Model dovetail saw handle

[Kees Heiden]

Bending 1/8" steel is not easy! I did it with 1/8" brass and had to use a hydraulic press at the end to really get the thing flat. Hammering flat ain't easy either. You quickly stretch the metal and create curves. But give it a try. I would choose some thinner material though.

[Jim Matthews]

It would seem the sort of thing a Dremel was built to handle.

Chuck the Dremel and carbide wheel so that it's fixed in place.
Using a "fence" for the steel blank so that it tracks straight, advance the steel to pass under
the turning wheel. The downside would be that sparks will fly and heat will be generated.

If your feedrate and chip size are right, the ejected chip will carry waste heat, and the steel will keep it's temper.
The machinist's page recommend cutting a series of parallel drill holes, then milling.

[Isaac Smith]

I have slotted brass on a drill press. The results were ok, and I may have been able to get better results if I had persisted. I don't know how well it would work with steel, though. I made an adjustable fence that had a hold down so that the spine could not move from side to side or up/down. Again, this was with brass, not steel, which I suspect would be a little more difficult to do. Cutting either material on anything other than a mill, I would be hesitant to use carbide cutters, since it needs a very rigid setup to keep it from shattering.

On the drill press, I didn't have any problems with kick back or catching, but I was not climb cutting, and would certainly never recommend doing it that way if you are feeding the stock by hand.

Nice handle, by the way. And great job on slotting the spine. That shows a lot of persistence and will to get it done. Bet you were happy to get to the bottom of that slot!

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Bending 1/8" steel is not easy! I did it with 1/8" brass and had to use a hydraulic press at the end to really get the thing flat. Hammering flat ain't easy either. You quickly stretch the metal and create curves. But give it a try. I would choose some thinner material though.

Did you anneal the brass when working, Kees? That can help things a lot. There's a reason George suggested it.

[george wilson]

3/32" metal would be fine,actually better for a saw this size. Yes,if you don't anneal the brass,it will most often crack open down the top of the saw back. We annealed ours twice as I think I mentioned. For the large tenon saws,we copied the Kenyons and used 3/16" brass. They were annealed 3 times.

[Kees Heiden]

No I didn't aneal, because I haven't the equipement to heat large parts like that. I got some fine surface cracks, nothing spectacular and easilly removed with sandpaper. I don't know if anealing normal steel would help much, because steel doesn't workharden much.

[george wilson]

Annealing steel will definitely help. We made some early style back saws in the toolmaking program,both with steel backs. the White pattern was one of them. We used "black iron",a low carbon steel that has a black,hot rolled surface on it. We annealed them.

[Kees Heiden]

Okay, I'll keep my mouth shut and will buy a larger burner for the next time.

[george wilson]

For many years I used simple means to heat things like plane blades. Saw backs could be heated the same way. 2 MAPP gas torches help. I arranged bricks on a table,laid flat. Behind them,I laid bricks upright to provide a vertical wall to help trap the heat. An object laid in the "corner" can be heated a lot more than one just on a flat surface with no wall behind it. You could certainly get most of a dovetail saw back red hot. Let it get red,then move it and heat the rest of it. Let it cool slowly.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Just an update with another model handle after feedback and after I have had a chance to play around with the first one a bit. I decided to try and salvage the blade and back I already made. I figure I could make a usable saw from these and have a saw I could use for a while to see how I like it.

This handle ended up being quite different but I still wanted to make one with a closed form. As before I have still left it rough while I'm playing around with changes.

Some things that changed.
1. Changed the hang angle. I made it a bit more relaxed in this handle but still not quite so much as seen on most dovetail saws.
2. Reduced the size of the cheeks to try and lighten the saw up without reducing the handle size.
3. Made the curve behind the saw back steeper and shorter.

Doing 1 and 2 above necessitated a pretty long lambs tongue, and it ended up being something more of a "Gene Simmons" tongue.
I have found it quite a bit more comfortable. On the previous handle, I really couldn't rest my index finger along the side of the handle/back. Instead, it would slip over the top of the back which kind of indicated to me that the hang angle was too steep.

Normally I wouldn't use Honduran Rosewood for a practice handle, but this was a piece that had a very different color on one side as compared to the other and I was finding it hard to keep details sharp on some softer woods that I was trying. I love the sharp edges that can be created with a wood like this and a sharp knife or chisel.

I know the hardware isn't as nice as some split nuts, but I just made these from some stock 1/4-24 stainless steel bolts/nuts. I just ground the head of a hex head bolt round, and slotted as narrow as I could with a ground down hack saw blade. I really like the appearance of a narrow slot on the screw heads.

Any feedback/critique is greatly appreciated.

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[Kees Heiden]

Well, you know, when you cut off the lambs tongue, you will have the perfect dovetailsaw....

Of course, in tools I like the traditional shapes. So I let others speak about the newer ones. You did a marvelous job on making the saw and I like these sawnuts too.

[Chris Griggs]

Yeah man. That is really nice. Marvelous saw. Really cool you made all your own parts. I think the saw nuts look quite nice.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Jeff

I like what you have done, but I am biased ... as you will discover.

I have just returned from the Perth LN Tool Event weekend, where I was demonstrating planemaking. I had a number of my tools there, including some of the backsaws I have built. I asked a number of visitors to compare the handles of two of my saws with the handles of the equivalent LN saws. What I was after was not which was "better", but in what way they were different.

The LN saws in question were a dovetail and a 14" tenon saw with a closed handle (as mine is a 14" carcase saw with a closed handle and LN only has a carcase saw with an open handle) ..





Here are my two saws. You will notice the similarity of yours ..





The main difference with the LN is the latter has a central "hump", while ours is more of a triangle. This is my understanding ...

Almost every person I asked said that the LN saws felt heavier. They could not put their finger on why - but a few got it, that is, that the thicker lower end of the handle effectively pushed the hand up into the underside of the horn. This takes the weight of the saw back, and adds more control. Hence the feeling that the saw was lighter and the LN heavier.

One person said that this was the same design intention behind the Colt Peacemaker revolver. I know nothing about guns and nothing about Colts, so others can comment here. It was explained to me that Samuel Colt designed the handle this way to relax the pressure on the trigger finger.

I know that the saw handle came in for some design criticism when I posted it here originally. I've been using these saws for ... what .. 12 or 18 months now (I can't recall), and they really feel more comfortable that the many other more traditional shapes I have.

Kees' comment "...in tools I like the traditional shapes. So I let others speak about the newer ones" is very helpful since it focuses attention on the fact that there are different school of thought. So, what other design ideas are there, and any comments ..?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Palmer]

Beautifully executed work. How do they perform in use?

[Jeff Wittrock]

Thanks all for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

Well, you know, when you cut off the lambs tongue, you will have the perfect dovetailsaw....

I know what you are saying. As I look at different handles (both closed and open) and try to pick out details that I like and discard ones that I don't there is always the danger that what I come up with is something of a mongrel that should never have been. I guess that's the nature of experimenting vs. reproduction and something I struggle with.

...The main difference with the LN is the latter has a central "hump", while ours is more of a triangle. This is my understanding ...

Almost every person I asked said that the LN saws felt heavier. They could not put their finger on why - but a few got it, that is, that the thicker lower end of the handle effectively pushed the hand up into the underside of the horn. This takes the weight of the saw back, and adds more control. Hence the feeling that the saw was lighter and the LN heavier.

One person said that this was the same design intention behind the Colt Peacemaker revolver. I know nothing about guns and nothing about Colts, so others can comment here. It was explained to me that Samuel Colt designed the handle this way to relax the pressure on the trigger finger....
Derek

Thanks for the observations Derek. This is something I had not really thought about. I wonder if it might also have something to do with how far down the handle is primarily contacting your hand as well. In other words, if you imagine the web of your hand and second finger being a fulcrum point and the farther down the handle the other contact point is, the lower pressure it would feel like it was delivering to your hand. The "hump" on the LN being closer to the fulcrum than the lower contact point as on the saw handles you have?
By the way, those are lovely saws you have made.

Thanks again to all for the comments.