Hammer Setting Saw Teeth

[Jim Koepke]

Check out the US BLS and forestry sites, a lot of them have old lit about different methods of doing things. I know for sure I've seen stuff referring to the hammer setting of log saws.

My brother gave me one of their publications with saw sharpening and setting information. Not sure where it is currently. There are also some catalogs available on line with saw maintenance information.

The teeth on log saws are kind of large for hand held plier type saw setting. There are saw wrests that are like small wrenches for setting large teeth.

jtk

[seth lowden]

It seems to me there must be a way to configure an automatic center punch to use as a small saw set. I have not looked into it or thought it through. I also was thinking about some type of slap hammer arrangement, which I will ponder a bit more.

[David Weaver]

You could just buy a foley tooth setter for a lot cheaper. Nobody wants them, apparently, as they're on CL here several times a year with no wear on them.

Someone last year sold a new retoother, carrier bars, filer, setter and a bunch of circular saw sharpening gear for $150. It was about an hour and a half from me, otherwise I would've gone to look just to get the toother, but I really had no need for a toother and don't want to get into making saws or refurbishing saws when I don't really need more of them to begin with.

I'd think that either using a pistol grip set or hammer setting the teeth is probably the way to go, as george mentioned you could do it quickly if you did it maybe a few hundred or thousand times.

It's nice to develop skills and alternate ways to do things, but I doubt anyone is going to do anything better functionally than a 42x (you can always alter the anvil if you don't like how it's working).

[Chris Griggs]

I have an old brass eclipse 77set ive been using. It works well up to about 10 to 12 ppi. Above 10 it starts to get finiky. I could file down the pin/hammer but will probably just grab a fine somax for my back saws. The hammer setting thing still intrigues me, but will definitely need to learn more about it before I actually make an attempt at hammer setting

[Bill Haumann]

[QUOTE=Chris I heard that Mark Harrellsets with a hammer because the set is more consistent. I've been interested in trying it but haven't determined what hammer and other equipment would be needed.

[Noah Wagener]

i recall seeing a video of a guy who used what looked like a nail set and just a flat board underneath that wass left with little indentations of the teeth. Real, real fast. ten seconds a side.

[Chris Griggs]

Wow,this thread is a blast from the past. I totally forgot about my curiosity about this. I just use an old eclipse for my large toothed saws and the blue somax set for my small toothed saws. I don't love the somax for my smaller toothed saw just because its very easy to overset the teeth even at the lightest setting. Noah, I recall that advice about the nail too, maybe I should give this a whirl next time I need to set a saw...worst scenario I waste a little time.

[Noah Wagener]

it wasnt an actual a nail but the thing you use to set a nail below the surface so you can puddy the hole.

[Chris Griggs]

it wasnt an actual a nail but the thing you use to set a nail below the surface so you can puddy the hole.

I've heard of people doing it with a nail too that been slightly blunted, or pretty much anything that has a small tip and can be hit with a hammer. I've never tried it with anything, but I have not doubt that a small nail set could surely be effective.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I think I also read the Mark Harrell (Badaxe) is doing this

I own one of these:

http://www.badaxetoolworks.com/10-in...-back-saw.html

It says:

The .015 or .018-gauge thin plates with its hammer-set toothline

I could provide a few more links from his site, but I expect that he hammer-sets his saws.

[Chris Fournier]

I think that David said it best.

Why would you want to hammer set teeth when you can set teeth with a tool that makes the outcome predictable?

Honestly, it seems that folks are sharpening saws left right and centre. Folks are over thinking this. If you take your saw and hold it vertically in your palm and it "sticks" its sharp enough to woodwork.

Shamefully I drove my panel saw into metal, 1/16" deep cut and it will still tear through wood effficiently. Sharpening is a process that allows you to work with wood, it shouldn't be a Holy Grail like pursuit.

[Chris Griggs]

Honestly, it seems that folks are sharpening saws left right and centre. Folks are over thinking this. If you take your saw and hold it vertically in your palm and it "sticks" its sharp enough to woodwork.

Yeah, I don't really disagree. I posted this thread a couple years ago mainly out of curiosity, to find out if hammer setting teeth was somehow, easier, faster, potentially preferable in some way. There's a chance I might try it at some point out curiosity, but if I do it will be one of those things that happens to keep me entertained between projects.

I do think some of the more esoteric, complex or really precise sounding saw sharpening stuff you see (e.g. sloped gullets, 18.267777777 degrees of fleam, rake that modulates 0.035 degrees per tooth, and precisely 0.125" of set, etc....) is to a large part marketing. My guess is that the reason guys like Harrel's and Weir's saw cut better than the average Joe's has less to do with esoteric setting/filing and more to do with the fact they they have sharpened a heck of a lot of saws, do it on a daily basis, and thus have exceptional, consistency, mastery and proficiency of the basics. Those others things perhaps make some difference but I'd venture to guess that if I asked one of those guys to sharpen an xcut saw with a standard 15/20 filing and set the teeth with a Somax it would still cut smoother, nicer, perhaps a bit faster then if the average Joe were to do the same.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Surly it matters little how the teeth get to where you want them, and since I expect that the teeth are likely knocked out and then coerced back if needed (filing, clamping with paper between the teeth and vice, etc...), that likely matters little providing you are close. How well it is done will affect the cut quality I suspect. I would guess that choosing to do a hammer set is probably more about speed than about better or worse. Most hand cut dovetail videos I see shows meticulous marking of the first cut. I forget who it was (Mr. Klaus perhaps) that I first perform the first cuts (on the tails I think) without measuring or marking. He simply made the cuts. I expect that the primary advantage there is speed as well.

Choices made while filing can affect how the saw starts, how quickly it cuts, etc. My Lie Nielsen saw is high aggressive and far more difficult to start than my Bad Axe saw. After using my Bad Axe saws to make a bunch of cuts, when I grabbed my LN saw and tried to start it in the same way, it jumped, landed on my finger nail. Sure, I can start it, but I need to be more careful with it. My point is not that one is better than the other, it is that they behave differently. Although I do not expect a fraction of a degree it to make much difference, I do expect that if the set is not consistent, the saw may not track well.

Certainly experience says a lot about it. If I sharpen a saw and it does not track perfectly, I am uncertain if it is me or the saw. If Mark Harrell sharpens a saw and says it is ready to go and good, if it does not track, I am pretty sure it is me. I was with Ron Herman while he was sharpening a saw. He made a test cut to see if it tracked well. He looked at the cut and said that it looked like one tooth was out. He was able to guess approximately what tooth based on where he saw the difference in the cut (as in where it occurred during his stroke). That ability only comes with a massive amount of experience, which is another way of saying that it is beyond my abilities.

[David Weaver]

Presume the one tooth out was based on the saw snagging in the cut and either leaving a mark or blowing out the back side of the cut?

I agree with (chris's)^2 comments, a lot more is made of sharpening than there is to it. And a lot of the trouble of things like strongly sloped gullets, etc, is demonstration material. You can sharpen a saw with flat gullets and never be lacking for speed.

Ultimately, sharpen your own saws, don't worry so much about perfection, just try to get a sharp tooth that is the same height as other teeth, and do whatever is quick to keep saws sharp. I sharpen a rip saw once per project. One pass with a file. Only when there is a problem do I bust out the file to joint the teeth, the honest truth is most of us will never use our saws enough so that we have to joint much if we stick to a routine and keep the teeth even.

Fanatical things like "must joint every time", etc, and showing saws that have huge frowns from dozens or hundreds of filings as proof that we must do it just don't match up with real world experience. However, if you're sharpening saws professionally, you almost have to joint them like that to keep up with the joneses, lest someone finds out a $30 or 40 sharpening job wasn't jointed.

[Chris Griggs]

I had an interesting conversation a while back with a professional saw restorer (who I won't name) about complex angles and slope. He pointed out to me that the restored saws that sell the best on ebay (not his but others) are ones that have a lot of slope and 30 or more degree of fleam. The teeth look very impressive and very sharp in ebay photos. He didn't sharpen his saws that way, as his feeling (which I agree with) was that said saws would cut really nicely for handful of cuts but get dull and punk out obscenely quickly.

I asked him about a bunch of different ways he filed saws and he pretty much said that he filed the majority his xcuts with 15 rake/20 fleam and all his rips with no fleam/slope and pretty standard rake angles. Basically, he had tried the fancier stuff and always gone back to the old standbys, and eventually concluded that there was a good reason why those became the old standbys.

(BTW, none of this is intended as a rip on Harrel, Weir, or any other saw filer [would love to have a saw from either one of them]. Their reputations proceed them and I have no bone to pick with them over their decisions to use more complex filing. But I did find it interesting to discuss and think about how much of saw filing esotera [a lot of which is seen on ebay] was about marketing and how much was about function.)