Recutting and Resizing Saw Teeth | Paul Sellers

I often worry about people when they when they're introduced to sores and sauce sharpening and the thought of sharpening a saw it can be very confusing from the get-go and what I want to do is talk to you about a saw that has teeth that are so bad you would look at it and you would be so confused where do you start the teeth are big the teeth are small they're uneven hi is there everything you don't want a saw to be and unless you're prepared to remove all the teeth and recut the teeth you're going to have problems in sharpening that saw so that's what I want to talk about and here I've got a very fine distance saw good steel good brass back ugly handle in this case parts screwed together you can see in here that it's been screwed together it's got a split here and it's got another split here I would replace this handle I wouldn't even try to work with this one but the steel and the brass back the screws and everything else I just find they will work so what you've got to do or what I would suggest you do is just file these teeth completely off I think you can see right into here you can see you've got big teeth here you've got small teeth back here uneven teeth some teeth are missing on this plate I would take them right off and that's where we're going to start with this restoration project first of all we're going to file off all the teeth and recut them using a method I'll guarantee that you've never seen before now I've got total access to the plate and this is all I need this very nice it's all clean inside I'm going to file the teeth off remove the teeth I'm just using a 10 inch flat file on top of the teeth fingers on either side and pull they don't take very much to file off I can see the tops of the teeth were teeth getting wider and wider in fact I might just stop and show you what has happened just so you can see so I think you can see here the teeth with the gullet weren't as deep and then you can see fairly regular then you come to some wider spots here this is where the teeth were very wide and then at this end you can see here teeth disappeared altogether so that means at this end of the saw was actually higher and then here we've got some very big teeth right in here I have to go to the bottom of these gullets to get this right back into the vise keep good control of this file make sure you don't slip sideways and cut yourself on their heads of this it's not likely just measured control strengthen forward push just not aggressively at all that's your this stretch here and this stretch here is now free of any gullets but this has some here this deep section here we have the big teeth I have to go all the way down so I have to take it off so I keep this saw nice and straight check it for straight if you're happy that looks great so this is another thing you may want this to be parallel along the length here one and seven-eighths that's slightly less on this end and but I'm going to leave it because this is the end that wears the most I could adjust this by tapping it back into the spline which is fine you can do that that's easy enough to do but in this case I think I'm just going to stay parallel and that's great we're ready to start cutting teeth now I'm ready to start cutting the teeth and one of the things you have to decide for yourself is how many teeth you do want to the end I've got a saw here a tenon saw that I use for the cheeks of tenon so I keep this with what Pretenders are those are quite massive teeth these are ten points to the inch that's a lot of size for a tenon saw but I like it that way on the other hand force a cross kurtsyn for the the shoulder lines I might use a twelve point per inch and this one has twelve teeth to the end so they're considerably smaller and they that makes it ideal for cross cutting and for rip cutting smaller sections of wood so that's what I'm actually going to put onto this plate here I'm going to put twelve teeth to the inch or thereabout so let me show you now then what about this sizing of the Sawtooth how do you determine and what size and how do you get the sizes you need for this there are a couple of different way but I'm going to show you one that I use it's quite difficult to eyeball cutting the teeth and getting them exactly the right size I came up with this little jig and I use this and it works very well it guides my curse but I want to show you a method as well that goes with this I've made this with what look like little saw teeth in the wood itself and the actual shape of that is of no consequence what is of consequence is the increments for each one of these cuts is exactly the same they're two millimeters apart and that's the size that I want to get twelve points to the inch on my saw plate roughly is just a marginally different than that but it's close enough I've got my ruler clumped here just with a spring clamp is plenty enough I've got my piece of wood in the vise secure I've just left the ruler just slightly below the wood and I can move this anywhere I want along this piece of wood so I'm going to start maybe half an inch from the end and I'm going to clamp the board just to the bench just to stop anything from shifting here I'm going to take my square along the edge of this and on the first mark here I'm going to make a square line then I'm going to move over two millimeters and make the second mark the knife walls are so definitive there is no moving away from the fact that knife separates the wanted from the unwanted and it separates it takes it away it keeps the exact line that you want and I think that's important so each of these little increments is actually going to be the guideline for the hacksaw blade as it cross cuts the plate just a little cut down into the soil plate and that will guide the hacksaw as you move across so if you you can do the whole length as I've done online here this was the one I'm not gonna actually use the one I'm showing you how to make but this is one that I'm using and have used and so you can do the whole length or you can just do a short length maybe two or three inches and then simply move it along the length of the sides not difficult you just line it up with the knife in the tooth and just keep moving along it's great it works so simply if you want to use an alternative way this way works well too this is where I've got a hat just a regular hacksaw blade and I choose the size this is 14 points per inch so it could be 18 or 16 or even less what you do is you place and actually you could just use a short line just snap the hacksaw blade and use a short length but just tap here and that that will give you the exact marking position can you see the little dots in there and and that gives you the exact position to mark your distances from so here I drop my knife right into that little dot and pull go to the next one right inside and pull so that's going to give me the the 14 points to the inch the increments that I want all the way along this piece of wood and that works great so you could do it that way too so now I want to make a small step down at the side of each of these knife walls to what's going to happen is we're going to set this saw against those vertical walls we've created with the knife so we want to make sure it steps down so what I do is I place my sharp chisel I've got a sharp chisel I've sharpened up and make sure it's sharp and about 1/3 of the distance between the knife cuts I place the chisel and I make an in size cut into the knife wall each one of them like this so chop chop because what we're not trying to do we're not trying to create a tooth pattern we're just creating a step down we don't need this to look like sore teeth accuracy is so important and accuracy always includes sharpness so you want a sharp knife and the sharp chisel don't take too big a bite here that's it that's really all I need so now you can see how this saw blade will drop right into each one of these knife walls like that the blade just puts right up against it I just want to put a gauge line on here I'm going about 1/8 of an inch like that put one on your side so you can see - yeah I go in with my saw and I keep the first pass he's very light up against this wall and then the second one is actually bringing the whole blade up against it and just saw down to that line keep it this square into the knife wall as possible I'm actually counting the cuts and so I've got these cut I just want to tell you now that I have modified this hacksaw blade a lot of hacksaw blades come with a wave in it and that's the actual wave that creates the set to the so it's not really a set so what I did is a couple of things I want to show you that now and then you'll see that I use the same saw blade to cut this curve and also to cut the teeth in the saw blade so this is one of the two modifications that I made to the blade hammer in the vise not hard you don't have to hit this strike it hard just gently along here this will take out 90% of the undulation that the hacksaw normally relies on but we don't need it so that has taken out most of the undulation you can still see it still there but this actually feels quite smooth when you run your fingers along it the second modification is I'm just going to put this in the vise and what this is this is my grinding wheel and I'm just going to take the very start this has teeth right on the beginning obviously as it should so I'm going to put this on here and I'm just going to grind off those opening teeth at a rake so in other words it's going to I'm going to go quite deep here but as I move here so it's going to incline into the main cut of the teeth and that's taken off the first row of teeth so when you actually come to the plate when you're actually sawing it's going to hit here so it's nice and smooth here gives you a smooth start and then it gives you a gradual start into the teeth and that makes cutting the soleplate so much easier especially if you're cutting thin plate steel as we will be and that's where we're going to next that's what we're going to do is cut the the teeth using the hacksaw I've I'm preparing to align everything what I've done here is I've just used two tabs of double sided tape here to tab this scrap of wood on here and that's just giving me the ability to clump these two into the vise unobstructed with the black the brass plan I don't necessarily want to take it off if I don't need to and so what I did is to get this aligned I'm just using the thickness of this rule which usually these will be about 1 mil but just check yours and what I did is I set this right on there flushed it with the steel edge of the plate on the top of my guide here this is just a depth guide it's not exactly critical but it just helps me to know where to stop I don't want to cut these curves from the the hacksaw too deep into the plate it actually doesn't matter to the saw it does affect the appearance of it but when you take subsequent filings that's going to come out if you did go too deep on one don't worry about it so I've got my plate aligned with the edge of here and here is my saw guide for the hacksaw to slide into when I make my curse so where I'm going to start it's more important to start at the nose and the heel because you can always file the heel off which often happens with sores here you can see I have taken the heel off this saw when I came to the close of the the file the sharpening on that one so I'm going to start eyeballing this very tip here is just slightly 1 mil or two millimeters passed the first saw curve there that's where I'm aligning mine and I want these nibs that I've created these so curves above the plate like that just enough to guarantee the saw sits into it and then I'm going to clamp this in the vise like this and this is where it becomes so simple because what I'm going to do is take this saw this is just a hacksaw remember I've trimmed off this incline here so when it's done it's going to rub it on here so when it starts can you see here it's not even biting at all and as I move forward into the cut I get this beautiful smooth action and that's what I need on the play if I was to start here these teeth will grab the plate too soon and it'll be hard on me so here listen no so I go down to this level here and then I stop as soon as I hit the wood or even if I don't hit it if I feel like it's time to stop this is all this micro adjusting that we need to do when we're working with the wood you can see how easily this sauce starts with those teeth filed off you can see the wood I'm just you probably can't see it but I can see just this minor kissing the surface with the last cheese keeper loose hum motion I'm squeezing this together I don't know if I need to but it feels more solid when I do now those look really good so you can see now I've got these first two inches of teeth cut so I'm going to move this along here into that lust curve like this so and what I'm going to do is just gently clump it then I'm going to slide my saw in just to align that last curve with the alignment there I'm going to check it just to make sure yeah see I'm right in so now I come back in and do the same again so I need to do this smooth this along six times so you can see that the sequence of how this worked now continue all the way along the plate now till you get to the other end with keep moving it and I'll get back to you when I finish cutting the remaining teeth we're ready to file the actual teeth and create the teeth we've got these some curves in here that are going to guide us so I'm using a four inch extra slim taper file for this which will work fine I've got some nice sand I saw hold our vise here but you if you don't have one just cut a curve down a piece of wood this works just fine I use it all the time especially if I want to sit down which is sometimes do clamp it in the vise down here and you're at a lower height for sharpening you can also just use two pieces of wood clumped on either side if you don't have that right off the bat so I'm starting this is the toe and this is the heel doesn't matter which end you start from but I have a habit of starting at the toe and working towards the heel which is down here so just tighten that up and we're ready to start filing I should point out now because we use the the saw kerf of the hacksaw in here you know a salsa I saw file is described as a three-sided file but it's actually a six-sided file it has three large sides and then it has this corner that is a small face on each one of these corners and these are the ones that actually wear down the most because they're the narrowest and the smallest they go right down into the bottom of the curve when you've cut this curve here the bottom of the gullet with the hacksaw that corner isn't cutting anymore until it just takes the last couple of strokes to bottom out the depth of the gullet and so you can see now that a hacksaw blade is a fraction of the cost of a saw file so the saw file should last a lot longer so I'm going to start on the first tooth and I'm starting on the back of the tooth you'll see as we progress this wall of the file here I'm keeping it vertical so it's 90 degrees to the length of the plate so one two I'm just going to do two for now go into the next one one two and the next one because I'm just at this stage and just deepening the notch and establishing the back of the tooth so it's giving the saw its tooth pattern now and so we progress along the whole length of the saw just establishing the tooth shape that we want so when I look back on this saw now I can see the flat tops on the teeth so I've not quite got up to the pinnacle point yet and I will go back in when I'm actually deepening the gullet just a little bit more and that's what I wanted I don't want to lose the flat top of the plate because that's closing margin on the light reflected off the flat top is what guides me to the definitive finished height of each suit now that I've taken off the the bulk of the steel you can see I think that I haven't actually shaped the teeth fully yet now I'm going to go back in and reshape the parts that I've done I'm going to start to add refinement to them and get the teeth exactly how I want them shaped so I'm refining the teeth I've already taken the bulk of the waste off now I'm refining every tooth and sizing it according to how I see these teeth this is important this is very important it's not complicated it's just being prepared to adjust your strength of stroke the length of stroke and working out the side of the of each individual tooth when when I'm working on the back of the tooth I'm saying to work directly on the back of each tooth that's the one with the slope that has the the shallow slope not the perpendicular face of the tooth but it actually pushes the file slightly into the face so it's actually working on the face of the adjacent tooth at the same time either side of the same tooth sometimes three or four times then back over the ones I just did so I'm looking at the top and I feel with the very tips of my fingers right now like this so I feel with it so I can actually feel the pinnacle whether it's grabbing and when it's not grabbing I just take a step back look at the light on the top I can just see a very faint line on the top of each of the teeth that's telling me I'm good for height and I'm looking at the shape of the teeth I'm looking at the size of the teeth and they're all looking very good so I'm just going to continue now all the way to the end of the saw so you can see now I haven't actually finished sharpening but the teeth are set there at the distance I want them and you'll be surprised at what you can do with this saw I have a little bit more tweaking to do on it just to adjust each tooth but not much let me show you what this saw will do now there is a piece of a scrap piece of pine for me put this in here let's just take a look now hmmm that saw would not do anything like this before and we've recut the teeth and it's ready for that final tweaking will it crosscut certainly were but I want to refine this all the more because I want to make this a top not so but the whole of the point in what you've just seen is to show the simplicity and the realistic way that you can cut your own teeth that's the purpose of it using a hacksaw and a three-cornered phallus or very silly

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 288,789

Rating: 4.9432292 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: mTqZTGPPRj0

Length: 29min 10sec (1750 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 25 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/I_Love_Waffles]

This is really cool. I never considered resharpening an old saw. I'll now be on the lookout for old saws at yard/garage sales.

[u/SirCrest_YT]

Was that 30minutes... wow. He's like the bob ross of tools. Was relaxing to watch. Satisfying how he cut the teeth with the file.

[u/Its_free_and_fun]

Wow. That's a lot of work, but a very useful skill.

[u/orcaporca]

I love that he has a picture of himself on the wall.

[u/MyNameIsRobPaulson]

YouTube is honestly one of the greatest things to ever happen. I love that we have the privilege to spend some virtual time with professionals like this guy and learn from them. Just amazing. That coupled with no commercial breaks - no distracting production/editing - its just a beautiful thing.

[u/BloodyIron]

This is a well done video, for sure, but this seems like tedious work, compared to other do-it-yourself work. I don't see why all this effort is worth it compared to replacement, tips?