Wood-working for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs

by Charles G. Wheeler

In rubbing the knife on the oil-stone give it a circular motion rather than simply back and forth, particularly for the point. The straight part can be allowed to bear a little more heavily near the edge of the stone as it is passed back and forth.

It is much the best way to sharpen tools frequently, as soon as they begin to get dull, when they will require but little rubbing on the stone, rather than to let them get into such condition that it is a long and hard job to whet them; and of course the more careful you are to keep them sharp, the better work you will do.

To test the sharpness of your tools, cut across the grain of a piece of soft pine wood. If the cut is clean and smooth, the tools are sharp, but if the cut is rough or the wood torn, further sharpening is needed. The reason for using soft wood, which at first thought might not seem to require as keen an edge as hard wood, is because the fibrous structure of the soft wood, being more yielding, offers less resistance to the tool and so is torn or crushed apart except by a very keen edge, while the firmer structure of the hard wood can be cut smoothly by a tool which would tear the soft wood. The difference is somewhat like that between cutting a fresh loaf of bread or cake and a stale one.

The edge left by the oil-stone can be improved by stropping on a piece of leather on which a little paste of lard and emery or some similar composition has been spread. This is better than to strop knives and other tools on your boots. Any piece of leather such as barbers use, or even a piece from an old boot, will answer. For flat edges see that the strop rests on a flat surface, so as not to tend to round the edge, as it may do if held carelessly in the hand. See Oil-stone and Strop.

Saw Filing is particularly hard for boys and amateurs to do satisfactorily and you are advised not to undertake it until you have become quite familiar with the use of tools, for it does not need to be done very often, costs but little, and there are very few places where you cannot get it done.

It is not difficult to understand the theory of setting and filing saw teeth, but to fix a saw in really good shape is hard for an amateur,—and for that matter you will find but a small proportion of good workmen who are experts in saw filing. Even in very small villages there is almost always some mechanic who has the knack of putting saws in order better than anyone else and who therefore makes quite a business of such work and people bring their saws to him from all the country round, even though they may be able to fix them tolerably well themselves, so great is the advantage in the quality of the work and the saving of time in having a saw in perfect condition. You had best do the same, and have your saws fixed whenever they get dull. The expense is but slight, and there is nothing that will conduce more to good work, and to your own success and satisfaction, than to have your tools in first-rate working order.

When you get to the point of filing and setting your saws you are advised to take a lesson from a good saw-filer. There are few persons so situated that they cannot do this, or at least watch someone go through the process, and thus learn much more readily than by reading about the process in a book. In fact, it is one of those things that it is so hard to learn from a book that merely a few remarks on the subject are given here.

The saw is firmly fastened in a saw-clamp, expressly for the purpose, so that it will not shake or rattle. The teeth are "jointed," or reduced to the same level, by lightly passing the flat side of a file over their points, lengthways of the saw. The saw can also be jointed along the sides after filing, but this is frequently omitted.

For a cross-cutting saw the file (a triangular saw-file) is held at an angle with the blade depending upon the particular form of tooth adopted, as you will see by examination. The handle being grasped in the right hand, the point of the file should be held between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand (Fig. 526). The file must be pushed across with an even, straight stroke, without any rocking or up and down motion, pressure being applied only on the forward or pushing stroke, the tool being drawn back very lightly or lifted entirely on the back stroke. The filing is begun at one end of the saw, filing only the teeth which bend away from you (i.e., every alternate tooth), carefully keeping the file at the proper angle, pressing only on the tooth you are filing, but keeping the tool lightly touching the adjacent tooth, and making allowance for the fact that when you file the alternate set the passing file will take off a little from the teeth first filed. The saw is then turned around and the process repeated with the other teeth. If you look lengthways along the edge of a panel-saw that has been properly filed and set, an angular trough or groove will be seen along the whole length, so that you can slide a needle along in it from one end of the saw to the other.

The ripping-saw is usually filed squarely across the saw (at right-angles to the blade), as you will see at once on examination of the teeth (Figs. 654 and 655), but sometimes at a more acute angle.