes and if you follow all of that correctly then the teeth should be all the same size I'm just going to take a file right on the end here and work this last tooth right there just like okay let's try it out when I think it cuts a lot better than it did before we started one of the things that some people like to do is they'll sharpen every other tooth from one side and then every other tooth from the other side and the reason why is they say that it puts the burr on one side when you file the saw with with the file you're pushing a burr to one side so I filed this saw with the handle to my left so it pushed the burr over on this side and when I have to do a few strokes with the saw to wear that burr off so you may find that the saw may veer a little bit to one side and if that's the case it's often times because the burr could be pulling it off usually a couple strokes and the burr is gone I like to work it from one side because as I file from one side going straight it's easier for me to maintain the angles and such because I'm right-handed I can maintain even pressure on every single tooth so let's try it again let's see if we can get a cut that's a little bit straighter now that saw is working well this saw was in pretty bad shape before we started and most saws aren't going to be this bad this saw probably took about two hours total time to restore it if you've got a saw that's not that bad it really shouldn't take too long the processes are still the same you just won't have to spend as much time if you have any questions or comments please feel free to comment below and I hope you enjoyed the video and that you can sharpen your sauce and enjoy a sharp tool and

Channel: Homestead Heritage School of Woodworking

Views: 107,985

Rating: 4.869411 out of 5

Keywords: sharpening, Saw, Wood, Rip Saw, Blade, Hand Tool (Product Category), Craftsman, Master craftsman, True craftsman, Classic craftsman, Vintage craftsman, Traditional craftsman, Old fashioned craftsman, Hand tool craftsman, Wood tool craftsman, Wood craftsman, Woodworking craftsman, Woodworker, Master woodworker, Woodworking

Id: vVcf6tEmkNs

Length: 51min 32sec (3092 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 28 2014