I recentely got a pair of Wenzloff & Sons small joinery saws, or what most would call small joinery saws. Here's a pic of them:
http://wenzloffandsons.com/saws/adu/adu_0002.jpg
I worked with Mike over quite a period to come up with this design, and some might consider them to be too small, as they're only 8" long and 1 3/4" deep (of usable blade). This is the type of saw I decided I wanted to use for cutting joinery in 4/4 to 6/4 sized stock, and they feel and cut wonderfuly. Made out of a very rare curless curly jatoba wood! (this grin is for Mike...:D) The wood really feels nice though, I like them a lot.
I've been playing with them for a few days, and they really cut well, which should be expected from a new saw, but they really track nicely. I certainly don't consider myself to be any type of great sawyer, so please take my comments with any large grain of salt, or even hit the next thread link at the bottom of the post.
Here's a set of houndstooth tails, hickory which is going into purple heart, but I ran into a problem having a difficult time marking the pins, after I hand planed the purple heart it was like polished glass...Later I though I might have had luck wetting the end grain, but not sure that would work. I'm adding an apron to a dimensional workbench in my garage, which will have one of these on each side of the front. This wood is HARD, harder than purple heart most certainly. Funny is that it actually chisels better than pine to me. I fine softwoods the most difficult to chisel.
http://www.SoftOrchestra.com/images/houndstooth.jpg
If you look closely you can see the marks, the saw tracked fairly well along the line, certainly a nice attribute for a hand saw.
The other thing that I found out over the past few days is that I rather like using a crosscut saw to cut across the grain (end pins or other cross grain cut). So far I had been using rip filed dovetail saws for that, and in comparing the 2 saws side by side, I would have to say the rip teeth are the wrong teeth for that task, although it does work and I have done this myself. Given the choice, I would take the proper saw for the task. Having both is nice.
Here's a small pine box I made, which will store my small measuring tools, bevels, marking gauge, etc...I still need to rabett the top/bottom, and glue those in place. These are the smallest pins I've ever cut, I'm a tad surprised they hold, but this is actually pretty strong, IMO. Could be do to the wider end pins, I'm not sure. Anyway, the widest part of the pin was too narrow to use a 1/8" chisel, so I needed to modify it after I had it laid out...;-) Pine is really difficult to chisel and requires sharp chisels, and even then seems to tear/smash easily. This is about 12" long and 3 1/2" high and 3 1/4" deep, and made out of 1/2" clear pine (some scraps I had from moulding).
http://www.SoftOrchestra.com/images/box_houndstooth.jpg
Even on the pine, cutting across the grain to cut the pins off works better and seems like the proper tool for the job, rather than using a rip files dovetail saw for those tasks.
I also cut another small box out of rosewood, fairly small, very pretty grain. I left it in the garage, but it's not put together yet.
