Progressive Pitch Sharpening

[Glen Evans]

I'm sharpening all my handmade saws with progressive pitch. It seems to be straight forward enough to do and the saws are very easy to start. I'm unsure though about setting the teeth. Should I be setting the smaller pitch teeth to the same set as the coarser teeth? I'm thinking that the kerf should be as uniform as possible--how do you guys do it??

On a related note, all my saws use 1095 blue tempered spring steel. I notice that saw manufacturers use Swedish spring steel--is there any difference??

Glen

[george wilson]

1095 is just fine. Hundreds of years ago Swedish steel was preferred in England because the English used coal with lots of sulfur in it to refine iron. That made their iron weak,and what blacksmiths call "hot short",that is,it could crumble when being forged at glowing heats.

The Swedes used charcoal to refine their metal,having a lot bigger supply of wood. No sulfur. This was imported as "hoop iron." And was much more expensive than English iron. More modern understanding of chemistry and better quality control has taken care of that issue. Some may argue otherwise,but I think that issue is passe.

I would set all the teeth to exactly the same width. You don't want the set getting wider as the saw is pushed into the cut,or it will probably bind.