Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Last week, we talked about handsaws. If anyone want to continue on that subject, here are some photos.

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Whew! We had a very active chat tonight. I guess everyone was snowed in! It's stopped here, now. Nice layer of ice under about three inches of new snow since this afternoon. We only discussed saw handles briefly. Also chisels, shooting boards, sources for MF cap irons, cheek and shoulder planes, guitars and myriad other subjects. You gotta read and type quick to keep up. Must have been 30 or 40 participants, at least, including Ellis W., and regulars like Stephen, Joel, Doug, Sam, Dan, Dustmaker, and many more.

Back to the saw handle photos in the previous post, for which I didn't have time to write explanations before the chat.

So you don't have to flip back and forth between posts, here they are again.

In the first photo, I'm milling the slot for the back into a mahogany handle. I'm using a solid carbide round file in the DP and feeding the handle into the mill using a sliding cross vise. The DP was running at 1630 RPM (Doug wanted to know), which was a bit too fast. I was taking it down about 3/16" per pass. I was getting some smoke, especially if I either slowed down or didn't periodically back the tool off. I bought a few of these files to use for burnishers (Hmmm...Where did I put the picture of one of those?), since they were about $3 each and the teeth make a really good bond with epoxy. I decided at least one of them should be used for something like its intended purpose. There's no reason you couldn't make this slot with hand tools.

First row, left side is a prototype European beech handle blank from Doug Evans R&D department. Unlike the yuppie backsaw handles, this one is generously proportioned. I've been making some refinements to Doug's, including adding a radius to the top and bottom surfaces. This subtlety is more obvious in the straight-on shot, second row right side. Also, with rasp, files, scraper and sandpaper, I smoothed the arises. I also got rid of the silly small diameter hole that modern backsaw manufacturers think they are supposed to use to torture the side of your index finger, and reshaped it to a reasonable, comfortable, rounded radius, in the manner of classic Disston saws. [Tongue-in-Cheek, Doug.] If it's good enough for Andy Sirotich and Pete Taran and Thomas Lie-Nielsen, shouldn't we all be happy with the classic design? Here's an old photo with an old apple-handled Disston, for comparison to a typical high-end DT saw.

It was dumb of me to not take any "before" pictures, especially since Shepherd Tool has access to PDQ CNC machines, and can knock out a new prototype with a change in geometry whenever they want to try something new, and obliterate an old design with a single strike of the Delete key. It's a great starting point, especially when you can adjust the angle between the grip and the brass back to your own preferences, like I'm doing.

Back to the second gathering of photos:

First row, right side shows the tools I use to punch holes in saw steel for split nuts. We discussed that method, which Todd taught me, a while back on this forum. Nothing could be simpler. Same beech handle is shown it that photo.

Second row, left side shows radiusing the mahogany handle with the spinning, shreiking, forked-tailed apprentice. I use two different round over bits, a 3/4" radius for the top, bottom and front surfaces, 1/2" radius for the back, inside of the grip, and index finger rest. Most people don't bother to round over the top and bottom, but I think it adds a touch of class. The remainder of the shaping, smoothing, and carving of artistic details will be done by hand tools. I have some totally useless scrollwork planned for the bottom of the guard in front of the grip. This is an unusual piece of ribbon stripe mahogany, with a distinctive curve to the growth rings. The arch worked into the shape of the handle, hopefully to significantly increase its strength.

Second row right side shows this handle again, also Doug's beech handle, and two previous prototypes I made out of mahogany. They weren't bad enough to be relegated to the BTU bin, but they weren't good enough for backsaws either, so they've been demoted to the garden shed, where one is a bulb planter or dibble, the other an asparagus cutter. The beech one is a prototype, too, so we won't worry about its less than optimum short grain situation.

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

TiO

>Rats! Looks like I bailed out too early on last night's session.

Nice looking handles. Can you reference back to Todd's information on punching holes instead of drilling them?

Thanks

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

Jack from Maine

>I bet that whoever designed the style with the useless finger rest didn't cut alot of wood with it(should be required for new tool testing). It's easy to see why it was done that way. It looks nicer that way. Which would be great if the intended use was as a wall decoration. Thanks for the info William. I plan on printing it out as a reference for building my own.All of your tool making posts are very much appreciated.---Jack

Wow...

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>Now I'm embarassed about the retrofit backsaw handle I posted...

The damned bar is too high.

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Todd's post was on Badger Pond. Even prior to that expos�, my guess is that you could find info in the OldTools Archives.

Here's my more complete explanation on this forum: Re: Putting holes in saw steel. It works for bandsaw blades used for bowsaws, too. Search the WC Hand Tool Forum for ALL the following words: "saw pin punch"

Re: Tuesday Night Hand Tool Chat

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>We've speculated on this issue. Figure the stylistic element was scaled down from a larger saw, where the notch was functional, and a lot of people don't notice, because they just point their index finger straight forward on a light weight backsaw.

Re: Wow...

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I don't know. I didn't see anything wrong with yours. Nothing at all! Forget the bells and whistles. Does it fit your hand? Is your wrist aligned comfortably when you are sawing? Does it hold the blade tight? Everything else is just eye candy.

Punching holes in steel

Mike DeHart, South Jersey

>Actually, Sir William, it was neither from Todd nor BPNH where you learned this trick. It was in my basement.

It works like a punch press but with tools that anyone has on hand or can make. The saw steel does punch rather cleanly due to its brittleness but the method works for softer sheet as well, including brass and alooneyum. The two key things for punching clean holes are to have sharp edges on the face of the punch and to back up your workpiece with the end grain of any hard but even grained wood. Hard maple is great. Harder woods make cleaner holes, but softer woods also work. I have punched steel using buttonwood as a backer. If you have the wherewithall to do it, a slight modification to the punch makes the process much more accurate. Grind the face of the punch so that it has a small point protruding from the very center. This can be done in a lathe or maybe a drill press with the aid of a dremel. This will allow you to lay out exactly where you want the holes, mark the spots lightly with a center punch, and find the marks with the point on the punch face. Cleaning up the resulting burrs can be done by planishing (lightly tapping with a flat faced hammer against an anvil) and filing or stoning. Use a fairly big hammer and hit it like you mean it. If you don't punch through clean you could cause all kinds of nasty deformation. The slug will be left in a hole in the backing block. Use a new place on the backer for each hole. Be sure to discard the used backer so you don't mistakenly run the slugs through your cutting tools later.

md, a South Jersey metalhead.

Re: Punching holes in steel

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Well, I don't have the archive, since it's Wintel only, so I can't look up any historical posts. It may well have been in your shop I first experienced the revelation. It may as easily have been in my shop, some time while you were here. Whichever place it was, one of us probably had about the right number of beers to know to stay away from the lathes and other power tools, but not remember where he was :^) I know that the first time I remember trying it, I was totally amazed with how easy it was, and how clean the hole came out. I like your idea of turning a center point on the punch. That may be very useful when trying to align the holes in the steel to predrilled saw nut holes in the handle, unless you can suggest a better way.

Transfer punch

Bob Hackett

>Instead of going to all the trouble of modifying a perfectly good pin punch,just use a transfer punch of the correct size.These punches are used to transfer the center of a thru hole onto a mating surface,some folks mistakenly call them center punches.You can get them singly or in sets from any supplier,even Horrible Freight.

Mainely,Bob

Re: Transfer punch

Mike DeHart, South Jersey

>Transfer punches are very much like what I described. However, the transfer punches I have seen had a center point that is much larger than what I had in mind and they did not have the sharp face edges needed for shearing through the sheet stock. A better example would be the punch used in a Roper-Whitney hand punch. The center is just big enough to feel the center mark in the sheet without being so big that it could cause distortion of the sheet before the sharp face could pierce through cleanly. If you can make a simple guide block with the hole pattern you need, you can use a flat faced pin punch through the guide holes and not worry at all about centering or alignment.