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.

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!

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.

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.

Honeymoon!

At long last, the marriage of spine and sawblade. After carefully filing all the burs from the edge of the sawblade, I set the spine in a groove in a block of wood. Then working from one end to the other, I insert the blade in the spine with a very hard rubber mallet. You have to give some serious blows to get it in, so don't be scared.

I didn't get them all to the same depth. While hammering you can see how the blade curves or stretches, depending on where you hit it. Often hitting it at the outer ends tends to straighten the blade. I stopped when the blade was deep enough and reasonably straight.

Then on to some finetuning. I had to reposition one of the sawblades in the spine (it was too much forward), like this.

To get the toothline really straight, I had to do some very carefull bending. Despite the hamfisted look of this picture, it's actually very precise.

Checking for twist in the blade.

And readjusting where neccessary. One end clamped in the vise. The other end is torqued with a clamp. I could also have used a crescent wrench or something similar, but this doesn't leave ugly marks on the brass.

And this is the harvest. I am very happy so far. This has been a major breakthrough in the project. I'll have to do some more sanding, but that's OK. Next step is filing some teeth.

Grinding brass

After a few days with other jobs, I found some time to continue working on the saws again. Grinding is the job at hand. Like I wrote last time, I use a handheld sander upside down in the vise. It's far from ideal, but it works. Here is one of the sawbacks where I was still learning the hammering technique, so it is full of dents. But I have 3 mm of brass and a 60 grit belt, so it is no problem.

The chamfers are also made on the sander. I just hold them at roughly 45 degrees and that works very well. I spend all afternoon working up the grits, from 60 to 240. I made the round nose and also a nice chamfer along its edge with files and sandpaper.

Above 240 grit it's time for handwork. 400 and 600 grit, with a sanding block.

And that's where I am now. Maybe I'll polish them up a bit with steelwool later. It looks like I have now arrived at the point where other home sawmakers usually start, when they buy the parts from a supplier. I have a steel plate, a back and some splitnuts. Time to do some assembly and look at the wooden part of this business.

Working the back

After flattening and straightening the back, it's time to do something about its shape. The back is a tapered one in this saw, so I mark a line and cut it with a hacksaw.

Then filing to remove the saw marks and straightening the cut. Finally everything needs to get sanded to remove all the hammer marks and dents. I use a handheld bandsander, clamped upside down in the vise. Going slow, not too much pressure, cooling in a bucket of water when my fingers get hot. And not being too skimpy with the sandpaper rolls.

Slowly they are starting to look nice!