handsaw restoration
Post on 04-Apr-2015
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Handsaw Restoration by: Mark Harrell
http://www.badaxetoolworks.com/
The first step in restoring a vintage saw is to remove the handle. All too
often, the sawnut/bolt assembly has become frozen over time—and it's always far easier to clean the sawplate without the handle, or if you have some horn repair
ahead of you.
Get a Wooden Clamp:
Nothing too large—a 10-incher will do. Break out your drill—you're going to bore
a hole in it.
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Bore a Hole:
Bore a 3/4" to 7/8" hole in the clamp, about an 1.5" down from the tip. The intent here is to clamp your saw in the clamp, and access the frozen nut through the
hole.
Clamp the Saw:
It helps to remove the other sawnuts/bolts that aren't locked up. You want as much wood on handle contact as possible. The clamp will hold the sawbolt in
place while you torque the sawnut out.
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Unscrew the Sawnut:
Make sure your slotted screwdriver is ground thinner, such that you can fully
insert the tip inside the sawnut to avoid deforming the edges.
Tap out the Sawbolt:
A note of caution here: make
sure when tapping out the sawbolt, that the handle is
supported on either side of
the sawbolt, so that you have
a void to tap the sawbolt
into—otherwise you'll wind up
deforming the shank of the
sawbolt.
You're Done:
So that's it: the concept is to clamp your saw tightly with a wooden clamp you've bored a hole into to access the frozen sawnut. Pretty simple, but someone had to
tell me how to do it, too.
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One man's patina is another man's rust. I fall into the latter group. Rust on
a sawplate promotes friction in a cut, and should be removed prior to sharpening
your saw. You could always pay me to do it for you, but why? All that's required
is a little elbow grease. With the procedure and pics below, I'll how you how to
clean up your sawplate in about twenty minutes.
Equipment Outlay:
Here's the stuff I like to use. It's certainly no
product endorsement;
essentially what you've got is a bottle of rust remover
available at any home
store, a razor-blade
scraper, some Scotchbrite
pads (medium and fine), a
Sandflex block rags, and metal polish. Note the
gloves—use them. And if
you have more rust than
what you see on this saw,
it's a good idea to use a
mask.
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Spray and Scrub (quickly!):
Lay down some cardboard or thick kraft paper to keep the
crud off your workbench. Then
spray the bottle of rust remover
onto the sawplate and
immediately begin scrubbing.
Important to do this quickly, or the rust remover will pool in
spots and leave marks on the
metal. I like using a fine
sanding sponge for this stage of
the cleaning. Use it on edge to
concentrate on spots where the rust is heavily built up, and hit
the teeth with it in particular.
Scrape:
There's usually a 'grime-line' that contours the handle—this is a good time to
scrape it off with a razor. Be careful—don't want to scratch the plate, so use a
sharp razor and don't let the corners dig into the sawplate. The razor is also good to use on other spots on the sawplate where rust is heavily built up.
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Clean the teeth:
Using all the abrasives shown in the outlay, concentrate on really getting the
teeth clean. This is where having a clean sawplate really counts. Rusted teeth just won't cut well, and it's worth the time to clean them up right. Be careful—they
like to bite fingers, lol.
Scotchbrite Medium & Fine:
Now that you've shredded your sanding sponge, wipe down the plate with a paper towel and go to work on it with your Scotchbrite medium and fine pads. Great
products, useful for wood finishing as well.
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Sandflex Block (Fine):
Another product I like to use are sandflex blocks; they're
rubberized sanding blocks
with varying grits (yellow is fine, green medium, and red
coarse). I never use
anything coarser than the
medium block and find that
the yellow/fine block handles
75% of my needs when cleaning a sawplate. Now's a
good time to flip the
sawplate over and repeat
the above steps prior to
polishing.
Polish:
Wipe down the sawplate with another paper towel to remove any residual grit from the sanding process, and break out your metal polish. I like using Wizard's
metal polish. Just squirt a little on an old tee-shirt or cotton cloth, and wipe away.
Really brightens and protects the metal.
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You're Done:
And that's all there is to it. Takes anywhere between 15 minutes to half and hour,
depending on the degree of rust. Rust is funny—never can tell what lies underneath, and many's been the time I've found a great etch. At any rate, if
you're sending a saw to me for sharpening or repair, I strongly encourage you to
clean your sawplate first.
Anyone can restore a saw handle — it's not rocket science. It does
require some patience, but most of all a determination to see it through. There
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are a lot of pics on this page, and it can seem a bit overwhelming. But trust me
on this—it's easier than you think. This is my method, and like anything else,
other methods will work. Have fun with it—the worse that can happen is you
simply saw off your repair piece, and start over.
Equipment Outlay:
Here we have a nice old
Harvey Peace panel saw handle with a blunted upper
horn—a pretty typical
scenario. This shot reflects a
suggested outlay of the
equipment and finishing
supplies I like to use. Essentially, you'll want a
small crosscut saw, your
dovetail saw, rasps to
contour-shape the horn,
some cyanoacrylate glue, a
dremel with associated buffs and sanding drums, a
scraper, an exacto knife, clamps, and even rubber bands.
To Cut is to Heal...
...that's what the SF medics used to tell me anyway before scrubbing an infected owie away with a ScotchBrite pad (in the name of debriding the wound, right?) As
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it applies to horn repair, what you're doing is cutting away the damage. Clamp
the handle in a vise and cut away the damaged part of the horn with a small
tenon saw, no coarser than 14 ppi. You may have to cut away the entire damaged piece with a vertical miter cut, amputating the damage completely,
such that the underside of the horn cutaway is longer than the upper side. This
utilizes as much of the remaining wood on top as much as possible where the
repair will be most apparent. Other times, the damage won't exist across the full
depth of the horn, like the Harvey Peace handle I'm working on here. What I'm
doing is creating a notch—a 90-degree angle for the repair piece to fit into. I make a cut across the grain with my crosscut saw, and make the notch with my
dovetail (or small tenon) saw, by sawing with the grain to the crosscut kerf. Do
this whenever possible, because two glue-up surface are stronger than one.
Clean the Cut with a Chisel
Once you've made the cut or cuts to remove the damaged wood, you'll now want to pare it smooth with a chisel (for notched cuts), or a block plane (if making a
through cut. Notched cuts require a 90-degree angle, and so some tweaking here
is in order prior to gluing up the repair wood.
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Cut the Repair Piece to Fit
Now rip-cut your repair piece of wood
lengthwise to
appropriate height with a shallow mitre
appropriate to the
grain flow of the
handle. Much of the
time, you'll want to
use apple, but cherry is a good choice too.
You'll wind up staining
it to the look of the
handle later on
anyway. The main
thing is to predicate your cut(s) to match
the grain flow on the
handle. You don't
want to glue on a piece of wood with grain that zig-zags from the original wood.
Here's a shill for my Bad Axe Bench Hook set. This is a very useful accessory
while you’re making these cuts. Lee Valley’s wonder dog, bench pup, and bench
clamp are other great accessories to free up your hands while you work.
Check the Grain
Test-fit the repair piece to the handle.
Don't worry about
cutting it to length yet—it's easier to
clamp with a longer
piece of wood. Also,
make sure the repair
piece is about a 1/16"
taller and wider than the handle wood, so
that you can shape
the contour, height
and width to size in
the pics that follow.
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Again—you're miter-cutting the replacement wood to match the grain direction of
the handle. Don't attempt to shape or cut the repair wood yet. Use an over-sized
chunk. The repair piece should be thicker and longer than what is required. You’ll
cut and shape it to size later.
Invest in some Rubber Bands
Here's the fun part: use
a couple of rubber bands
to clamp the repair piece
into position. Rubber
bands let you clamp the repair piece into position
flush with the notch or
miter cut, and they work
great for clamping
asymmetrical pieces
together. Don't glue it up yet, so you can get
the pieces lined up
correctly. Note the piece
of bracing wood to
achieve the direction of
pull I want.
Glue-up
Now clamp your handle in a vise, gently lift the
repair piece, and apply
the glue, making sure you
get both surfaces. I like
using the gap-filler cyanoacrylate glues
available from Lee Valley.
Wear gloves and like Mr.
Bill, don’t inhale—this
stuff is potent. Wipe off
excess glue with a paper towel, and clamp the
handle in an orientation
where any gaps to fill will
pool the glue in place for
a stronger seam. Let dry overnight.
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Repairing a Crack
If you're feeling cocky by now, you
can also attempt to
repair other damage, like the
through-crack I'm
gluing up just above
the lower horn. In
this shot, I'm
wedging open the crack with a
screwdriver, while
applying the glue.
It's smarter to wait
until the other repair
is dry first, but I was feeling pretty full of
myself the day I worked on this handle. Wedge apart the crack with a thin-bladed
screwdriver or an exacto knife, and shoot the glue into the crack using a wood
glue syringe. If you don’t have a syringe, use a razor blade or the tip of a knife to
'push' the bead of glue into the crack, and gravity will take its course. Use two
clamps to squeeze the crack closed along the vertical and horizontal planes. If you have a major crack in the handle, I’ve found it useful to insert two opposing
and tapered pieces of wood inside the grip to spread the crack. If you wind up
completely breaking the handle, don’t flip out. Just glue the pieces together and
clamp.
Cleaning the Brass
The next couple of shots show how I clean up the
medallion sawbolt and
sawnuts using a brass
wire wheel on my Dremel. This is a matter
of personal taste. Some
people like shiny, others
don't. When working on a
vintage saw, I clean out
the gunk with the Dremel without overdoing it,
leaving some patina to
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match the appearance of the saw handle itself. In situations where I have to
completely strip the handle, I'll make the brass shiny at that point. Regardless,
exercise care not to grind down the embossed artwork and lettering within the
medallion.
Be the Dentist...
Dental tools aren't just for
probing root canals and cleaning your M16; they
work great to pick out
decades of gunked-up skin
cells and oil inside slotted
sawnuts. I've often found
that if you clean out the slot, you'll be less apt to distort
the brass when removing or
tightening the fasteners with
your screwdriver. On that
note, file or grind the
flathead screwdriver you use to achieve a thinner tip so it
can fit all the way inside the sawnut slot—antique sawnuts often require a thin
blade to fit.
Polishing the Brass
Here's where purists will take umbrage with me—actually
polishing the medallion
sawbolt/nut. If you like
shiny, you can chuck the
medallion sawnut in your cordless drill and bring the
polishing cloth to the
spinning medallion. If you
want to retain a clean patina
appropriate to the
salvageability of the original finish, a gentle buffing will
suffice, such as I'm doing
here.
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Part Two of handle restoration covers shaping the repair to the correct
length, width and contour, and how to finish the repair.
Draw the Horn
Once you've let the glue-up cure overnight, draw the contour of your new horn onto the repair piece. If you have a matching handle with intact horns, use it to
trace the outline on the repair wood. Not a mission-stopper if you don’t. Web
sites like www.disstonianinstitute.com have many pictures of vintage Disstons to
go by.
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Cut the New Horn to Length
Here's a step that's easy to goof up: while cutting your hon to length, don't cut to
the line; leave yourself an eighth of an inch so you can creep up to the line while
shaping the horn in the following steps.
Break Out Your Rasps
Time to shape the radius, length and
width of the repair
piece with your
favorite rasp.
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Shilling for Joel at Gramercy Tools
Now shape the contours of the repair piece with a
saw handle rasp. Tools
for Working Wood sells
their Gramercy Tools'
saw handle rasp for this
step of the procedure, and it’s a pretty handy
tool to have in your
arsenal. If you don't own
a saw handle rasp, use a
Dremel equipped with a
sanding drum. After roughing out the shape
with a rasp, I like using
my 10.8 Lithium battery
cordless Dremel with a
sanding drum to further refine the repair piece to shape and appropriate contour.
Strongly recommend safety glasses with the bifocal lenses and a dust mask while doing this, not only for safety reasons, but so you can get close in and see in
minute detail what you’re doing.
Scrape the Glueline Flush
It's important to make the transition from vintage
wood to replacement wood
smooth and even, with no
ridges or bumps.
Recommend you put a
fresh burr on your scraper at this stage to make a
good transition.
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Buff the Repair Smooth
Starting with the coarse and graduating to the fine Dremel buffing wheels, smooth out both vintage and new wood. This softens the edges and helps you
achieve a smooth transition between the two pieces, and prepares it for your final buffing with Scotchbrite pads prior to staining and wood treatment. You might
find yourself alternating between the Dremel, your scraper, and some fine
sandpaper at this point to attain a consistent transition between both pieces. Be
careful with the Dremel so you don't wind up sanding a ridge or hollow in the
wood. Pop the grain with fine and polish-grade Scotchbrite pads.
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Evaluate for Fit and Proportion
Time to walk away and throw a beer down your neck. When you come back, check out your work. Look at it objectively, and make sure it feels right in your
hand. Hold it at arm's length and see if it has the kind of shape that resonates
with the rest of the
handle.
Buff the Rest of the
Handle
Now that you've repaired the horn, it's
time to buff out the rest of the handle. If
the original
finish/lacquer on the
handle isn't worth
saving, strip it down
to raw wood. Often, however, you can
save the original
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finish by gently buffing the handle and judiciously scraping off grime and paint
splatters with your scraper. The intent here is to even out the remaining color on
the handle in preparation to stain the raw wood marks from the repair work.
Stain the Raw Wood
Stain the handle's raw wood with the procedure of your
choice. I generally use a touchup marking pen in Red
Oak, which usually attains
the color of vintage finishes
with repeated coats.
Treat the Wood
Buff the entire handle with
0000 steel wool (or Scotch-
Brite equivalent), treat the
wood with the product of your choice, such as
Murphy's Oil Soap. I like
using a wood treatment
called Kramer’s Antique
Improver, which cleans and preserves antique woods without stripping the
original finish. I’ve also found that it assists the final blending of the two pieces to
mitigate the ready appearance of a repair. You're done when you're happy.
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Drum Roll...
So here's the end state: the handle's upper horn has been repaired, and with repeated coats of stain the repair should blend over time with the rest of the
handle. The through-crack above the lower horn is now secure. Though it is
obvious that the handle has been repaired, it is now a far stronger handle and with care, the saw will see another century of use with a comfortable feel in the
hand and a renewed ability to saw with confidence.
This above all: have faith in what you’re doing. Repairing a saw handle is not
rocket science, but seems a little intimidating the first time you do it. Don’t sweat
this. The worst that can happen is that you cut away the repair piece and start
over.
Henry Disston posted a motto throughout his Philadelphia plant
stipulating—'Quality Sells.' Likewise, the NCOs bringing me up in Special
Forces when I was a young Captain use to drill into my head that
'excellence is not an option with anything you do. Do it right, do it on time,
and do it better than anyone else.' This is the philosophy I bring to the table
with the Bad Axe products I offer to you.
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That's me in the middle with my crew in Afghanistan in 2007, where we ran
a special training program for the Afghan National Army. It was a great assignment, fantastic bunch of guys to work with, and a meaningful deployment.
After 28 years of bouncing around the planet with the U.S. Army, I retired and
am now living in Southwest Wisconsin, where I once ran the ROTC department
for University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Restoring vintage hand tools and working
on my environmental home in Bad Axe feed my passion and underscore my
philosophy that the progressive Luddite does not have to reject the new to
embrace the old.
— Mark Harrell
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