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Plywood Tearout? Grab a hand saw

20 comments
11 years ago
General Articles

I’m not sure where this comes from but it seems there is a myth floating around out there that you can’t cut plywood with a hand saw.
Hand sawing plywood
Oops, sorry I guess I broke the rules then.
Hand sawing plywoodUsing a 10 ppi panel saw filed crosscut on this 3/4 Walnut plywood produced not only a perfectly straight and square cut, but not tearing or fraying of the super thin face veneer either. Pictured here is the back side of the cut that usually tears the most as the saw exits the wood. I have gotten much worse quality cuts from my old table saw and even my fancy Festool track saw. No blue tape on the cut line, no zero clearance support underneath, just a well tuned saw with a tooth geometry well suited for the task at hand. In this case 20° rake, 15° fleam. The relaxed rake eases the saw teeth into and out of the wood and the fleam creates tiny little knives that slice across the grain making for very clean edges to the kerf. However I urge you not to focus on this as the exact formula for a plywood saw but experiment for yourself. I’m sure even better results could be had if I wanted to create a plywood saw, but I would rather keep this little guy more of a fine finish blade than anything more specific.

Makes you wonder where these “you can’t do that” claims come from eh? Is this a global conspiracy devised by the dregs of the woodworking guilds of yore trying to keep their trade secrets secret? I guess I’ll see if a horse head (or whatever the medieval guild equivalent is) shows up in my bed once this post is published.

crosscut plywoodUPDATE: for that that asked, here is a shot of a crossgrain cut on the face veneer that shows a negligible difference to the cut quality.

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mitch wilson

And just what is the tooth geometry of this panel saw? (See what happens when you take courses with Matt Cianci?)

    Shannon

    No secret there Mitch. The teeth are raked at 20 degrees with 15 degrees of fleam. They ease into and out of the wood and slice all along the way. In other words, just a nicely dedicated cross cut saw with a finer pitch.

Nik brown

I always heard the glues were really bad on the saw and they would dull it really fast

    Shannon

    Yes I have heard that too though I’m not sure how accurate it is anymore with so many environmental changes being done to panels to meet CARB2 compliance and the like. Regardless, that’s what saw files are for.

Ian Fraser

Thanks for sharing this and busting a myth. I wonder how you keep your saw cut perpendicular to the board – do you plane it afterwards?

    Shannon

    Ian, this mostly comes with practice but with a saw that is tuned properly and a light grip on the handle the saw will want to stay to a line in both dimensions. For this project I did edge band those boards to just a few swipes with a plane was all that was needed before gluing the banding in place.

Joe Ledington

I think most of these “no you can do that” come from the pro side of woodworking and carpentry were they see using hand-tools as a detriment to production, especially with the lack of industrial education, most carpenters and jointers are trained to use a machine first or to find a machine solution to any problems that rise were most times a simple hand-tool would of done the job with less time and energy.

Mike Hamilton

What do your cuts look like when the crosscut the face grain rather than rip?

Thanks,
Mike

    Shannon

    Negligible difference Mike. The saw I used is a crosscut saw so it slices very nicely across the grain. I’ll grab some more pics and post the cross grain shots.

Chris J

I’ve been wondering about this! Thanks so much for addressing this!

Would love more info on how you have the saw set up. Special fleam, rake or set?