Thursday, August 24, 2006

Saw Census

Well I seem to have hit a rich vein of form with regard to the lights being on but no-one home - embarrassing lack of engaging brain before doing anything continues to plague me, but luckily not within the remit of this Blog! And no, I didn't Blog yesterday in an effort to protect myself from the worst faux pas, although it's not a bad idea. Nope, it was raining again. I may have to change my habits and post in the morning as now seems to give the best chance of actually being able to post then.

Anyway, it's seemed best to stop pretending to be a woodworker for a bit until the grey matter comes back from its holidays, so I've been catching up on some of my tool cleaning and so forth. I momentarily dabbled with the idea of sharpening a saw, then considered all the ways it could go pear-shaped and decided to leave it for a bit... But I did do another foolish thing - I gathered all my back saws together in one place in a doomed bid to decide which should be the users and which I should re-home. Naturally I'm no nearer deciding and just a little taken aback at this very obvious evidence of what can only be described as an illness. I mean I knew I had "a few", but... Heck, I thinned out the herd only a year ago. Oh deary me.



I reckon the interesting one is the pistol-gripped 12" on the far right next to the 10" pair. Not only is it open-handled, the handle hang is more dovetail than tenon and the tooth count is 15ppi. Is this one of those mythical carcass saws? I dunno, but I bet I'll never see another. Mind you it turns out the Disston is 15 too, and still sharp enough to try out. Mmmm, very nice it is too. Heavy sucker though.

Anyway, the worst of it is I can't decide on a favourite. How can you decide which to let go when you can't decide which to keep? It's a 'mare. Maybe I should just sell the lot and start again by only buying a saw I actually need rather than what happens to be there.

Nah, that'll never catch on...

2 comments:

  1. Ooh, there all too lovely to get rid of any!

    Personally, I would keep 'em all and see which ones become favorites after another 20 years [g].

    But...if I were to get rid of any, I would keep the brass-backed ones. Size-wise, looking at the pic they seem to represent a nice range of length/depth. Well, and the open-handled one...

    And I would file them in descending ppi from the smaller being more, to the larger being few. The two larger brass backed ones, 9 ppi rip and 12 ppi rip, the two smaller, a 12 ppi cc and a 14/15 ppi cross cut. The open handle? Perhaps a ...

    Take care, Mike

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  2. Al
    Haven't laughed so much for a while-"only buying a saw I actually need"? You'll never get anywhere with that attitude young lady ;)
    Seriously, you need at least three back saws. Dovetail saw, rip tenon, x-cut tenon. You got a big and heavy rip tenon? I love mine (one of Vlad's)and it makes tenons by hand a real cinch. Same with a x-cut-you need enough blade to use it as in a mitre box.
    At the end of the day you gotta pick one that shouts out to you. Mike ain't gonna let you down!
    Happy picking,
    Philly

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