Saw sharpening services
- Thread starter Hornbeam
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Roxie
Established Member
Do it yourself, have a look at Paul Sellers. Having followed his video I made a half decent job of a couple of tenon saws including stripping all the "wonky" teeth on one of them.
John
John
To answer your actual question, Ian, I recently used Tewkesbury Saws. Email Dawn Hardy, [email protected] and was very satisfied with the four I had done. Their quote was:
"For a standard sharpen & set price will be £11.77 + Vat each, without seeing the blades any additional work will have to be quoted for. If you have 10 or more we can offer you less 20% off the price." Plus postage of course.
I had two rip, one tenon and one gentleman's saw done, down to 14 tpi. I am not sure if they do finer, but ask, and they only do rip cut, not flame.
I preferred to pay someone expert rather than acquire the equipment and the skills and spend the time to get a whole-decent job done!
"For a standard sharpen & set price will be £11.77 + Vat each, without seeing the blades any additional work will have to be quoted for. If you have 10 or more we can offer you less 20% off the price." Plus postage of course.
I had two rip, one tenon and one gentleman's saw done, down to 14 tpi. I am not sure if they do finer, but ask, and they only do rip cut, not flame.
I preferred to pay someone expert rather than acquire the equipment and the skills and spend the time to get a whole-decent job done!
I also use a head Lupe and also a sharpie to mark all of the teeth before I run the file over them each time.
Unless your cutting stuff at circa 1~2mm thick there is no need to go to 20tpi for a dovetail saw. 14tpi is more than sufficient and with a good sharpen and a proper set you won’t really be able to tell the difference in cut quality apart from getting the cut done faster. I’ve seen the hype about blow out being reduced for a higher Tpi, but from my own observation I find that the higher Tpi just reduces the amount of set you can create and this is in fact what reduces the blow out on the back of the cut. Simply by applying the right amount of set to a 14tpi you get the same result. The only observable slight difference is the striations in the cut the 14tpi being ever so slightly rougher.
If your struggling to sharpen a 20Tpi saw I’d strip off the teeth and Resharpen to a lower TPI
Unless your cutting stuff at circa 1~2mm thick there is no need to go to 20tpi for a dovetail saw. 14tpi is more than sufficient and with a good sharpen and a proper set you won’t really be able to tell the difference in cut quality apart from getting the cut done faster. I’ve seen the hype about blow out being reduced for a higher Tpi, but from my own observation I find that the higher Tpi just reduces the amount of set you can create and this is in fact what reduces the blow out on the back of the cut. Simply by applying the right amount of set to a 14tpi you get the same result. The only observable slight difference is the striations in the cut the 14tpi being ever so slightly rougher.
If your struggling to sharpen a 20Tpi saw I’d strip off the teeth and Resharpen to a lower TPI
I struggled along with one of those awkward magnifier visors for ages until someone on this site recommended getting a cheap pair of +3 reading spectacles. It has really improve my enjoyment of doing any close up work, including saw sharpening. I see now you can get +4 specs if you order online, mind you, even with that magnification I don't think doing a 20TPI saw would be much fun.
Re. using a saw sharpening service I am tempted to try one just so I have something to compare my own efforts to. Let us know how you get on!
Re. using a saw sharpening service I am tempted to try one just so I have something to compare my own efforts to. Let us know how you get on!
If you do want to get a saw sharpened I would send mine to Skelton Saws in Scarborough. I know he offers Saw sharpening when I spoke with him last year at one of the shows. His saws are both beautiful and extremely well sharpened / set.
https://www.skeltonsaws.co.uk
https://www.skeltonsaws.co.uk
Hornbeam
Established Member
Thanks for the comments. Sharpened the 20tpi saw at week end. There is room for improvement but much better than previous. Will probably do some more practice on a couple of older saws. Really liked the article by Blue Kingfisher on the spears and jackson saw refurb.
Ian
Ian
bugbear
Established Member
I have sharpened an 18 tpi DT saw, using needle files AND magnification. It was still very difficult. Down on this scale, a single vigorous file stroke can take you from not filed enough to "whoops".
You need to be very confident of your overall saw filing skills before attempting fine teeth (say 16 TPI or smaller)
It is quite common (although not applicable in this case) for "hybrid" woodworkers to only have small toothed saws,
since any "big" sawing is done with power tools. I don't know how they get their saws sharpened, since they
don't have the opportunity to practice on their coarser saws and build up.
BugBear
You need to be very confident of your overall saw filing skills before attempting fine teeth (say 16 TPI or smaller)
It is quite common (although not applicable in this case) for "hybrid" woodworkers to only have small toothed saws,
since any "big" sawing is done with power tools. I don't know how they get their saws sharpened, since they
don't have the opportunity to practice on their coarser saws and build up.
BugBear
Was going to recommend exactly that and for exactly the same reason. Inexpensive reading glasses proved a godsend for me, literally made a job that had become impossible doable again.nabs":22h6pe4o said:
Good question.bugbear":22h6pe4o said:
It's possible that some of them have better-than-average fine motor skills from previous interests. I'm like that since I started my 'practical handicrafts' journey as a miniaturist so small-scale filing is second nature (when I put my mind to it). Course I'm not getting any younger so those skills are only set to decline, along with my rapidly diminishing close-up vision!
