This week I take a recently acquired Disston D8 28″ rip saw and put it back into working order. I hope this episode sparks a lot of criticism as I am a real novice to saw sharpening and I would love some input on my technique and how I can improve. In the long run, by the end of the episode, the saw was cutting great so I guess I didn’t go too far off on my process.
Nice job Shannon! Good summary of the process. I do have one comment and I’m not sure if you simply mis-spoke or if this is what you were actually doing but you mentioned that you were filing the fronts of the teeth that were set toward you. If this is indeed what you were doing, it may have been one of the reasons you were getting some chatter from time to time.
What I do is to file the front (toe side) of the teeth that are set away from me. This way, the stroke of the file is pushing the tooth in the same direction that it is leaning instead of the file stroke and the natural bend of the tooth fighting each other. This helps to reduce the skittering of the file across the tooth which will dull the file and result in requiring more strokes to get the teeth sharp.
Another good aid to sharpening and being able to tell when the flats are gone is to darken the flats of the teeth after jointing with a Sharpie. Then you file until the marker disappears. This is especially helpful in shops where you have a flooding light like that from overhead flourescents but little raking light like that from a task light positioned to the side of the work or from a window. The raking light (like from your flashlight) helps to show the flats because it creates shadows, which flooding overhead light tends to eliminate.
Other than that, I think you did a fine job, especially for your first attempt.
Bob
P.S. Not sure if you saw my reply to your comment on the saw vise questions you had on my blog but it’s there if you didn’t get a chance to check it out. My blog provider doesn’t send an email to the original commenter when I reply to a comment so unfortunately, you need to recheck the comments for a reply (unless you send me an email and I reply to that).
Keep up the good work!
One other minor comment. I noticed you put zero rake into the teeth. With a saw this coarse (i.e. low PPI) this will be great for softwoods like pine and cedar and softer hardwoods like poplar, however, you may find some difficulty with hardwoods, especially the real hard stuff like maple, oak and ash. I’ve found that if you can’t have dedicated hard wood and soft wood rip saws with different PPI & rake, adding a little rake to your rip saw makes it easier to use in hard woods without giving up much in the way of speed in soft woods.
FWIW, I file my 5½ PPI rip saw with about 4-5 degrees of rake. It is a lot easier in hardwoods than a zero rake saw but I can still cut through 4/4 white pine at 1″-2″ per stroke.
Shannon
You have doen a great job and it is valuable that there is now a saw filing video podcast out there!.
I agree with both of Bob’s comments and would add only a few minor points:
1.. Like mack says in TWOTG 18, the teeth of a rip saw are like chisels, so it is important that the tooth come to a sharp point which is smooth on both sides (like the back and the bevel of the chisel). When I shape teeth, I think that is like flattening and polishing the back of a chisel or plane blde – so I concentrate on applying the file to the sloped back of the tooth that I am shaping and not on the front of the following tooth. I try to take off all the flat left from jointing by filing the back not the front. I then turn to the front of the tooth which is like the bevel of the chisel or plane blade and try to feel the file cutting on the front and just resting lightly on the back of the tooth in front.
2. If the set is uneven and that is causing binding, stoning is more important than resetting, becasue stoning on the “overset” side will reduce the set on that side. As you know I try to have the very least set possible to stop binding so that the kerf is as narrow as possible – not so that I save wood, but so that I don’t have to cut so much wood out to go a certain distance. In your training for the WIA Olympics, I recommend reducing the set on your saws as much as possible becasue it will make you faster because each stroke will cut more along the line (rather than just making a wider kerf)!
But these are minor quibbles. As a first effort, you did much better than I did and you certainly seem to have that D8 singing at the end.
Thanks, just what I was looking for. Comments too. Going to try it.
Dallas
Cheers! Sandra. R.