Flea market round-ups May 11th & 19th.

Disston keystone crosscut saw around 1930s.

I am a simple individual, I did not learn anything through being taught, nor did I go to school for it. I do read the theory behind everything to gain a better knowledge base.

However, I truly believe that experience is the greatest teacher.

“Crosscut sawyering” is this area where I have struggled the most with. It was only until recently that I began to grasp what is efficient in this area.

Now, I do like chainsaws, I own three, but crosscut saws are cheaper and easier to store in my shed than a regular chainsaw. The saws can be hung on a simple peg board wall by their handles, it’s quite easy for me.

And so, with this background. I bought my seventh crosscut saw on Saturday of May 11th. I spent 20 dollars, and I talked to the gentleman who was also just annoyed at having to store these saws, and I was happy to take one off of his hands. He had another saw for sale, but this one had a disston logo on the medallion, and I felt like it would be nice to give this tool some time, love, and care.

Simmonds multi-kut and a sandvik file

I also bought some nice files from another guy after walking around. However, these files were NOS (new old stock), so they didn’t need any restoration, but I felt like they would be lovely in my hobby work. And they have been since, so that was a nice purchase.

Some weird second person handle added?

So, crosscut saws are categorized as one person & two person saws, although they don’t limit one or two people using either. Just that it’s function is different.

Some of these old saws have a “helper handle” which is a lathe turned knob that spins with a thread on the inside to tension to a pin, that goes through a hole that is on either end of the saw. So you can have a second person to pull with you. But this saw appeared to have had a handmade wrap around for a dowel handle on the end.

I promptly removed it.

Logo acid etching

Crosscut saws carry acid etching on the blades, and rust seems to cover over that, but if you are careful enough, you can see the old logo and get some good info out of the saw. Using a grill cleaning pumice stone, or a simple axe puck stone, works amazingly. But make sure you have a hose or watering can to wash the rust off.

After this, I made sure to fix the rakers, as this previous user wanted to make them function as a crosscut teeth and bent them in opposing directions like a regular saw, not ideal for efficient use in a log. But I fixed them by patiently filing them down with a large triangle file and then hammering them back into place

Somehow, these were bent to be used only as a crosscut.

This task took me an hour.

Back to proper form

A crosscut performs well with the teeth that cut as knives, scoring the wood fibers on a log, and then the rakers come and scoop out material like a chisel. Originally, log saws had just basic teeth for sawing like you could imagine if you didn’t have any familiarity with this tool. But these saws needed to be more efficient for cutting through logs for American lumber harvesting. And so the rakers were invented to speed up sawing time.

Proper raker form

I have the crosscut saw manual from a New York based saw company. They have an online store https://crosscutsaw.com/ and I’ve purchased some items from them, importantly, they sell maintenance tools used in sharpening. But before finding this store, I had purchased a set of old simmonds tools for this purpose

These tools are made to function with your files. You joint the teeth using this tool. It holds a file at °90 running along the side of the saw to make sure it’s a perfect right angle, and then when you are done with a couple passes, use these special plates lowered from the crosscut teeth to file the rakers so they don’t catch in the cut. Rakers that are too high basically stop the saw in a cut. It’s annoying and means you need to file them down some more.

I’m almost done explaining this.

When the rakers are filed and lowered. You take a special hammer called a swage, which is a large hammer that is tapered to a small point and that bends the raker to a curve like in the diagram. Sadly, I don’t have a swage hammer, so I use a large steel punch to push the rakers over to form, essentially a scoop. With this done, the saw is properly restored.

It was dark outside, sorry.

A proper saw, when used in greenwood logs. Pulls these noodles from cutting. These are the rakers working just right, and they are an indication of a well tuned saw. However, this log was dry rotted, so I couldn’t get good noodles from it.

My decision to explain all of this was because I had experienced a change in my hobby woodworking, that I am practically delighted to share with you, the reader.

Now, all this talk about saws, how they work, and restoring them. There was a reason for it…

I bought another crosscut saw.

Yes, I bought my 8th crosscut saw that next week, on May 19th. This month has been miserable and rainy. I have not been to the flea market since my last weekly writing.

Long view of the saw

So that’s why I felt like explaining everything at the beginning. It was long, yes. But I wanted to give you insight into my decision to buy another saw.

I’ll try to go through this one quickly.

Improved disston saw, "Toledo triumph"

I went to a Facebook group full of crosscut saw experts and asked if they were familiar with this pattern, and someone responded with the disston catalog and what this saw was trying to accomplish.

More logo

Thank you, dolly

I didn’t do much to it, and I’ve already detailed everything about the teeth and rakers, so I simply touched up the blade with my files. Unlike the mangled mess of the last saw, this one was maintained by an experienced person. They did everything to set the teeth right.

Clearly, this tool was cared for, which is nice to see.

I used my axe stones to take the rust off, there was also some dents in the saw, which would affect performance, but I wanted to take care of of the dirt and worry about the dents later.

Cleaned saw

Now, I wasn’t perfect. And I was about as thorough as I wanted to be. And it ran just fine through a cut.

I did make things difficult for myself when I didn’t take care of the dents in the saw. Because, as I pulled back on the other end. It got stuck….

I am the architect of my own failures, unfortunately. But I can come back to this through the week.

I have another disston saw that I’ve left “as is”. I purchased it years ago hoping to use it with a partner, either my dad or a good friend. But I knew I wasn’t skilled, and this saw was similar in that it had been perfectly maintained, and I knew I would mess it up with my lack of skill. So I left it and practiced my saw sharpening over the years.

Now I can come back to it, maybe this Saturday or over the weekend and I’ll have a lovely time with it. I wanted to explain my renewed passion for a certain part of my hobby and my rediscovering a lost art in saw sharpening and maintenance.

This type of thing is nice, and it gives me something to show off with my friends and my parents who think it’s interesting and kind of silly. But these saws are lovely to me, and they produce a song that you can hear when you run it through a log.

I’ll continue to visit the flea market when I can, and as of writing this, the forecast says next Sunday should be nice!

Thank you kindly for reading this, and have a nice weekend!