Saw Till

Re: Saw Till

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>The last saw on the right, with the cranked handle, looks like it might be used for cutting plugs flush, and appears to have a reversible blade. Shouldn't the brass nut be on the top side instead of on the bottom side?

You Are Correct, As Usual, Sir William

Bob Hutchins in central Texas

>This is actually the poorest saw in the till and the one I use to make quick and dirty cuts on all kinds of stuff. I rarely use it for flush cutting and must have stuck the bolt thru the wrong way the last time I used it. I'll fix that.

Thanks,

BobH

Re: You Are Correct, As Usual, Sir William

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>I found one that was in really bad shape down at the Schooner Project this spring, ignored, rusted, abandoned, unrecognized, unappreciated. When plugging planks, instead of doing it the right way, I think they had been using a belt sander :^( After I restored the saw, sharpened it, and built a sheath to protect the teeth, it is now respected. We put a lot of bungs in a lot of decking and trimmed them all flush using that saw (and a lowly Stanley 60 1/2 block plane).

When a properly tuned tool is applied to the application it was designed for, it can change a task from drudgery to almost joy.

HIJACK: Deck Bungs?

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, Florida

>What are the holes for in the decking? Screw holes?

Don - whose childhood boats tended to the fibreglas and aluminium.

Re: HIJACK: Deck Bungs?

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>The deck of the Meerwald is 12/4 Atlantic white cedar, nailed to the 12x12 longleaf pine deck beams with deck nails. These are, to the best of my recollection, cast iron or steel, about 3 or 4 inches long, with 3/8" square shanks, set in countersunk holes in the decking. After they are driven in, the countersink is filled with a cedar or pine plug, glued in with epoxy, and then trimmed flush with the referenced backsaw and planes. The original plugs were about 1" diameter, but getting the old plugs and nails out to replace the deck beams messed up the holes in the decking in many places, so some of the new plugs are noticeable larger. The resulting pattern of plugs not pretty, but it's a historical reconstruction of a working boat.

Countersink?

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>How do you keep a bung in a countersink? Did you mean counterbore?

Re: Countersink?

Bob Hackett

>Go deep enough with a countersink and you get a counterbore with a non-flat bottom,leaving room for the screw or nailhead.If you think about it,the tapershank bits used for screwing things down have an adjustable counterbore that looks just like a countersink on the cutting edge.

MB

Re: Countersink?

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>You are right. I misspoke. We usually drill the counterbores with a Forstner bit, but there are a couple of ship's augers hanging on the walls, if we needed to do it the old fashioned way. I'll try to get a couple of photos of the nails, bungs, hammers and drift pins we use, but the schooner is up in New London, CT this week, so I can't get you a photo of the deck until next month.