Alan DuBoff
>MikeW wrote:
"Once the flats are nearly gone and of pretty darn equal size, this indicates the teeth are of an even size. But only if a reasonalby consistent rake has been maintained. There's reasons that one would file a changing rake, but one should be aware that when doing so the teeth will be of different widths at the baseline and or the toothline will not be exactly and "perfectly" even. This in practice is a non-issue."

I can certainly use your terminology and haven't seen you add anything I don't agree with, just that I think of it differently.

One of the things I learned from Tom Law's video was to watch the tooth that I'm filing (i.e., the front edge tooth), and to watch it file cleanly and shore up against the file. But since I use a Foley, it's not perfect to set the rake as you probably know, so getting it close and shoring it up with the file to the proper rake angle seems to be about the best I can do in the situation. Maybe you have a trick for making the settings on the Foley more accurate. The Foley is more consistent for the amount of time for my purpose than shaping by hand, but I can do a pretty good job these days with shaping by hand. I don't recommend someone shape the teeth by hand the first time they sharpen, though, that takes some practice most certainly...

Cheers,
Alan

PS - For anyone following at home, don't ever use a saw file without a handle on it, ALWAYS make sure you put a handle on it.