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Sunday, November 17, 2013

And slowly ripening

This is ridiculous fun. Carving a lamstongue. All done with a sharp chisel, without any training in carving ever. So I'm just winging it. It's far from finished of course.




Friday, November 15, 2013

Something is brewing again

This week I started work on a new saw. Steel back this time. What a bear to work! I still have some 0.6 mm springsteel plate, so this is what I came up with, so far. Lots of work still to do.


Wednesday, November 13, 2013

New smithing tools

Today I acquired a nice chunck of steel and a larger hammer for my saw smithing adventures. It's all quite a bit larger then the old setup, as can be seen in the picture. Old stuff on the right, the new plate with whacker on the left. And all that for the pricely sum of 10 euro. :-)



Now I really must clean up this metal workers bench!

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Pictures






Finishing the saw

After drilling the holes and finetuning them to a perfect fit, I polished up the metal parts for the last time and assembled the saw. My splitnut driver has given up the ghost so it was time to make a new one. A real sturdy one this time. I bought a screwdriver and cut an opening with the anglegrinder. That's how I like my tools, quick and dirty.




Because the sawscrews are a tight fit, I literally hammer them into the handle. Trying to draw them in with the nut doesn't work, only damages the threads. The screws and nuts are now protruding a bit above the wood, so I file them flush and rub everything down on a sheet of sanding paper.



And then after cleaning everything carefully and oiling the handle a couple of times, here's a peek view of how it turns out. I'll make some better pictures outside when it's light again.


Friday, November 8, 2013

Drilling

Slowly the saw is aproaching its finish. Tonight I drilled the screwholes. After deliberating about the best position, as far apart as possible without interfering with the sawback or the chamfers, I drilled a very thin drillbit through and through. This is my pilot hole for all further bits. Starting with an 11 mm one for the screwhead. Then 6 mm for the square shank and then 4 mm for the threaded part of the screw. Then turning the handle over and do the same from the other side. The pilot hole is essential to get both sides in line with each other.

I make the square hole with a small chisel. Fist removing a bit of wood. Then hammering the screw into the hole, so it marks its own hole. Remove the squashed bits and repeat until I have a nice tight fit.

Tomorrow I'll drill the sawblade with a HSS-cobalt bit which works a lot better then a normal HSS bit in springsteel.


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Handle making, the easy bit.

And now for the fun part. Shaping with rasps and files, lots of sanding, looking and correcting. This is like sculpting for me.




Monday, November 4, 2013

Problem solved!

Like I wrote yesterday, I had a small problem. As soon as I put a clamp on the cheeks of the sawhandle, it would bow the end of the sawblade a little bit. Not enough to really worry about, especially as you never use that bit of the sawblade under the handle. But it bugged me nonetheless. First I thought I had the mortice off kilter, but inspection showed no troubles there. Then I looked very closely at the blade groove, whitout a clamp yet,  and saw this. On one side it was tight against the blade, at the other side there was room. I used an offcut from the blade as a scraper and scraped away a bit of wood, inside the groove. Problem solved!



Sunday, November 3, 2013

Handle, the difficult bits.

Today I started the handle making. I glued the template on the piece of beech. Then drilled out the narrow curves with some forstner bits.




I used my bowsaw to cut the rest of the curves. BTW, this is not an easy saw to master, but I'm learning. After sawing, most cuts will be skewed a bit from front to back of the handle blank, so I square everything up with a rasp.


To cut the blade slot I use the trick with another saw, clamped upon a bit of wood, half the width of the sawhandle. This lets you cut a groove very accurately.


I finish the cut with handle clamped in the vise. It's now pretty easy with the groove allready started.


Then the next difficult bit, chopping out the mortice for the sawback. I mark it with the back in situ. Then drill a hole in the bottom and start removing wood with narrow chisels. Very carefully, slowly widening and deepening until I am happy with the fit.


And then it's time to see if everything is still straight. Luckily the groove for the blade is perfect. But the blade is bend a minimal amount below the handle. So I suppose the back isn't 100% correctly fitted yet. I'll sleep on it to see what I will do about this.


Saturday, November 2, 2013

Toothing

After a busy week at work, I finally have some time again to continue with the project. I've decide to make one prototype first. And because I allready have an 18 ppi saw, I make this one at 14 ppi.

Setup is very simple. Two battens with two clamping screws, and all that clamped in the  machinist vise. A wooden rake block, to help me getting consistent rake angles. And a pattern glued to the edge of my "sawvise". First I give a single stroke for each gullet, then slowly deepen it, all the while watching how the teeth emerge equally.



When the teeth are ready I set them with an Eclipse 77. I modified this one slightly for such small teeth. Grinded the round anvil down a bit to reduce the amount of set, and made the hammer narrower. I mark every other tooth to avoid confusion.


After setting I joint the teeth once again and go for the most perfect teeth I'm capable of. This is the setup I like to use, just one spotlight to get the exact right amount of reflection.


And this what I see. Sharp teeth on the far right, while the teeth on the left are still reflecting light from their flat tops.


And the result, as far as I can capture them with an Iphone.