Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I have been wanting to try my hand at making a panel saw for some time. I know how much I like to look at build threads, so thought I would start posting pictures as I make some progress.
Please don't mistake this for a tutorial. I'm just showing how I stumble through things without much fore thought. Sometimes the way I do things works out and other times...
I fell in love with Mike Wenzloff's rendition of a Kenyon panel saw the first time I saw it, so decided to make something similar to these. I'm still not good at drawing a handle without something to start with, so thanks to "Two Guys in a Garage" for providing saw handle templates on their website. I started with their Seaton tool chest pattern.
I have already been working on this for the last couple of weekends, so I'll start posting what I have and add progress as I make some. You'll probably see that I jump around a lot without ever finishing anything in any kind of order. I just like to work that way. As I grow tired of doing something, I just move on to something else for awhile.
To start with, I bought some blue temper spring steel from amazon. The roll I bought was 0.032" x 6" x 50". I really wish I had gotten some 8" width instead as 6" is a bit narrow at the heal for a panel saw, but this roll was a good price and with 50" length, I will have enough left over for a sash saw I have been thinking of.
Straightening the roll was a bit of a pain. I wish I had read back though some old posts in the forum where George Wilson mentioned pouring boiling water on the plate to allow straightening. I did it the hard way by pulling the steel backwards across the rounded edge of my work counter. I was surprised at how straight I was able to get it this way, but it wasn't easy.
I just started marking out the pattern on the blue steel using a sharpie. I decided on a 24" length. I left the toe a bit deeper than typical. 0.032" is probably a bit floppy so thought I would leave the saw a bit deeper. I figured it would be easy to trim down later if I decided but much harder to add it back.
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