Saw toother

[harry strasil]

I went a different route for toothing saws, its a small hand operated machine that cuts a piece out like a regular toother.



It's rather smallish and cuts when you pull the lever and the cutter is moved by an eccentric that is rotated by the handle.



I used a lathe tool bit ground to 60° and it moves only a small amount, the table is milled so that it has an elevated edge to slide against to keep the edge straight, and there is a small adjustable indexing tooth to the right of the cutter that engages the teeth for spacing after the first few teeth are cut.



I file by hand using a Disston No. 3D saw vise.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

That is very cool Harry did you build the thing yourself?
I like the way you guide it.

[harry strasil]

Yes, it was a matter of necessity also, the only saw sharpener in this area died and his tools went to a step son who is only interested in sharpening circular saws. I would only let the saw sharpener tooth my saws anyway, after I used the first 2 he did, they would cut circles really well, I figured out what was wrong, his machine toothed and set the teeth at the same time and it put more set on one side than the other. I remedied that by my paper and vise squeezing thing, which I still do to keep the kerf narrow so there is almost no flop. Also he would not adjust his machine to file the angle I wanted as it wasn't in his operators manual, so I learned how to file my own out of necessity.

[harry strasil]

I had a revelation or an eye opening experience when you stated you used a threaded rod to set tooth spacing, so I am going to make several short rods so I can index the first few teeth, currently I am using short sections of salvaged teeth from several cut up saws to index with. Thank you for the idea, its so simple its complicated as usual. DUH

[harry strasil]

I am a self taught machinist or half-fast if you will and having no formal training I developed ways of doing things that are outside the box and strange to a good machinist. One of the hardest for people to understand is when they ask me how deep to cut threads, I tell them to divide 1 inch by the number of threads to get the spacing between threads and as you normally set the compound to 29° so you cut on one side and scrape the other, and threads being an equilateral triangle, the distance between is also the depth at 29°.

I also built a self centering steady rest that is accurate over its capacity of 5/16 to 5 inches. its just a prototype, but works well for what I designed it for, centering the end of a long shaft to drill a center hole.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

HA HA That's cool~!! 29° is close enough for Guv'mint work.

I remember learning to use thread wires and micrometer to calibrate my depth of cut to the Class thread pitch called for. It works easier than I'd have thought prior.

[george wilson]

Nice little device,Harry. A lot less complicated,and much more compact than many others.

[Dan Andrews]

Cliff and Harry, If I could just hang out with each of you guys for about a year I shure would learn a whole lot. Amazing.

[Denys Sushko]

What is your impressions from this machine with experience from 2009? I'm intended to make my own

[Tony Zaffuto]

Harry's machine and inventiveness, to me, seems simple great! Around 2010, I bought a complete Foley handsaw sharpening outfit, with full set of ratchet bars, etc. for around $400. I got more than $400 worth of fiddling around with it, BUT Harry's comments about the guy who did his sharpening, rings true to my own experience with the Foley-that being the saws seemed to "gain" a bit of curvature to the saw plate. I suppose I could have fiddled a few more months and worked through the issue, but my time was better spent doing other stuff.

So to answer your question, I think building a device similar to what Harry did may be just the ticket.

[Patrick Chase]

So to answer your question, I think building a device similar to what Harry did may be just the ticket.

From a practical perspective, yes.

From a "sheer impressiveness" perspective it's hard to beat Cliff's machine, though :-)

[Kees Heiden]

It is impressive! But also a bit ludicrous when you just want to make a few saws. Handfiling the teeth isn't that much work.

[george wilson]

What am I missing? Harrys little device is for punching teeth,not sharpening them. Am in too much of a hurry to read all of this as I'm cooking some lunch.

[Denys Sushko]

one for beginning in future who knows?

[Jim Davis]

It is impressive! But also a bit ludicrous when you just want to make a few saws. Handfiling the teeth isn't that much work.

But annoying having to remove all that metal with files, especially since good saw files are hard to find or afford these days.