Rake and fleam guide

[jim_hanna]

Rake and Fleam guide

I’ve had a couple of my dad’s old saws in the garage for a long time and recently decided I’d like to try to sharpen and use them. I bought a few saw files from Axminster, got a cheap Eclipse 77 saw set and a test saw for my first experiments on ebay and built myself a saw vice.

Unfortunately I was already down this road before I read Alf’s very relevant note at:
http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/so-you-want-to-get-into-using-old-saws-t11720.html

I had read a lot of the saw sharpening stuff on the web and had made the rake guide blocks described by Pete Taran (http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html available at the wayback machine archive at web.archive.org).

Then I saw Bugbear’s rake angle control guide at
https://web.archive.org/web/20050406115524/http://www.geocities.com/plybench/shop_projects.html
which looked a lot easier to use on a cross cut saw.

I’ve made a couple of small changes. Instead of a wooden file collar I used a 12mm diameter depth stop as the collar on a 12mm dowel file handle (a 12mm drill depth stop would do as well). The fixing screw is standard M4 so I used a long bolt as the vertical indicator.
With a couple of nuts locked together half way up this and a wing nut below I can fix a horizontal fleam (bevel) guide.

Cost, a few pence. Veritas do a commercial file holder at £ 41 but I couldn’t justify spending that much.

The parts, just a drill stop to fit the dowel file handle.

Easy to use for both rake and fleam control.

Regards

Jim

 

[matthewwh]

Beautiful solution!

I tend to use a fingertip placed on either the side of the file (rip) or the top (crosscut) and pick an aiming point on the wall opposite to keep the fleam consistent. If your opposite wall isn't very far behind the bench this would be a better option, and probably easier to judge a few degrees of rake for smoother starting.