Free Shipping from Lee Valley-evil marketing

Re: Free Shipping from Lee Valley-evil marketing

John McGaw

Dunno' Given the price of product vs. price of shipping, I'd go for paying the shipping and having the product(s) be free...

Re: Free Shipping from Lee Valley-evil marketing

William Duffield

They sure picked out a gorgeous piece of bubinga to shape into your tote.

I have a Veritas tenon saw (cross cut) that I reach for for everything but dovetails. Im still using my L-N for that purpose, for two reasons. The obvious one is that it is sharpened rip . But the more important reason is the machined back.

The Veritas backsaws share a problem with all traditional saws with folded backs, and their modern aesthetic make it worse. For a joint which needs to be cut with precision and accurate with at least three degrees of freedom, the curved, rounded back is a disadvantage. It gives the optical illusion that the back is bent, and makes it more difficult to see in which directions you are actually steering the saw.

When I say "three degrees of freedom," that is only with respect to the saw's relation to the board, but doesn't include the saw's hang and its other relations to the sawyer's wrist, elbow, shoulder, stance, etc., which I find to be better managed by other senses.

All the arises on the back of the L-N (and other more expensive, or even "boutique") back saws are straight lines exactly parallel to the line of the teeth (at least that's the way they come from the maker) regardless of the interactions between the work light source and the sawyer's eyes.

Optical illusion alludes me

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

"The Veritas backsaws share a problem with all traditional saws with folded backs"

"optical illusion that the back is bent" Really?

I have not observed this issue. Maybe since I didn't know it existed it didn't become a problem in my work. But then I must cut dovetails incorrectly because I am not looking at the back of the saw when I cut. I'm looking at the teeth. I'm not going to be looking at the back of the saw to guess what the teeth are doing several inches away.

Re: Optical illusion alludes me

William Duffield

No, you are not doing it incorrectly. The illusion is not even obvious unless you are using a spot source as your dovetailing work light. With even illumination, the highlights down the back of the saw don't look like an aris, and you are forced to look at the teeth instead of the back for alignment. In my case, I've always had a spotlight and learned precision sawing of dovetails with the L-N Independence saw, so I got hooked on using the machined bevels on the brass back for alignment, and it is now difficult to stop looking at them. I think I am getting good enough at it now (and I have accepted the purely structural nature of non-Krenovian dovetails) that I don't need that crutch. But it is still distracting.