Hand Saw Sharpening

[sonos1]

My mother lives for yard sales. Off before the sun rises. Most days I think she unlocks the door for the biscuit cook at Hardees . A few weeks back she brings me yard sale TOOLS . In the box of mostly junk i spy a back saw. The medalian on the saw is G.H. Bishop @ Co, Cincinnati, O. Pat. Dec 27, 1887 . So now i am faced with the task of sharpening this saw myself or sending it out. I have a couple of small files, a set, and a have managed to sharpen a couple of blades in the past. So i am wondering if i am the only weekend woodworker silly enough to do this or are there others?

Little Egypt

[SamV]

Are you the only weekend warrior who resharpens? Heck no, resharpening is easy-ish. Ok you get a lot better at it by the last tooth I'll admit. Just make sure you match up the proper size/kind file to the # of TPI. Vintage Saws has a lot of good info on their website just a little hard to navigate so does Bad Axe tools and they will sharpen them if you go that route. My current project is retoothing one of my Grandpa's old Disston saws from 8 to 4 TPI. Good luck.

Viall8r

[wilburpan]

Here's something that will hopefully get you over the hump of wondering if you're going to screw things up by trying to sharpen a saw. Joel Moskowitz from Tools for Working Wood gave a talk to our woodworking club last year, and on the subject of saw sharpening he said,

A poorly sharpened saw will still work better than a dull saw.

[LordLQQK]

I prefer, when possible, to resharpen my saws. If you follow the link Highland Hardware has a decent assortment of sharpening tool for saws, especially the Japanese saws.

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/search.aspx?find=saw+files&log=false&category=215

LQQK

[Lawrence Brown]

I hardly ever use regular western handsaws, but a while back I needed to do a cut that I couldn't accomplish any other way and all I had was an old generic saw I bought years ago from a big-box store and it was dull as could be. I looked at the teeth with a magnifier, and they were just round. I'd never tried sharpening before, but I didn't feel like buying a new one just for a few cuts and I had some small files laying around, so I figured "what the heck?"

I just eyeballed it and filed each tooth until I saw the reflection on the round tip go away. Didn't take too long once I got a rythm going and I was actually quite pleased with the results. Now I wonder what I could achieve with some practice and some decent steel. It was pretty cool being able to say "I did that!"

[SamV]

Are you the only weekend warrior who resharpens? Heck no, resharpening is easy-ish. Ok you get a lot better at it by the last tooth I'll admit. Just make sure you match up the proper size/kind file to the # of TPI. Vintage Saws has a lot of good info on their website just a little hard to navigate so does Bad Axe tools and they will sharpen them if you go that route. My current project is retoothing one of my Grandpa's old Disston saws from 8 to 4 TPI. Good luck.

Viall8r

My wife took the shop camera on a trip but... The saw has been set (following advice to set rip saws at a half setting so 8 not 4) and then joined. Last thing is to resharpen the teeth. Also as a side note, I got new files from LN and the files are thicker like the diffrence between a taper and an extra slim taper from the one I got from tools for working wood. These new files are also Grobert and don't have their style named on them unlike the Nicholsen files I'm accustomed to. The files from LN do appear to be more appropriate sized for this size tooth than the TFWW one, as they could be used on all three corners with a fresh cutting area where as the TFWW one was almost burried in the cut and Dulled quickly cause of it. I'll post pictures of them to better show this when I get my camera back.

Viall8r