Heath Robinson
Established Member
Hi all.
I've had a set of Z saw blades and a handle for a while now, so I thought I'd give them a little write up.
I got them from the confusing and badly arranged woodworkprojects.co.uk (no affiliation), and ordered crosscut, and rip blades, a Huntley oak blade, and a "magnificent puff" handle. He did me a bit of a deal, as I was essentially buying the "woodworker" package with a different handle and the oak blade instead of a traditional jap general purpose blade.
Firstly, the puffer handle is a brilliant little idea. It has a piston in the hollow of the handle, that trundles up and down as you cut. There's a little hole at the blade end of the handle, through which the piston puffs air, clearing the sawdust off your cut line. It's simple, it works well, and it makes it a nicer tool to use.
The crosscut blade has a curve to the line of the teeth, which seems like a sensible plan, and it seems fast and easy to use. It gives a nice clean cut.
The rip blade has cunningly graduated teeth, fine up near the handle to gurt big gnashing things down at the tip, which makes starting off easy, and cuts really fast once you get into the bigger teeth. Again, a good finish to the cut, and a satisfying thing to use.
Now to the star of the show, the Huntley oak blade. Named after it's designer, it's specifically built to handle hard European hardwoods, which traditionally are a bit much for jap blades, and have been known to cause them to shed teeth and go blunt frustratingly fast (10 mins of Wenge and 20mins of rock-like oak ruined my first jap saw).
I have to say, it yields astounding results. The finish through the oak and elm that I was cutting over the last few days was flawless, as if it had just had a freshly sharpened plane run over it. You could see down the capillaries, it was as it if it was an illustration from a biology book!
I've had all this for about a year now, and within that time it's had a fair few months of hard use (I don't get to do much woodwork over the summer months due to other commitments), and it's all still like new! There's no appreciable blunting, and everything looks, feels and works as it did the day I got it.
In general, I like old tools, but I have to say that saws are the exception, and these doubly so. Obviously this is all just my opinion, but I definitely do better, more accurate work when wielding these as opposed to my other saws.
That's me lot, cheers,
Jake
I've had a set of Z saw blades and a handle for a while now, so I thought I'd give them a little write up.
I got them from the confusing and badly arranged woodworkprojects.co.uk (no affiliation), and ordered crosscut, and rip blades, a Huntley oak blade, and a "magnificent puff" handle. He did me a bit of a deal, as I was essentially buying the "woodworker" package with a different handle and the oak blade instead of a traditional jap general purpose blade.
Firstly, the puffer handle is a brilliant little idea. It has a piston in the hollow of the handle, that trundles up and down as you cut. There's a little hole at the blade end of the handle, through which the piston puffs air, clearing the sawdust off your cut line. It's simple, it works well, and it makes it a nicer tool to use.
The crosscut blade has a curve to the line of the teeth, which seems like a sensible plan, and it seems fast and easy to use. It gives a nice clean cut.
The rip blade has cunningly graduated teeth, fine up near the handle to gurt big gnashing things down at the tip, which makes starting off easy, and cuts really fast once you get into the bigger teeth. Again, a good finish to the cut, and a satisfying thing to use.
Now to the star of the show, the Huntley oak blade. Named after it's designer, it's specifically built to handle hard European hardwoods, which traditionally are a bit much for jap blades, and have been known to cause them to shed teeth and go blunt frustratingly fast (10 mins of Wenge and 20mins of rock-like oak ruined my first jap saw).
I have to say, it yields astounding results. The finish through the oak and elm that I was cutting over the last few days was flawless, as if it had just had a freshly sharpened plane run over it. You could see down the capillaries, it was as it if it was an illustration from a biology book!
I've had all this for about a year now, and within that time it's had a fair few months of hard use (I don't get to do much woodwork over the summer months due to other commitments), and it's all still like new! There's no appreciable blunting, and everything looks, feels and works as it did the day I got it.
In general, I like old tools, but I have to say that saws are the exception, and these doubly so. Obviously this is all just my opinion, but I definitely do better, more accurate work when wielding these as opposed to my other saws.
That's me lot, cheers,
Jake
