spring steel

[David Weaver]

They can get a little bit better price, but unless they grind to size themselves, they are also buying precision ground stock. As rob lee would probably tell us, it's still expensive. It's just not a big enough market to warrant high volume low cost goods.

[george wilson]

I was also going to remind you(before we reached the word limit) that even if you sawed the planks out,it would be at the LEAST 1 year drying if they are 1" thick. I would also recommend SEVERAL MONTHS more drying time INSIDE a heated shop.

You could work at a job and make money to buy wood faster than you can hand saw up the logs. The whole idea is impractical. It is the sort of idea that young men get into their heads,and I was no exception,that is just much more trouble than it is worth.

[Noah Wagener]

i went ahead and made a maebiki with the 1/32" steel. difficult to start a kerf and it meandered to the right before i even had a chance to improperly set the teeth. The steel ( i hesitate to call it a saw) still has a kink to it. I tried boiling water and bending in both directions and pounding with a peen hammer to no avail. the steel buckles or pops into place in either direction. oh well. I think i need to start a new thread on riving logs.

David, are you talking about the maebiki being held by a woman? The info says it is a laminated blade. I thought a saw had to be steel throughout to be stiff enough. iron can be tempered and tensioned? A lot of the teeth on that saw have a second bevel so the point looks like it is at the 60 degrees of western saws. Is the back side of Japanese saw teeth steeper to get more teeth without sacrificing depth of gullett or is it to have a more acute tooth?

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

If I wanted to start my work with logs, and do the work on my own, I'd be riving them.

[george wilson]

The way to use THIN spring steel is to make a frame type saw with it. Look up George Wilson harpsichord. You will find video installments of the movie we made about harpsichord and violin making. In one of the videos you will see marcus and me using a frame type veneer saw to saw the veneer for the inside of the harpsichord(spinet) case. Your thin steel would be ideal for this application since it can be tensioned as tightly as needed to keep it straight and sawing accurately. You can use this type saw by yourself,though having a partner is better.

[David Weaver]

i went ahead and made a maebiki with the 1/32" steel. difficult to start a kerf and it meandered to the right before i even had a chance to improperly set the teeth. The steel ( i hesitate to call it a saw) still has a kink to it. I tried boiling water and bending in both directions and pounding with a peen hammer to no avail. the steel buckles or pops into place in either direction. oh well. I think i need to start a new thread on riving logs.

David, are you talking about the maebiki being held by a woman? The info says it is a laminated blade. I thought a saw had to be steel throughout to be stiff enough. iron can be tempered and tensioned? A lot of the teeth on that saw have a second bevel so the point looks like it is at the 60 degrees of western saws. Is the back side of Japanese saw teeth steeper to get more teeth without sacrificing depth of gullett or is it to have a more acute tooth?

I definitely don't know anything about maebiki construction. Maybe iron and steel are laminated together to make it tougher.

I've seen some with plain rip teeth and some with teeth like those in the picture. I'm not sure that second bevel isn't just the product of resharpening.

[Noah Wagener]

thanks again fellas. I already have a frame saw similar to the one you are using though the blade on mine is 2" where as yours looks a little wider. After seeing the pictures of the maebiki in us i really am interested in sawing horizontally so i can just crack into logs i find where they lie. I even tried using the frame saw blade in a bow saw but at 48" it was a little cumbersome.I initially tried the 1/32" maebiki on some 3/4 stock so my degradation of it may have been premature. The extreme width has no benenfits on such wood but i did try it on a log since and i am sold on the Japanes style saw. THose aggressive angles really bite in so you need no downward pressure whatsover. I even felt like i was lifting it off ever so much. You can use all your energy to yank it through whereas if you ,well me anyways, pushed that hard the saw would buckle. I dont think i could even push a saw at all with that negative rake.Man i wish i would have bought that maebiki David mentioned. I think it sold for 270 and i ended up paying 180 for my piece of spring steel and some junk files(80 dollars shipping!) I had made the attempt to make one of these saws because the only maebiki i had seen for sale was $1,000. Had no idea they showed up on e-bay. Someone else was selling an antique sawmill blade like you suggested George. It did not sell i believe. I wish i could find it again as i may proceed in my folly of making one of these saws. It was nine inches wide and looked pretty thick. The newer band blades appear to be only like an inch and a half.

Out of curiosity anyone know what the purpose of filing the tip of the front of the teeth recessed a little would be? Third picture: http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG7...-this-is-a-saw

thanks Noah

[David Weaver]

If someone is filing only the tip of a tooth back, it may be that they are just looking do get by with files that they have, or not file all of the metal present if they don't have to.

There are maebiki on ebay with some regularity, $270 seems a little high for what I've seen, but I could just be off because they are not always in a condition that could be used easily.

What thickness of spring steel did you end up getting? If you get to a point where you've made a saw that you can use with ease in cutting lumber, it'd be illuminating for everyone and definitely post worthy (plus you could probably make a rowing team after you've done a few boards).

It always appears slow and full of work when I see people demo-ing them, but demos aren't always (or aren't often at all) done with the speed or skill that a professional sawyer would have.

[Noah Wagener]

David,

I came across a small paragraph about the filing that makes me think it is intentional with some purpose pertaining to sawing. "THe special teeth give purchase so the blade can dig in better at the end of its glide, where the power of the user's pull plus the blade's own inertia is at its least. .... Odate mentioned that in woodworker's slang these teeth were sometimes called chon-gake." I don't really understand "purchase" in this usage and i think the "blade's own inertia" would be at its least at the start of the stroke. It would be zero anyways.

The steel i used is 1/32" as before i adequately researched the maebiki i came across a thread where someone said there saw left a 1/32" kerf. This made sense to me as i have read that pit saws are 1/16 and also that Japanese saws are thinner than western saws. I think it is interesting that the pit saw cuts on pull stroke but no one ever tried transferring this to other sawing applications. I think one of those box handles that the pitman uses would be good for sawing horizontally with a maebiki as well.

My trials certainly did not saw lumber with ease but were quicker and more pleasant than what i was used to (5 ppi panel saw and crosscut timber saw). I think it is always going to look slow. I remember reading a book i think called The Village Carpenter about a kid growing up at a mill where they pit sawed and remarked how painfully slow and tedious the sawing went. I imagine those maebikis cut about the same rate as a pit saw. Some guy did claim he cut 3/4" per stroke with his frame saw with a band saw blade on a maple log. That is 16 strokes a foot so that means a foot every what, 30 seconds? Seems unbelievable to me. Takes me about 30 minutes.

I would like to ask again if anyone knows where yu would take a piece of steel the size of a maebiki to be heat treated?

thanks