Crosscut Saw Manual

Filing the Saw

Opinions vary among saw filers on the order of steps followed in filing a saw. Guidelines offered by saw companies differ significantly. After examining the reasons for the different orders, I prefer the following order:

Cleaning--removing rust or pitch.
Hammering--straightening a saw if it has bumps, kinks, or twists.
Jointing--the means by which the tips of all the cutter teeth on the saw are made to conform to the circle of the saw.
Raker fitting--includes shaping the raker gullet and swaging and sharpening the raker.
Pointing up cutter teeth--sharpening the teeth by filing.
Setting--bending the tips of the cutter teeth away from the plane of the saw, causing the kerf to be wider than the saw.

Tools necessary for:

Hammering

Two steel straightedges about 10 to 14 inches long.
3- to 4-pound cross-pein saw hammer (some manufacturers call them cross-face hammers).
Fairly flat anvil.

Jointing

Jointer (short or long).
7- or 8-inch special crosscut file (mill bastard blunt file).
Saw vise.

Raker fitting

7- or 8-inch slim-taper (triangular) file.
Pin gauge, raker gauge, or 8- to 16-ounce tinner's riveting hammer for swaging.
6-inch, slim-taper file with "safe" corners (corners ground smooth).
6-inch mill-bastard file.
Saw vise.

Pointing up cutter teeth

7- or 8-inch special crosscut file (mill bastard blunt file) for lance-tooth saws.
6- or 8-inch Great American crosscut file for championtooth saws.
Saw vise.

Setting

8-ounce set hammer (or tinner's riveting hammer).
Setting stake or set tool, or anvil and spider.
Saw vise.

Cleaning

Often a filer must clean a rusty or pitchy saw. One good method is to lay the saw on a flat surface and clean it with an ax stone or a pumice grill stone. Liberally douse the saw with a citrus-based solvent to dissolve the pitch and keep the stone from plugging up with debris. Small kinks show up as bright areas when they are high spots and dark areas when they are low spots. Use only enough pressure on the cutter teeth to clean them. If metal is taken off the tips, both set and tooth length will be affected.

Hammering or Straightening

Few saws are completely straight. Although slight kinks or bumps will not cause much trouble, a straight saw requires minimum set and is less likely to buckle during the push stroke when one person is sawing...and it will cut straighter.

The saw to be straightened is hung vertically from one of the handle holes.

Hold the straightedges lightly, one on each side of the saw, so they are directly opposite each other. By moving the straightedges back and forth, as well as along the saw, any kinks or bumps can be found. If you move the straightedges with a slight twisting motion, quite small kinks can be found by the difference in resistance to twisting the straightedges. A straightedge contacting the convex side of a kink will twist more easily than one on the concave side.

Locating kinks using two straightedges
Photo demonstrating how to locate a kink.

Sawmaker's straightedges
Photo of sawmaker's straightedges.

When a kink is located, determine its shape and axis by moving the straightedges over its surface. Mark its shape with chalk or grease pencil (a wetted finger works well, too). Put the concave side down flat on the anvil, and with the appropriate face of your cross-pein hammer, strike the saw several times over the kink. (The appropriate face is the one that is fairly parallel to the kink axis). Check the kink with the straightedges and determine further action. Take care to strike the saw with the face of the hammer and not the edge. When hammering is done properly, the hammer should leave no visible mark. A slightly round-faced, 3-pound hammer can be used but results aren't as good as with a cross-pein hammer.

Hammering out a kink
Photo showing how to hammer out a kink.

If it is not possible to acquire a straightedge specifically for saw work, there are acceptable substitutes. A desirable straightedge will be light, stiff, and reasonably straight. A thickness from 0.050 to 0.100 inch is acceptable, but the thinner straightedge is better. Substitutes might be a draftsman's or machinist's straightedge, or the rule on a combination square.