Restore a vintage handsaw and get working NOW!

ladies and gentlemen I have spent years telling people to go out to the places where you can find old tools flea markets tag sales estate sales antique stores you can go to all these places and find amazing neglected equipment for your shop and if you follow that advice you might have come home with quite a little pile of treasures over the years and now well we're all at home we're all on lockdown no one's supposed to go anywhere maybe you can't find any wood for that project you want to tackle you might not be sure what to do well this might be the perfect time to pull some of those rusty treasures down off the wall and get them going again because really what's the alternative spend time with your family [Applause] let's tackle a vintage handsaw it's a quick restoration and doesn't take a lot of supplies a lot of the saws I find come really rustic like this one but as long as they're not pitted you can quickly remove that rust with just some sandpaper or maybe a wire wheel even a saw without a lot of rust will probably be covered with dark tarnish like this one I've also got some powdery rust up by the handle we don't need the saw plate looking new but we do want to get rid of most of that tarnish and bring back some shine mostly to cut down on friction while we're sawing we're going to start by getting that Hardware at most vintage saws have very narrow screw slots a standard screwdriver won't fit so I've taken a very cheap one and ground the tip just a little bit narrower if you don't have a grinder you could also use a file the slotted part is actually a nut and it connects to a small carriage bolt that passes through the plate and the handle keep your hardware in a container as you take it off you don't want to lose anything and for popping out those carriage bolts I usually use a punch or some other narrow tool they can be stubborn to get out this big one is called the medallion and you can use it to research your saw and find out its age mine is a distant d8 a classic heavy ripping saw and it was made before 1917 my handle is in good condition overall but I want to fix a few things and refinish it a card scraper is perfect for taking the old finish off it's fast and even a straight scraper will handle flat spots and curved spots then you can follow up with sandpaper of course you can also just go straight to sandpaper 150 grit is about right with the finish off I'm giving my handle a close inspection I only want to work on this saw once so I'm gonna be sure I get everything the first time his horn is a common place to find damage and it's got several splits I'm just gonna flow some super glue into those cracks I'm using a lot to fill the gaps up I'm also scraping up a little sawdust right off the bench and sprinkling that onto the bigger cracks this crack on the lower horn is much worse and there's wood missing so I'll take a back saw and cut away all the damaged wood I don't care about making it look new again I'm trying to fix areas that are weak so they can't get worse but fixing this detail I'm helping the tool to last a lot longer a sanding stick flattens the saw cut and it's ready for the patch saw handles are usually Applewood so another fruit would like this cherry can make a good repair walnut often looks even better because the finish is gonna darken the handle a lot use what you have you only need a little piece with one flat edge superglue works fine for small repairs like this and a spring clamp gives more than enough pressure with the wood clamped I flow a little more glue into the joint it's dry in about 20 minutes and I can use a coping saw to come right around this curved chisel off most of the waste shape it with medium sandpaper blend it with 220 grit and I'm done the final repair is easy to see but I'm not doing this for looks my goal is a durable tool that's comfortable in the hand for tool handles I always do a two-step finish boiled linseed oil is a great undercoat it gets rid of that powdery texture you get on dry old wood it also makes the wood swell and gets rid of little splits on the surface I'm going heavy with the oil here the wood will soak up a lot while it dries we'll start on the plate this is messy work I recommend paper on the bench and I'm using my old workbench because it's already as dirty as it's going to get I'm just gonna pour some mineral spirits on the saw plate and then wrap some 220 grit sandpaper around a block I'm sanding gently here no need to be aggressive the mineral spirits lubricates the paper to keep it from clogging it also traps the sanding dust and keeps it out of the air lots of old saws have beautiful edging on the plate and I try to save that where I can after the 220 grit I wipe the plate cleaned and come back with a few grits of wet or dry sandpaper I'm using 400 600 and 1200 here but you can use whatever's laying around if you've been sharpening your tools with sandpaper you already have all the grits you need the finished plate has regained a lot of its shine and it's gonna be smooth in the cut the last step is a little paste wax on steel wool this polishes the plate and protects it from rust even if you don't use this soft for a while that wax is gonna preserve all the hard work we just did now this brass hardware is badly tarnished and there are a million ways to fix that I like to move fast so I've got a fine wire wheel in my drill press and that takes off the tarnish really quickly the wheel can scratch up that soft brass so I finish up with a little wet or dry sandpaper if you don't have any of this equipment don't sweat it a little bit of 220 grit sandpaper does the job almost as well and it's quick now we're onto sharpening and I can't cover everything about saw sharpening in one video so I'll just do kind of an overview for restoration and then we'll come back and do a more detailed sharpening video down the line you'll need some kind of soft ice I have this old one but let me know down in the comments if you want me to do a video on making your own soft ice out of common shop supplies it's probably a good project the first thing to do is joint the saw it's just like joining a board you're making everything flat and level you'll need a file that's held perpendicular to the plate you can find one of these old metal file holders but an equally good solution is to saw a slot into a scrap of wood and just jam a flat file into it I honestly prefer the shop made one hold your wood block tight against the side of the saw give your file medium pressure and take a couple of smooth strokes all the way down from the heel to the toe the jointing makes all the teeth the same height and puts a shiny little flat spot on the top of each tooth a lot of old saws have uneven or different sized teeth and we're gonna take care of that problem right now you can see how this first tooth is really low and flat on top it probably broke at some point and it needs to be shaped I'm coming in with a triangular file and deepening the gullets on either side of the tooth until I've restored the shape and given it a sharp point again now I'm gonna work my way down the saw taking a few strokes between each tooth my usual grip is the one you see here with my left hand steadying the tip of the file but that makes it hard for you to see so I'll put both my hands on the handle instead I'm generally moving from toe to heel and most of the teeth just get a couple of strokes but if something is really low or a tooth is miss shapen I'll do as many strokes as it takes to bring back a good point you made the tops of the teeth flat when you joint it now you're bringing all those points back again you can see me pausing sometimes and touching the tops of the teeth I'm looking for them to feel very sharp even though this isn't the final sharpener now the saw gets jointed again but very gently this time and I'm doing the final sharpening this time it's important for each tooth to get the same number of strokes I'm doing two per tooth by the end the teeth don't just feel sharp on the hand they're also grabbing they tug on your skin like cat's claws that's how I tell when my saws are really sharp again this isn't a complete guide to saw sharpener it's just an overview for restoration while I've been sharpening the plate the handle dried and I buffed it out with steel wool and wax I have a whole video on fast finishes if you want to learn more about that process the plate is a tight fit in the handle which is good but you might need to tap it a bit with a soft mallet to get all those holes lined up the hardware it goes back in without any trouble but you can bend your saw plate if the nuts are tightened unevenly so get them all snug and then skip around a little bit while you do your final tightening you want them all equally typed to test this saw I've picked the toughest wood in my shop for quarter white oak and this piece is especially dense I grabbed it tight in my homemade leg vise and get the cut started with the thumb of my left hand you might have wondered about the crazy grip on this saw and it's optimized for heavy rip cuts you put the thumb of your off hand into that hole and wrap your fingers over the top this gives you maximum power from both arms and for these long rip cuts you need it if you're wondering the about the bench I'm using it's my version of the traditional English joiners bench you can build it in two days for under two hundred and fifty dollars of common parts if you want to build it I have a whole playlist and a huge bundle of plans that even includes this monster leg vise amusing I tested this bench last week but I didn't put it through this kind of heavy sawing I have to admit I'm pretty happy with how solid the bench looks even as I'm hacking through this cut I'm not gonna pretend this sawing is quick or easy but I only paid a few bucks for this saw and after a couple hours of restoring it I have something that will rip any wood in my shop I mean literally anything so when I started this channel a few years ago I was all about telling people to go out and buy vintage tools and restore them and get working but over time I heard from viewers who said to me hey I can't find old tools where I live I need some other solution so slowly over the years I started the wood work for human series and I started teaching people how to buy cheap tools on the internet or even how to make their own tools and that really became the focus of this channel but doing this restoration really reminded me just how much I love vintage tools how much I love working with them and restoring them and I wonder how much of that do you guys want to see I can keep my focus just on inexpensive new tools and just on tool making or I could mix in a little bit of tool restoration I could do a lot of stuff about saws sharpening and restoring and making your own saw vise it could be a great series but I really need to know if you want to see it or not so please let me know down in the comments whether you want to see more these types of restorations and see me bring more of these rusty old tools back to life and if you enjoyed this video it was brought to you by my patrons on patreon their support makes all of this possible and I do my best to repay them with early access to videos exclusive content articles blog posts reviews free plans all kinds of stuff if you want to see the rewards an early access that I have just for my patrons going over to patreon com and check out the amazing community of craftspeople that we have there and listen I'll be back next week with brand-new project in the woodwork for human series it's gonna be particularly good for people who are stuck at home and needs something to do come on back and join me and just like always thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 71,707

Rating: 4.9726696 out of 5

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Id: cN8yMAXp54s

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020