I have an old Disston that the teeth were horrendous... (attached) Over the past 9 months or so I have collected quite a few old handsaws, and have had quite a bit of luck with sharpening... no problems filing both crosscut and rip saws and getting them to work well... However, this one I spent a few hours on last night and it's better, but still pretty bad... I had a very difficult time getting the depth of the teeth to be even, and the final result last night was much better than the starting photo, but the teeth are uneven height...

Question is if reshaping a crosscut saw, is it better to just file the teeth to shape *first* with no fleam, and then go back and lightly file in the fleem...? That's what I was going to try tonight, but thought I would ask here first... I was having all kinds of issues trying to file in the fleem and rake at the same time, getting gullets that were uneven and keeping the tooth size even... I don't think that I have to take off all of the teeth and start from scratch, but trying to sharpen it like some of the other crosscut saws that had nicely shaped teeth didn't go so well...

Also, when reshaping using a new file, is it normal to dull one edge on the first overall pass...? I seem to notice on these old saws that I'm restoring that getting the file to "bite" is very difficult on the first pass... kind of like the steel is harder until the file takes the tooth down... that has happened on most of the saws I have restored... on subsequent sharpenings, it is very easy to take light passes to sharpen the teeth... just wondering if that is normal...

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