Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.
>Or, at least, who should be considered in the final round?
It seems like Yataiki should make the list, who else should be considered?
Thnx,
DC
Still waiting for his Imai sword steel chisels :-(
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Yataiki is no longer making saws, or so Kayoko says; but he is reputed to have made the absolute best saws, perhaps of all time. If you've got the money, go for it. I think it's still possible to purchase a tamahagane model for about $20,000, but don't know this.
Mitsukawa, his high end stuff from Iida-san, is probably also excellent. Send it to Mark Grable for metate and end up with an excellent saw for $500-600 total.
Pam
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>BTW, I use a Kaneharu rip dozuki that is just a bit more expensive than the Mitsukawa and works great. I suspect these two are more or less equivalent, especially after Mark's treatment.
Pam
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Paul M. in San Diego
>I've always considered Dozuki's to be disposable. I've gone through 3 already due to blade kinks, missing teeth, etc. These saws are just too fragile to last more than a few years.
The thought of paying hundreds of dollars for a disposable item makes me shudder. I've spent significant money on a large rip tatebiki because that is less fragile and resharpenable. I fully expect that saw to last my lifetime. But a dozuki? No way!
I was wondering..
Joe Piotrowski - Chicago Burb's
>what is the sweet spot in cost. considering I don't do but a few projects a year, where is the real value?
20 dollar saw? 40 dollar saws? 80, 100 etc.
I have 3 saws. the 40 dollar one is definitely better than the 20 dollar on I have. would I notice the difference if I jumped to a 80 dollar saw? is it even worth it to go beyond that if I don't know how to sharpen one?
Re: I was wondering..
thomd
>I have only one 500 dollar saw, and it's a log saw, so hard to compare. Otherwise my saws are all under 200 and mostly closer to 50. my experience is that the more you pay the better they are. fairly linear progresion. I think Pam made a good point recently when she was talking about how easy dovetails are. I would elaborate the point as being that most of what passes as hand made up here is actually machine made, so who cares about doing the big stuff by hand, while our joinery is all very short (the Pam point), so the sawing is not such a big deal. So if you are buying saws in the range where the teeth are adjusted for the type of cut and wood being cut (rip, hardwood or riff, softwood), then you are likely to get the best possible results, and have good feel in the saw. I don't think the saw will determine your results here, above 30 bucks. But you will notice differencecs in the saws for sure. If you want a wide saw to perfectly hold a line when ripping out stock that most probably cut on bandsaws, then a higher grade of saw will be required/beneficial.
It's like cars. Anything that moves will get you to the store. You can esily tell the difference between the higher end vehicles and the ones at the lower end. At some level the added features may be required, like in the Paris Dakar, or the autoban.
I have dozukis from 1970, or 1980, and they were cheap or moderate, they still cut fine today. If you are blowing out teeth, then the fault is most likely with the user. One thing to remember is that the Japanese sellect wood by it's perfection, not it's anomolies. That said, the only time I have broken teeth was when CCing the bottom of a door that turned out to have some of those huge staples in they used to hold it in a box. You can damage teeth on knots etc... but even there with care I have not broken any. Of course you can damge saws without breaking the teeth. I keep a variety of saws around. The lowest of the low is the LV plywood blade, and the various record pull saws they have been selling for rough work at prices like 10 bucks. I have plywood saws goint back nearly 30 years that are still useable, though the oldest is mostly dull. Then there are the cheaper replacement blade saws like those by Toshiro (pretty good saws) and some of the cheaper dozukis that various people sell. Then I have a few good saws, etc... I use these in a higherarchy of need. So I would never blow a .014 dozuki cross cutting scrap painted 2x4, and I would need instructions on how to break them in clean wood.
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>If you buy a good, non-disposable dozuki, it should last a long time. I've never blown one out, even the replaceable blade versions, they all still work.
I blew out the teeth on two ryoba, trying to resaw too quickly and too deep, one was hand made, one a mixture of hand and machine. In both cases, I think it was my method that sucked, not the saws, proven by replacing both saws which have now lasted several years.
Pam
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Dave Burnard
>There are several makers of nice dozuki out there, but that isn't what you asked. ;)
You said "absolute best" - so that makes it easy. Yataiki and before that Yataiki's father.
Yataiki is retired from production work, but he still spends a lot of time at the forge and with his tools. At age 79, Yataiki works when he can, on projects that interest him. So while Kayoko can't realistically take orders for specific items, she does get tools from Yataiki to sell from time to time. When I last visited I was able to watch him do the hardening and tempering of some dozuki blanks for a set of unusual tapered dozuki for a famous shoji-maker. He was also getting ready to finish up a large yariganna (spear plane).
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
hub777
>This is quite interesting but may I rephrase the question for my purposes. If you were to buy one today, whose would you buy for cutting dovetails for instance in a moderate $50 price range
Thanks
Hub
Remove 7 for e-mail
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
thomd
>The problem with the cheap stuff is it comes in and out of availability. Lee Valley used to offer a steel backed saw with rip teeth that cut dovetails really well, and cost about 30 dollars canadian. Every bit as good as, say, the independence. I don't see anything really like it in the current offerings. This does raies the point that if you find somethig you like in the replaceable blade range, buy some extra blades.
Dovetails are neither rip nor crosscuts. I like a hybrid tooth seems to start better. The current LV saws, some of which are very reasonable are dominant rip teeth, and I haven't tried them, therefore hard to say what the deal is. They are offering one called the rip tooth dozuki that has a hybrid tooth. They have been visiting Japan, and put a lot of effort into improving their offerings. So I would trust their current offerings if I was looking.
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=48338&cat=1,42884
In the price range and above that you are considering, I would double up and buy a Lee Nielsen Dovetail saw. You aren't going to get a transforming experience in that price range with a Japanese saw (I'm sure that isn't your motivation either). But in the LN range, or similar, you can get a saw that can't easily be beat in the western canon, and will last for ever. There seem to be more top class sharpeners around than ever.
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.
>I own both the LV rip Dozuki and the LN DT saw, and from my point of view the LV is heads and shoulders above the LN. Easier to start, much thinner kerf, and cuts significantly faster. I find it much easier to do precision work with that saw.
My thinking when I started this thread was, if that saw (LV) is that good, being a replaceable blade saw and all, how much more performance can I get from the best traditional (re-sharpenable) Japanese saws? I'm sure there are diminishing returns as the price goes up, but I want to know and feel what the best feels like, or at least getting close to that... At least Japanese saws aren't as expensive as infill planes :-)
DC
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Wiley Horne
>Denis,
Let me give you my impression from memory, and I'll check myself on it tomorrow. It's been a while since I used a replaceable blade saw, and I have never used the LV rip dozuki which is undoubtedly a better saw than the Gyokucho's I have used.
My recall of the Gyokucho compared to a traditional Japanese saw is (I think) traceable to the blade/handle connection. The replaceable blade saw, with the shorter, truncated shank, just felt dead in the hand, although I could cut dovetails very well with it. The traditional saw, with the longer and thicker welded shank running halfway down the handle, had a livelier feel. I had then, and still have, the feeling that I can feel the individual teeth cutting the wood.
If you look at the joints they cut, you couldn't tell the difference. The difference is in the feel of the thing in action. Plus I can't completely separate my feelings about the saw from my feelings about the man that made it. So it's difficult for me to be objective. I will have to go use the replaceable blade saw and recheck my memory tomorrow after the sun comes up.
Wiley
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Yeah, differential returns, that's a tricky one. I think you (impersonal) get huge returns moving from the basic replaceable bladed dozuki to the LV rip and/or LV Pro; although I still stand by my recommendation of the LV Pro dozuki, a fine dovetail and shoulder and short tenon cutter. These are all less than $80 or so.
I think you get another huge return moving to one of the hand made dozuki, such as from Kaneharu and Mitsukawa, there's something competent feeling about the hand sharpened, non-brittle, blades, perhaps it's because of the variability of the tooth size, etc.
I'll bet, although I only have two Yataiki azebiki, which are exquisite, you get astronomical returns from moving to a Yataiki dozuki.
And, again, as Wiley says, these returns don't necessarily show in the dovetails themselves.
Pam
Pam - Mark Grable/Metate?
Chuck Nickerson
>What is this? Ihave a couple moderately price Japanese saws ($80 and $220) and wonder if they'll bebefit.
Re: Pam - Mark Grable/Metate?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>A metate fine tunes a saw, but that sounds like a light definition of what Mark does. He reshapes if necessary, retooths if necessary, sharpens, sets, etc.
All hand made steels benefit.
Pam
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Paul Kierstead
>Interesting. Although I only sporadically use my LVPro for dovetails, it is definitely my go-to saw for shoulders. Didn't expect others to find it so. I have used it for tenons, but it is rarely deep enough for me, and I actually appreciate a little more 'steerability' for that job anyway.
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
gordon thomas
>Pam, I see that LV has a rip tooth dozuki that is slightly higher priced than the pro offering. I wondered why you prefer the pro saw?
best wishes,
Gordon
Guilty
Paul M. in San Diego
>Thom Posted:
"I have dozukis from 1970, or 1980, and they were cheap or moderate, they still cut fine today. If you are blowing out teeth, then the fault is most likely with the user."
Guilty as charged! I grab cheap dozuki's and ryobas for construction duty as well as for the shop. These get stepped on, they bind up when cutting fence posts to length, etc. So I'm pretty rough on these guys.
The beauty is that they're cheap and replacable, so I can quickly jump in the car and get to the nearest Rockler for an easy replacement.
I do have the LV rip dozuki that does not make it out of the shop and into the construction zones. This is the one that just gets dovetail duty. So I do understand the desire to have a good dozuki that is set for a specific function. But do I think that a $500 one will cut dovetails better than the LV? Nope.
Re: Guilty
thomd
>Not mmuch guilt there! It's working as planned. I'm thinking more of the kind of accident that happens when a person is still learning. Maybe in Tage Frid's case, his skill was so well ingrained he wasn't changing his bowsaw stroke for some dozuki.
Re: Who makes the absolute best dozuki?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Because I bought too soon. About a year after I got the LV Pro, Rob announced the LV rip; but then I'd recently purchased the Kaneharu from Harrelson. BTW, this wasn't because the LV Pro ever let me down, more because I wanted to see and feel the difference between replaceable and sharpenable. I still like both. I've never tried the LV rip, but I trust Rob and others that's it's a great saw.
Pam
Mark Grable link *LINK*
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Here's a link for Mark, who no longer has a web site. This is a page on the Daiku Dojo site, which is a residence for Jay van Arsdale and his students.
Re: Mark Grable Sawing Exercises *LINK*
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>And here's a pdf of Mark's sawing exercises, which are famous in certain circles. Truly great stuff.
Re: Mark Grable Sawing Exercises
Denny
>Pam, Thanks for posting that, very cool. Some people may wonder why the photos on p.10 are duplicated, they're actually a 3-D image. You have to rotate the page and sort of cross your eyes...
Denny
Re: Mark Grable Sawing Exercises
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Thanks, Denny. I didn't pay much attention to page 10, that's really cool that Mark did that.
Pam