After a thumbhole shaped handle fitting exactly to my hand was laying around in my shop for several months , it got finally a blade . It took a little longer to make this blade for 2 reasons. The 0.040" steel plate is extremely hard, it was a bear to shape. Pedder nearly ruined his retoother on this blade. And I, well I did ruin my Fein nibbler, the steel was stronger ... Pedder found a way to shape the plate
The second reason was the taper grinding. We did several attempts until it went so la la ...
I was silly enough to take this Pear handle for my 1st wheat carving attempts, shouldn't have done that because the handle lost a lot of it's former beauty. I still like it however
The blade is 29 1/2" long (at the toothline), 4" deep at the toe and 8 1/2"" deep at the heel (in front of the handle). It has a 2-pitch-layout, the first 5" are toothed to 7 TPI, the rest to 3.5 TPI. The taper of the plate reaches from 0.040" at the toothline to about 0.028" at the top of the blade.
I had no possibility to let it run seriously but the first attempts seem to be rather good. Maybe the plate size has to be reduced a little bit. I like the heft of the saw and the strength of the blade but there is a lot of steel which has to be pushed through the wood. That will be decided after some test runs.
Thanks for looking!
Klaus