Harrison dovetail saw

I saw this saw on instagram. The owner had a problem with a bow in the blade. The Instagram solution was: Let it as be.

But the owner was kind enough to send me the saw.

The numbers: Dovetail saw By Harrison.
There are four makers of this name in Simon Barley's book.

The yougest is Wiliam Harrison, Huxton, who made saws until 1868. So at least 150 years for this old lady.

Length 9" or 230 mm
Tapered blade now 1 3/16" or 31mmm at the toe and 1 3/8 or 35mm at the heel.

Very thin blade for that old saw: 0,3mm or 0.012"

I restored the toothing to 18 tpi what is close to what I found.

The spine is 6mm*16mm (please inch people calculate for yourself)

The handle ist one of the most delicate I've seen. The wood is 20mm (a hair above 474 inch) thick and the thinnest place at the transmission is 12mm (1/2 inch).

Well packed by the owner. Brits usually use two layers of cardbox with some tape.

The nuts have been tuoched before but that is long ago.

the back nut shows the unscrewing, too.

hard to show the wave in the blade

The blad was hold firmly by the spine. I had not enough courage to try to take it apart.

Cuting before the toothing

if it is that bad, better don't try to reshape the teeth.

After retoothing.

The wave is there, but it doesn't hurt the cutting power

the cuts are straight and plane. 

Crosscuts are ok, too. (Would be better in hard wood.)

I think the blade is rusty under the handle. The holws are a bit too wide. So the spine shakes in the handle. This wedge hleps. The owner will have to decide if he cuts another wedge.

A scan for anybody who wants to make a copy of the handle

Sawmaker

This is my personal blog. And it is about sawa. Mostly.

I'm burning for english back saws and hand saws since I found them shortly after I found internet.
I started this blog to gather links to saw making articles and  links and to document my own journey.

The guys, who inspired me to saw making were Leif Hanson (Norse Woodsmith) and Mike Wenzloff. 

But before I even know there are modern backsaws, Pete Taran and Patrick Leach founded, raised and even sold Independence saws to Thomas Lie-Nielsen. Now Pete Taran is back in saw making under a new label: Ne plus ultra.

It's ridiculus to mark Pete as a new saw maker, but this is how my page work. Pete is the new until the next saw maker shows up.

BTW, if you are a saw maker and want to be listed, shoot me an e-mail with the link to your blog or home page.

The Skokloster Saw

In 2014 Roald, one of the blogger of Hyvelbenk (Planingbench) postet some pictures of a saw from the 17th century found in the Swedish Slot od Skokloster. (Klick on the link, to see them.) And a bit later he postet even more pictures. I'm interested in saws of all kind, so I asked him for more pictures. We talked a bit via E-Mail, but then we forgot about it.

Early this year, Jimmy Hendrix, connected me with David from Ageröd Snickeri. David, too, has visited the Tool Sanctum of Skokloster and wanted to make some replicas of the saws. He send me some pdf of the saw blade. I thought I could do the filing by hand, but if there will be more people want to test a saw theat looks like 17Th cntury we should use a more reliable copy method.

I asked Gerd Fritsche, who not only make fantastic planes, but sells saws and saw parts, too, to laser the blade for us. If you laser a blade, ith get's brittle at the edges. You can't set it nor you cant file it. Easiest way the handle this is to bake the blade in the oven to straw. After that filing and setting is possible. But you have to deblue the saw. I found the hard way, deblueing isn't that easy as I remembered. A lot of acid, autosol and elbow grease was needed to come to this:

still a bit blurry, but no fear th saw will get sharp later

Today I finished the filing, setting and testcutting. The problem is, there are no handles yet. The blades will be send to David and get their handles in sweden. This is may solution. An old cocobolo handle, that wasn't sellabe and some c-vises.

The first trial was ugly. The saw needs more set than I thought  and more sharpnes.

And the handle needs to be lower (it is at the original saw) more like at my table saw.

That has to be enough until i get the sas back wit the handle. The saw it sharpened without fleam like te saws of that age. at 15° Rake you can us it crosscut as good as rip cut. Not perfect, but in the woodworking of that ager you will hardly see any sawn surface.