I Can Afford Only One Saw Right Now—So Which One Should I Buy, and What the Heck Is Your Hybrid-Cut
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“I Can Afford Only One Saw Right Now—So Which One Should I Buy, and What the Heck is Your Hybrid-Cut all About?” (How Bad Axe Tool Works Creates and Sharpens a Toothline) t’s early Thursday afternoon, and your PowerPoint presentation for the three o’clock meeting is done as it’s ever going to be. You’re surfing the web on your lunch break, sick of the virtual reality grind of Iyour job, and frustrated by those who answer to you or to whom you answer, because these people—coworkers and clients alike—do not share your ethos that excellence is simply not an option. Everywhere, it seems, people beg the question: “Who is John Galt?” They don’t actually say it, because they have no clue to begin with. They just live the question, day in, day out. You glance at your computer again, and shift your keyboard in place with renewed energy as you type out the URL for the website you want to visit. And you think about the project awaiting you for the weekend. You ‘ve been taking your frustrations out on the 4/4 quartersawn cherry and walnut and white oak you have carefully stockpiled at home in the basement workshop you’ve cobbled together over the past several months while developing a pronounced hand tool problem. And your lovely wife—commonly referred to as SWMBO (She Who Must be Obeyed) in Old Tool Galoot parlance—has confronted you about the amount of tools you’ve been snapping up on eBay with money you should have set aside to purchase the next iKea chest of drawers for your five-year-old. You sigh, wipe the corners of your mouth from the chicken alfredo she packed away in your lunch, and glance compulsively at your computer screen. You want a saw. eBay beckons. Then you realize that you would far rather buy a great—not just good, but a GREAT—hand or backsaw to slide into your arsenal unbeknownst to SWMBO’s all-knowing gaze. And you dream of cutting pristine hardwood in the quiet of your home, along with a sip or two from a fine merlot or microbrew of your choice while listening to YOUR music on YOUR iPod. Your cursor eventually rolls over a link to my site, and here you are. Welcome to the dark world of Bad Axe, and the various saws I offer. Be warned—some of them are known as my Darth Vader saws, tricked out in gunsmith-blued metal, walnut, and premium Swedish spring steel. Who’s the man behind the curtain? You’ll find me not behind a curtain, but in an alleyway in the old part of town next to the bus stop. I’m the guy with saws clanking inside my trench coat. I only sell the best, and you won’t be disappointed. My website is maintained by a Swedish computer hacker chick in her late twenties, a skinny little pierced & tatooed Goth, the best in her class. And it is through this dark portal I offer you my saws. But first we have to understand what it is that makes a Bad Axe a GREAT saw, and it can’t just be phony marketing hype. There is hard sharpening theory that goes into the toothline of any well-tuned saw that you will reach for time and again. o it goes like this: Many of my clients new to the hand tool world often ask which saw they should purchase first, given budget constraints. I always respond by asking them to tell me about the kind S of projects they want to make, and the choice of wood species they intend to use. This is important feedback, where quantity of detail counts. Once I figure out what it is they’re trying to do with associated typical cut dimensions, I can then recommend a saw size with commensurate pitch and filing pattern most suited for their needs. So here’s where it all starts—let’s get some definitions going and then we’ll discuss some scenarios I hope you’ll find useful prior to clicking through a deposit for one of my saws. First of all, let’s review some common saw filing terminology for reference: • Three angles apply—rake, fleam, and gullet: Sharpening a toothline requires consistently filing three angles on every tooth with each stroke, because they are all interrelated with pitch and set to maximize efficiencies for the type of cut you want to make. One configuration, as you can imagine, will not apply for all species and cut dimensions. As a minimum, you need one configuration for hardwoods, and another for softwoods. And not all hardwoods are created equal, so these configurations might well adjust again if one chooses to work predominantly in hard maple or white oak, vice a softer hardwood, such as walnut. Therefore, it’s important to recognize that degree settings for rake, fleam and gullet all work together with pitch and how the teeth are set to cut effectively on softwoods, hardwoods, and really hard hardwoods. So let’s now examine these configuration concepts and ultimately how they apply to my methods of filing with an eye toward why a hybrid-cut may be desirable for your saw— particularly if you’re just starting to slide down that proverbial slippery slope of hand tool hell (or paradise, depending on whether SWMBO has blessed your endeavors). • Rake (the degree of lean back from the direction of cut). Rake, working in tandem with fleam , controls how aggressively the saw cuts. It’s important to recognize that degree settings for both rake and fleam are predicated by the typical species of wood and dimensions of cut one desires to work (and this is why I always ask my clients for that sort of feedback before building their saws). I file saws with a fairly aggressive rake for both hardwoods and softwoods, (more relaxed for the former and stiffer for the latter), and in both cases modulate that rake with the degree of fleam to reduce tearout opposite the cut. But if a client tells me he wants to rip through hickory, black locust, rock maple, or white oak (throw in another particularly hard wood), then I’ll relax the rake even more. Most rip saws, for instance, have a pretty aggressive rake of 0 to 6 degrees, which is great for ripping softwoods. A more forgiving rake of 6-9 degrees is more appropriate when ripping most hardwoods. Particularly tough hardwoods can mandate a rake of 10-12 degrees. But rake and fleam must work together; both angles determine how efficiently or how poorly the saw cuts in a given piece of wood, and that’s why it’s so important to know why you want a particular saw for a particular purpose—it’s no different than when selecting your array of bench and specialty planes. • Fleam (how the tooth is beveled): A crosscut filing on a toothline presents a series of knife edges to sever the wood fiber perpendicular to the direction of cut. The degree of fleam for a traditional crosscut filing runs 20-30 degrees. You’d think a more pronounced bevel presenting a thinner knife edge to the wood is desirable, but one must remember that saw steel is softer at Rockwell 50-52 compared to O-1 grade plane iron steel at Rockwell 60-62. I file my dedicated crosscut saws at 20 degrees, because anything beyond that is simply more apt to dull quicker regardless of wood species, and a 20 degree cut (or 17.5 for that matter) leaves a fantastic finish. If, however, a client tells me he wants a dedicated crosscut saw for softwoods, and that he wants the cleanest finish possible, then we’ll move up to 25 degrees. • Gullet (degree of downward slant when filing fleam). Combined with fleam, creating a slight 5- degree gullet lengthens the toothline, and creates a tad more room to discharge sawdust. I find that it speeds the cut and reduces tearout opposite the cut. I have also found that for particularly coarse toothlines, such as a 4-5 pitch thumbhole-grip ripper, that a 10-degree gullet make that sort of monster rip a little easier. • How does jointing come into play? Everything I’ve mentioned above is worthless unless the toothline has been properly jointed; that is to say each tooth has been filed to a consistently even height adjacent to its ranger buddy, and stays that way across the entire toothine. Why is that important? So every trooper on that firing line does his duty. Can’t let two or three of those guys do the work of a whole 11-man squad, can we? Everyone pulls his weight of the load. You can always tell when a saw has been properly jointed. It’s just glides through a cut with a long buzz commensurate to the length of your stroke, and you can feel that buzz tingle up your forearm and smell that white oak sawdust spilling copiously underneath the cut onto your workshop floor. It’s truly a rush the first time you experience it. hat’s the moment—that epiphany —that seminal moment, when one jumps headlong down the slippery slope of saw abuse. Be warned. Better read Tom Price’s ‘ Daddy Has a TSaw Problem ,’ and get ready for the ride. Set up a new checking or PayPal account SWMBO knows nothing about. Make sure I know your work address before shipping your new saw, so you can sneak your Bad Axe home late at night while your household slumbers unaware of your sin.