FILING THE CROSSCUT SAW

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This is the second of two excerpts. The first installment, which appeared in MOTHER NO. 59, covered the use of the crosscut saw.

Reprinted from Crosscut Saw Manual by Warren Miller (available for $1.50 from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402).

Opinions vary among saw filers as to the order of steps followed in filing a crosscut. Guidelines offered by saw companies differ significantly. After examining the reasons for the different orders, I've concluded the following sequence is preferable.

Cleaning: removing rust or pitch.

Hammering: straightening a saw if it has bumps, kinks, or twists in it.

Jointing: the means by which the tips or all the cutter teeth 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: filing the teeth sharp.

Setting: bending the tips of the cutter teeth away from the plane of the saw, causing the kerf to be wider than the blade.
These are the tools necessary for each operation.

Hammering: two steel straightedges about 10 to 14 inches long, a 3- to 4-pound cross-pein saw hammer (some manufacturers call them cross-face hammers), a 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 gage, raker gage, hammer for swaging (8- to 16-ounce tinner's riveting hammer), 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 champion tooth saws, saw vise.

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

CLEANING THE SAW

Often a filer must clean a rusty or pitchy saw. One good method is to lay the tool on a flat surface and clean with an axe stone or a pumice grill stone. Liberally douse the blade with kerosene or diesel oil to cut pitch and keep the stone from plugging up with debris. Small kinks show up as bright areas for high spots and dark places for indentations. 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.