Category Archives: Old Tools

Silly Honing Guide Tricks

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After finishing off those last two projects, I had some time to clean and rearrange stuff in the shop, and as I was doing so, I couldn’t help myself from sharpening up a nice old W. Butcher chisel I got off of eBay a while back. I decided that I needed to reshape the bevel, so I put some Norton 3X on the surface plate and set up my Lee Valley/Veritas Mk. 2 honing guide. (I sharpen freehand for the most part now, but for shaping, I use the guide.)

As I was going to work, the blade did something that it sometimes does in the guide–it slipped and rotated out of square. This has been my only major gripe with the guide, and it’s going to happen with any top-clamping guide, especially with the narrower blades.

Then I thought of a way to make it stop, maybe. I took a small piece of very fine grit sandpaper (1500 in this case), folded it, and put it between the blade and the guide on the bevel side, where it wouldn’t affect the bevel angle:

honing_guide_trick

And it no longer slipped around. Someone else has probably thought of this fix, too, they’ve had to.

(For the record, my only other gripe with the guide, a minor one, is that the knurled knobs are sometimes difficult to loosen. I’d kind of prefer something more like a wingnut.)

A D-8 named Sawthra

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The last saw to be complete from the pile o’ handles I refinished a while back was a 28″ Disston D-8. The plan was to make it a replacement for the 7 TPI D-7 that I’d been using for a rip saw.

When I first got the D-8, I was somewhat ecstatic. The blade was pretty clean, reasonably straight, and even had its etch. So all I needed to do was refinish the handle, clean off the blade, and sharpen. Easy, right?

Well, I got to sharpening, and about halfway through from the heel to toe, my file started to make strange noises and didn’t want to cut the metal. Huh. It turns out that there was a roughly 8-inch length where someone had done something unholy to the teeth. They were hard, very hard. We’re talking “breaks the teeth off your file” hard here.

I wasn’t going to let a saw make a monkey out of me, though, and managed to work through the hard metal. It seemed to go about 1/8″ deep into the blade. After this, I was tired. Very tired. I thought, well, maybe I should name this thing “Sawzilla,” but quick research indicated that it wasn’t a terribly original name. So here is Sawthra, named after the slightly more obscure Mothra:

disston_d8_sawthra

The Disston D-8 brings me to another thought I’d been having lately, namely, “wouldn’t it be great to have a brand-new D-8?” Then at Bagathon, I made a rather unusual deal with Larry that brought me this saw:

pax_no1

Notice anything familiar about this 24-inch Pax “No 1″ panel saw? Like, maybe, that it’s a total copy of the Disston D-8, even down to the handle and the screw arrangement?

So I really do have a practically brand-new D-8 now. It makes sense, I suppose. The Flinn company tends to catch a lot of flak about its saws, in particular, that the handles aren’t as nice as century-old handles. But they do at least reproduce a true classic handsaw. The blade is taper-ground, for whatever that’s worth. Although I wouldn’t characterize the teeth on this thing as “sharp” (my little carcase saw currently cuts faster than this thing at the moment), they don’t look too bad, and probably need a little touch-up. I’ll wax the blade, like I always do.

The handle? Well, I’m not sure if I want to make a new one or not. To be honest, the handle isn’t that bad. But I always seem to end up making handles.

A Tale of Two Saws

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Or, rather, two descriptions. I finally finished the pile o’ handles I was working on, and two of the saws on which they belong are complete:

The one in the back is a 28″ Disston No. 7. When I got it, it was filed at 4.5TPI crosscut. However, this pitch (and the saw’s handle) is far more suited for ripping, so during sharpening, I converted it to a rip saw. For the first time when simply modifying teeth on an old saw, I needed to add some set–there was practically none. Although the surface looks a little funky (strange corrosion patterns), it’s actually pretty smooth, and it tears through wood like a bat out of hell. I have wanted this saw to be complete for a long time. I’ll be using it a lot.

The other saw is a “Warranted Superior” backsaw from the 50s or so. There’s nothing remarkable about it. It’s not mine (it belongs to someone in the family), but I’ve had it for a while because it was in bad need of a rehab. The teeth had been nearly worn off in places. Nasty. So, after refinishing the handle and redoing the teeth, it cuts about as well as you’d hope it to. Interestingly, it’s been a while since I did crosscut filing; most of my latest projects have revolved around different varieties of rip saws.

Unfortunately, this thing was on my project list for a couple of years. Now I can finally send it back to its owner.

Mortise chisel: Part 2

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I marked out the angles on the mortise chisel by “feel,” just by sort of looking at all of the pictures I’ve seen and guessing. With two sides cut away, it looked like this:

I cut out these sections with my larger rip saw. It would have taken forever with anything else. Then I used a block plane to smooth around the oval. I nicked the blade of the plane against the chisel bolster doing that. Boo. Grinding that stuff out is always such a pain.

Following the plane, I used a spokeshave to further smooth the oval shape, then, finally, progressive grits of sandpaper on a block to do the final smoothing. This sequence was quick.

A couple of oil/varnish blend applications later, along with the requisite sharpening, it was ready to use. Here it is with its first test mortise-and-tenon joint (upper left, not that stuff to the right):

It’s a lot of fun to use. Best of all, it’s fast.

Mortise chisel handle: Part 1

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I’ve been jonesing for a “real” mortise chisel for a long time now. My obstacle, however, has been the irrational cheapskate inside of me. There’s been a lot written about the English “pigsticker” style of mortise chisel lately, and I’ve been trolling ebay for a cheap one or one without a handle. I finally got my hands on a handle-free sample a couple of weeks ago.

Made by W. Butcher, it has a strange width–something like 9/32″. This is close enough to 1/4″, I guess. Its cutting edge is laminated to a softer metal for the rest of the blade.

Unfortunately, it was dubbed at the tip when I got it, and it was a lot of work to flatten the back (I took the dubbing problem from both ends; shortened it slightly and flattened the rest off). You would think something that small would be easier to flatten, but the steel is really quite hard. I used Norton 3X sandpaper on a granite surface plate, grits 80 on up.

After doing this task, I set out to make a new handle per Derek Cohen’s instructions. Putting in the hole for the tang was a real pain in the ass:

The wood is yellow birch. We’ll see if it holds up. Next step is to shape it, then finish sharpening the blade.

Various handles and knobs

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I’m in the process of varnishing four saw handles, a plane tote, and a plane knob. Here are half of the pieces.

As usual, I’m not being terribly speedy here. It’s been seven months since I started working on that tenon saw handle in the center. Things happen but I like to think that sooner or later, I get back to this stuff. (Especially since I’ve had the saw blade sharpened almost since I started on the handle and it’s otherwise ready to go.)

The larger hand saw handle in the rear is for a Disston D-8 that will become one of my new rip saws, somewhere at around 7TPI. This will be in addition to a No. 7 (I think) that’s going to be a larger 4.5TPI rip saw. The handle for that one is also in this batch, thankfully. Both of these handles were glopped over with some awful green paint that I needed to strip before the refinishing process started. What is it with the green paint?

The initial finish on these two handles was a mix of “colonial maple” stain, some satin polyurethane, and tung oil, for an oil/varnish blend (this makes the rays in the beech look nice). After a few coats of that, I’m now putting on satin polyurethane. I like the way that a top coat of polyurethane feels on the other handles I’ve done (as opposed to alkyd varnish and oil/varnish blends), and it seems to hold up better. It takes a little more effort to get polyurethane to look decent, but it’s not that bad.

I think I need one or two more coats on the handles.

The knob is from a Millers Falls #22 jointer plane that’s been waiting for restoration. I did not use the oil/varnish blend on this (or its accompanying tote), because the ray structure in this tropical wood did not seem worth bringing out. I may be done with the plane parts; I’ll evaluate that later.

Saw handle: Complete

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I’ve been away for the last two and a half weeks. Just before I left, I put the final coat of finish on the saw handle. When I returned, I rubbed out the finish and put it back on the saw.

Everything turned out perfectly save one detail: I messed up the centering on the screw holes. Especially on the medallion. I could fix it, but I have two reasons not to. First, it serves as a reminder that I will need to practice that next time. Second, the saw itself is not worth it; I found out that the back is slightly bent. I don’t know if this happened recently or no, but it doesn’t really matter.

There’s also another good reason not to fool around with this one any longer–I want to get cracking on handles for my good saws. To that end, I bought a board of apple in Pennsylvania during my visit. It’s a pretty board and I don’t think I’ll want to stain it at all.

I also retrieved a brace from my mom’s place. The ratchet mechanism seized up, so I chucked in a sort of wide-bladed screwdriver bit, placed the blade in a vise, put in some wd-40, and turned. This freed it, and now it’s bleeding rust. Soon I’ll be able to give this one to a buddy.

Saw handle: Back mortise and screw holes

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The mortise for the blade’s back was pretty much a piece of cake. I marked it off with a marking gauge on both sides, sawed down the lines, and chiseled it out.

After verifying that everything fit, it was time to drill and shape the holes for the saw screws and nuts. This was sort of a complicated operation, because there are several different sizes of recesses to cut. I started with some small pilot holes in the correct locations. Amazingly, I got them straight working freehand:

The fun part was next, because I got to use both of my braces and two auger bits to cut the recesses for the screws and nuts. Most of the shallow ones are 1/2″ in diameter, but the one for the medallion was 3/4″.

Then I had more holes to drill, because the nuts require one size, the screws another size, and the screw with the medallion needed yet another size. I did a sloppy job with the holes for the nuts, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s actually not a bad idea if they have a lot of slop anyway. I was much more careful on the side for the screws, and that turned out fine:

I test-fit everything. It’s all good. So it’s done except for the finish. I washcoated it this morning. Hopefully this time, the finish won’t take forever.

Saw handle: Cutting the blade slot

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Sooner or later, I had to cut the slot for the blade, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. There is a method of cheating at this in a Lee Valley newsletter article, but the only appropriate saw I have for doing this is my dovetail saw, which wasn’t gonna work.

So that meant cutting it “freehand.” And I’m really supposed to be able to do this sooner or later, anyway, because it’s the same as sawing a tenon cheek. Unfortunately, I haven’t been very good at that.

I decided that it would probably be a good idea to practice. So I marked out a bunch of lines on some scrap and sawed away:

The first tries were not encouraging. In fact, at first, I screwed up about seven times versus one instance where it wasn’t that bad. Eventually, though, I managed to relax and let the saw do the work instead of holding with a death grip. I did three good ones in a row. It seemed time.

It took what seemed to be an eternity, but once I had established the kerf (approaching from both sides), it was a cakewalk.

I managed to split the marking line. I hope that this means better tenons in the future.

Next up is cutting the mortise for the back and the holes for the saw screws and nuts. It’s starting to occur to me that this saw handle is now far better than the beat-up saw blade that it’s going to go on.

Saw handle: Shaping

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The first step in shaping a saw handle is to mark out the inner lines that you’ll shape up to.

Then it’s time to break out the rasp and file and wish you had a better rasp:

I didn’t use a center line along the edge of the handle this time. I just cut alternately from each side until they met in the center. I kept them even by measuring the depth with my double square. That tool should be dragged out back and shot for being so handy.

When it was all mostly said and done, except for final sanding, it looked like this (shown next to the old handle):

The next steps are to cut the holes for the screws and the slot/mortise for the blade. I am not looking forward to the slot. It’s where I can really screw up the whole thing in one simple, easy step.