First beginnings

Metalwork comes first when making a saw. The brass back has allready been folded some two years ago. A collegue helped me with a bad-ass metal brake and a hydraulic press. Still, the fold wasn't completely closed. Brass work hardenes, which means it becomes very stiff when you bend it. This is easilly remidied however, you just have to heat it up and let it cool off again. It doesn't need to get redhot, I made it as hot as I could with a simple butane burner. Then hammering with a big hammer on an anvil.

Hammering works very well, you have to watch out to keep it straight though. So, you hammer one side or the other until you are happy. I got a bit over enthousiastic though, and made it totally flat. No space for the sawblade anymore! So I had to labourously hammer an old knife in the fold again to unbend it a little. Broke the knife, no fun. Hammering also causes dents, so I had to do a lot of work with files and a bandsander. At the same time I made the taper along the length, about 2 mm less width in the front. And I filed and sanded some chamfers and the nice little round detail at the very tip. Overall, a lot of work for such a little saw.

Inserting the blade into the back was troublesome too. No matter how hard I hit the blade, it wouldn't go any deeper! After all that hammering the blade wasn't quite straight and flat anymore. Luckily I had read a very good article about this problem, and it was no trouble to correct it. Straightening the blade. Have a look around in this blog, it is full of advice.

Next part of a saw is the handle. And you need a bit of wood for that. Original is quarter sawn beech. I have plenty of beech, not all quarter sawn though. I didn't want to dig through the woodstack too much, so I grabbed an offcut from a beech 10x10 cm beam. The wood is a little peculiar, there is quite some spalting going on. I had to do some creative sawing and planing to circumvent a couple of cracks and to make it as QS as possible. This is not the most perfect piece of wood, but this is a workmans saw. And I am sure no workman would have thrown away a decent piece of beech because of some spalting. I am not sure yet how I will saw the handle from this piece of wood, but this is one possibility. (The one on the right is a paper copy!)