Starting rips badly

[Hong Le]

hi, new to sawmill and a slow convert to neanderthal'ing.

I just restored a D-23 (5tpi rip) and i believe i sharped it well and set the teeth correctly.
For some reason the first few inches of all my rips always come out very messed up, I start the cut on a push on a saw bench with one knee on the piece. After those chips, the cut is very smooth. Did i not restore the saw correctly or is there something wrong with my technique?

[Carl Maeda-San Diego]

My guess is the technique.
When I first started using hand saws, I had a hard time sawing a straight line but I eventually "got it" by visualizing that the saw was against a wall and the saw was sliding against the wall. In other words, keeping the saw absolutely straight during the cut.
I think what's happening is that the saw is not straight throughout the cut so until the cut is established, the saw needs correction until you have a straight cut.
I also guide the initial cut with my thumb.
Hope this helps... it just takes some practice.

[Wilbur Pan]

Next time you make a cut, try to pay attention to see if you are forcing the saw through the cut. Forcing the saw to cut faster than it wants to often leads to the tearout that you are seeing.

[Robert Rozaieski]

I'm with Carl. Looks like you're not starting straight. Go slower your first few strokes and focus on keeping the saw straight and plumb until the kerf is established for a few inches, then pick up the speed. From your picture, it looks like the saw is tipping out of plumb and catching the sides of the kerf until the saw kerf gets established and helps to keep the saw moving consistently. Try to get your eye on the side you saw with (right eye for right handed sawyer) directly over top of the saw. This will help you to maintain plumb as you sight directly down the back of the saw, just like sighting a rifle. If you sight down the side of the saw, the tendency is to favor the cut to that side and usually results in an out of plumb cut to that side. You can check your sawn edge for square to see if this might be the culprit.

Remember too that a rip saw is a rough tool so cleanup of the edge with a plane after sawing is a given unless the edge will be hidden completely from view. A little roughness in the cut line shouldn't matter much and should easily plane out when you clean up the edge. Marking the cut line with a marking gauge instead of a pencil helps too by separating the fibers before the cut is made. This way the tearout is typically localized to the waste side of the cut line.

[harry strasil]

Are you strangling the saw handle. let the saw do the work, no need to force it.

[Alan Schwabacher]

Are you cutting with the teeth moving square to the board? It may help to lower the handle to make the saw approach the board at 45 degrees. This puts more of the blade in the kerf, letting it help guide the saw better. It also can help you to line the cut up along your mark. Of course this refers to the angle front to back -- sideways you want it square. Going for a long smooth motion helps too.

[Jeff Considine]

ymmv, but tips I've picked up at this, and other sites, are helping me build better technique - None of these are my ideas, all borrowed from guys here. I'm just here to testify that they work.

I've learned that:

Trying to speed up my saw strokes results in a much faster sawcut much further from where I wanted to be.

Forcing the cut requires me to put increasing grip on the tote, which requires me to force the cut more, which requires me to grip harder on the tote... which ultimately results in a much more difficult cut, much further from where I wanted to be.

Not lining up my shoulder and elbow so they can move in a straight line to the blade and the cut causes me to have to try to twist the blade to get back to the intended line, which results in a much more difficult cut, much further from where I wanted to be.

Not taking the longest possible stroke with the saw causes me to work that much harder, and only creates the illusion of speed... if I let the saw do the work (as Harry said), with as little pressure on the tote as possible I get the best result the fastest, and it's a heck of lot more fun.

Someone said (might have been here) that gripping the tote as if you were holding a baby bird will help - I keep trying to get that right- but not there yet.

I also make it a point to scribe every line I'm going to cut with a knife, and use a chisel to cut a small v groove in the line, highlighted with a pencil. Might be wasted effort, and I might get to the point where I don't need to do it every time, but for some reason it seems to help me, more so in cross cuts than rips, but it helps me ripping too. The line is generally a 'safe' distance from my finished dimension, so I have room to plane to the dimension, as Robert said.

Still, the worst day in the shoparage is still better than the best day at work...

Regards,

Jeff

[Pam Niedermayer]

Would also be a good idea to try ripping from the other end of the board, just in case it's the wood.

Pam

[Hong Le]

thanks guys, i think my problem was that I was starting the cut at too high of an angle.