I purchased this saw a bit back from a local flea market. It was labeled as a small tenon saw.

When I bought it, it was filed crosscut.

I am heavily influenced by Paul Sellers. I will be forever grateful to him, as I have always wanted to work wood with hand tools, but he was the first person I ever saw who explained and demonstrated the techniques in a way in which my brain said, "Hey, I can do that". Most of what I know I learned from him, and the rest, where i differ is ways I have learned that suit the way I think better.

Sellers is an advocate of rip saws when it comes to joinery saws, however, i have seen him use a carcass saw that I'm pretty sure is filed cross, I can't prove that, though. I think he advocates rip because it is easy to resharpen for a beginner, but I think in practice he diverges a bit.

I said all of that because it is relevant to the topic at hand.

Up until now, all of my joinery saws have been rip, and they have worked well for me, so i filed this one rip as well.

But in daily use i began to wonder, "Why in the heck do I need three separate joinery saws filed rip?"

I'm a voracious consumer of any media involving hand tool woodworking I can find, so i know that traditionally joinery saws were both ripcut and crosscut, So i decided to convert this saw to crosscut, and so far I'm glad i did.

It wasn't easy, though. If you look at the saw sharpening videos on Youtube you will usually see these guys demonstrate passing a file through the teeth about twice and calling them good. Okay, Billy Bob.

I literally had to sharpen this saw about 5 times until I got it where it was cutting to my satisfaction. The conclusion I've come to is that they are sharpening saws whose teeth are already in good condition; this one needed much more work.

The handle is a bit blocky and does not fit my hand all that well, so in future I will most likely alter it a bit. The saw as far as I know holds no value as a collector or a piece of history. There are no maker's marks, branding, nor anything else. It's just an average saw for the average man, so I'm not worried that this average woodworker is going to ruin anything by altering it to fit my hand better.

All in all, I'm glad i hung in there and got it right.

 

Paul Sellers is a favorite of mine. If you haven't already, take a look at Graham Blackburns YouTube channel. Another hand tool guru with straight forward presentation style full of traditional hand tool techniques, tips and general information.

 

BTW, love the t-shirt!

Graham is fantastic and fun, and he's had a huge influence on hand tool woodworking over the decades.

What a satisfying journey to go on, to try and try again, and finally get that ol saw to where you want it, that's gotta be very satisfying. I would agree with ya, the videos we see mainly on sharpening saws are saws that basically just need a tune up, I haven't had to start from scratch on any of my saws, but I love watching someone take a heavily used saw, file the tips flat, take it all the way back to nothing, and bring it back to very scary sharp.

Hat off to ya for hanging in there and getting it to where you want it, many of us would have given up and just moved on to another saw to screw up

But you got this one right obviously!

Since we are talking about our favorite hand tool guys, I love the folks over at Mortise and Tenon Magazine, they turn seemingly complicated processes into basic skills is all that is needed, from furniture building to tool restoration and maintenance.

 

Keep us up to date on your hand saw and work! And ya, gotta love that t-shirt!!

6 hours ago, John Morris said:

What a satisfying journey to go on, to try and try again, and finally get that ol saw to where you want it, that's gotta be very satisfying. I would agree with ya, the videos we see mainly on sharpening saws are saws that basically just need a tune up, I haven't had to start from scratch on any of my saws, but I love watching someone take a heavily used saw, file the tips flat, take it all the way back to nothing, and bring it back to very scary sharp.

Hat off to ya for hanging in there and getting it to where you want it, many of us would have given up and just moved on to another saw to screw up

But you got this one right obviously!

Since we are talking about our favorite hand tool guys, I love the folks over at Mortise and Tenon Magazine, they turn seemingly complicated processes into basic skills is all that is needed, from furniture building to tool restoration and maintenance.

 

Keep us up to date on your hand saw and work! And ya, gotta love that t-shirt!!

John, thanks. It's much appreciated.

And yes, I watch M&T Magazine. I like the fact that they rehab and use the old tools. I like the good quality newer stuff, and truth be told if I had the budget I'd probably have gone that route in the beginning. But there is just a big satisfaction for me in taking something and putting it back to the use it was intended for.

I’ve reprofiled teeth on several saws. Definitely more work than just a resharpen, but worth the effort to get what you need from a saw. I’ve found that using a rip saw for crosscut tends to catch real bad and is almost impossible to get it started without it skipping out. They also tear out the back side pretty bad.

Crosscut saws in rip application are just terribly inefficient. 

I’ve thought about filing crosscut teeth in sets of three, where the first 2 are normal crosscut and the third tooth is filed level with just a little forward angle kind of like a rip tooth so it could scoop out the severed fibers left from the first two teeth and repeat that pattern all the way down the plate. Kind of like the large 2 man saws that use left and right single bevel knife teeth and the third tooth is a raker.

Anybody ever tried that?

Hmmmm

Just hanging...(L-R)  No. 10 Atkins, Disston D8 Panel saw...and 3 backsaws...the skinny Jackson is hiding behind the 2 Disston No. 4s...one rip and the one behind is a crosscut...

Kind of a busy space...Canvas roll is a full set of Irwin Bits ( #4-#16)

Yummy.