Mike Wenzloff Sets a Saw With a Piece of Paper

[TerryMcK]

I remember this from years ago and decided to post it again. BTW paper does not compress and I can confirm this method works well. When I was an apprentice boy engineer we used to set cutting tools (milling cutters) 2 thou away from the workpiece using a small strip of newspaper glued (with spit) to the face of the workpiece. When inching the cutter (while running) closer to the workpiece as soon as the paper disappeared (it was swept off by the cutter) we were guaranteed to be 2 thou away. So I know that newspaper is always consistent thickness. Mind you what will happen when newspapers are replaced by the internet  ? I don't think they will replace toilet paper anytime soon  so we will have to use that instead.

 

Anyway I digress so have a look at Mike's method below.

 

 

 

[Unknown craftsman]

I tried this with my machinist vice and found out I need a better vice.

I have three of mikes saws. I really hope he's still building saws I haven't finish filling my saw till. 

Aj

[Tom King]

The first thing I noticed was that it was a pretty fancy vise.

I don't like to do anything to the teeth once they've been sharpened.  The first thing I do after filing is to sight down each side.  If a tooth is sticking out more than the others, I'll "sharpen" that tooth a little more, and if it makes it a little shorter than the others, don't worry about it until the next sharpening.

[Minnesota Steve]

I think that's a machine vise from a mill.   So the vise faces are going to be precise, flat and parallel to one another.

So it looks like he's not really setting the teeth... he's just ensuring they're aligned.   It makes sense, and I think if you were doing this in a production environment a lot it's a fast easy way to accomplish this.

Otherwise it might not make sense to spend the $1000+ to buy the vise. :-)