How to use a handsaw

The advent of power saws and, in particular, tablesaws, has reduced the need for mastering this fundamental woodworking skill. In the few places where it could still be useful, such as in hand cutting dovetails, the need for accuracy can be easily avoided by the two step technique of rough sawing safely in the waste wood, and using a chisel to pare to the line. However, even though this might work, it is not as efficient or satisfying as being able to cut to the line. Furthermore, if a large part of your love for woodworking comes from the joy of doing it well, then a basic skill such as sawing will be one that you will want to master.

Know your saw

Most woodworkers know the general details of saws, but there are some fine details that are not so widely known but are critical to understanding how to best use a saw.

Saws were once made in a bewildering array of types, sizes and qualities, reflecting their fundamental importance to a number of trades. And for each use there were many brands and designs, and sizes and ranges of quality to choose from. Furthermore, depending on their skill, each tradesperson would probably favour not only a size, model and number of teeth in their saw, but would also have a preference for how it was sharpened. They would know that, having chosen a particular size and tooth configuration, they could further customise the saw for their preferred balance between ease of use and speed of cut by the rake angle they chose when sharpening it.

Needless to say, just about all of this has fallen into the black hole of the past, and now we are offered plastic handled monstrosities with hardened teeth designed to be used and thrown away (I actually get greater pleasure out of throwing them away before using them).

Crosscutting

Saws are used in two major ways: cutting along the grain or length (ripping), or across the grain (crosscutting). Because each of these cuts attacks the wood fibres in a different way, it’s not surprising that each requires a saw sharpened in a specific way.

To understand this it’s helpful to think of the wood as a stiff piece of rope. Crosscutting can be compared with cutting a narrow section about 1–2 mm long out of the length of rope. In order to remove this segment cleanly, each rope fibre will need to be cut in two places, one at each end of the segment. The only other option would be to tear, or break, them out. To cut it out cleanly, each crosscut saw tooth is sharpened like a tiny knife blade, and shaped so the teeth cut alternately on the left and right hand extremities of the cut. After being cut at each end, the small wood fibre segments are then quite easily removed by the lower parts of the saw teeth.

Ripping

Ripping attacks the rope along its length with an action more like that of a handplane, and each segment of wood fibre removed is actually a small shaving that has been ‘planed’ away. It is not surprising then to find that each tooth of a ripsaw is shaped like a small plane blade.

However, shaping rip or crosscut teeth appropriately is not all that needs to be done to ensure the best cutting action. If the cut made by the teeth is the same width as the sawblade thickness, the saw will tend to stick or bind in the cut, particularly if the wood is green.

Set

Saw manufacturers mostly overcame binding by giving teeth a slight bend or ‘set’ alternately to the left and right, so that the slot, or ‘kerf’, cut by the teeth was slightly wider than the main sawblade thickness. A more difficult and expensive way was to ‘taper grind’ the blade, so its thickness was at its maximum at the teeth, and became progressively thinner towards its upper, or back edge. The very best quality taper ground saws, such as the Disston Acme rip and crosscut saws, as well as their No.77 back saw, were actually designed and made to be used in dry wood with no set at all.

Teeth

The shape of the saw tooth, together with its size, which is a function of the number of points or teeth to the inch (there is one more point than tooth to the inch) determine how aggressively the saw cuts. This needs to be matched to the type of wood being cut, and whether we are talking about a rip, or cross cut.

 

There can be two variables in the tooth shape. One is the rake angle of the tooth; the other the fleam, or bevel that is filed onto each face of the tooth. Traditionally, these applied only to crosscut teeth. Rip teeth had zero rake and no fleam as they were filed square across to create the miniature plane blade shape. However, these saws were designed to be used with the board lying face down in a horizontal position and the saw inclined at 60° to the vertical. This meant that the weight of the sawblade was not bearing fully on the teeth in actual contact with the wood. If we consider the case of a dovetail saw sharpened with rip teeth, we see that it is typically used with the wood held vertically in the vice, so the entire weight of the sawblade is able to bear down on the teeth in contact with the wood (if we allow it to).

The problem here is that the more aggressive the shape of a sharp tooth, and the more weight bearing down on it, the more readily it will bite into the wood, and the more likely the saw will be to ‘jag’ or stop suddenly in the middle of the stroke. It will have taken too big a bite of the wood too suddenly for you to be able to increase the power in time to keep the cut going. This is particularly the case at the start of a cut.

It takes a good sawing technique and a skilled hand to use such a saw. A less skilled hand might prefer a less aggressively sharpened saw as it would be easier to use. In the case of a rip blade, this might entail filing some negative rake onto each tooth, or in the case of a crosscut blade, a larger negative rake angle. And in fact, this is what has tended to happen with production saws as the general level of user skill has declined with the advent of power saws. The general rule is that the smaller the negative rake on the tooth, the more aggressively it will cut. Japanese saws, especially Japanese rip saws, actually have positive rake angles on their teeth, but in spite of this, other factors in the design of these saws make them quite user friendly.

Gullets

One last factor to be considered when thinking about sawing is the removal of waste wood from the cut. This is the function of the space between the teeth, the gullets. If they are not able to carry the sawdust away as quickly as it is produced, the cut becomes clogged and the blade binds more readily. This can be a nasty problem with bandsaws where deep resaw cuts require blades with something like 1 tooth per inch (or two points per inch). A ripsaw requires larger gullets than a crosscut because the shavings resulting from the rip cut occupy a greater volume than the sawdust created by the cross cut. If you have spent some time on a chainsaw you will know how dramatic this difference can be.

Sharpness

Blunt saws are the main cause of poor sawing technique. With a blunt saw the hapless user applies the Rambo technique: brute force. After a while this heavy handed approach becomes automatic, but it cannot be used with a sharp saw. A sharp saw requires a very light and sensitive hand. It is not too outlandish to say that you need to ‘feel’ the saw into the wood. The slightest bit of excess pressure at the wrong time will cause the saw to ‘jag’—it will bite too much wood and stop dead.

Points per inch

Another factor to consider if you want your saw to cut easily and smoothly, is the number of teeth in contact with the wood. Imagine trying to cut a piece of veneer with a 4ppi rip saw! That’s extreme but if the downward pressure on the saw coming mainly from its own weight is only spread across a couple of teeth, they are more likely to dig in too far and stop dead than if the weight is spread across six or seven teeth.

Above: This is why it is difficult to begin a saw cut if the saw is allowed to rest on the wood, instead of being held in the air above the wood. This tooth is taking a bite that is much too large.

Get a good start

The right number of teeth is very relevant when you are starting a cut. Our habit is to begin the cut on a corner of the wood, but if you stop and think, this will give you about the worst possible situation if you are trying to maximise the number of teeth in contact with the wood. When you place the saw on the corner, the wood slips right into the gullet between two teeth. If you muscle the saw forward it will tear out a chunk of wood and bounce as the pent up forward pressure is released. Or you can draw it backwards and hope that you rub or rasp some of the squareness away.

More effective is to lay the saw closer to a horizontal position, or to lift it closer to vertical (depending on where you are trying to make the cut). Either way, you will bring more teeth into contact with the wood and thus reduce the pressure on each one making it easier to begin the saw stroke. Most importantly, you will remove that lump of wood from that first gullet.

With practice however, you will find that by taking the weight of the saw in your hand and not touching the wood as you get the saw in motion, and gently lowering it into the wood as it is moving, you also overcome this problem of the big bit of wood in one gullet.

Stay on track

Once you have succeeded in getting the cut started you still need to ensure it is in the right place, and that it’s going in the right direction.You also need to make sure you only apply pressure to the saw on the forward or cutting stroke, and remove any downward pressure for the return stroke (you should be able to hear the difference between the two strokes, with the cutting stroke being the louder of the two). Finally, you need to concentrate on keeping the sawblade moving freely in the kerf as the cut proceeds.

Above: the saw kerf touches the line of the right, and is in the waste wood on the left.

Sawing to a line

Any saw cut where accuracy matters will be guided by marked lines. Marking with a knife or a pencil is a matter of personal preference. If we want to split the line with a saw, it is a matter of judgement with both types of line. It cannot be done by letting the saw run in the knife cut, for example, as the saw kerf will be much wider than the knife cut and will obliterate it completely.

Furthermore, because we cut both across and through the wood, the cut has to follow two lines, not just one. But it’s hard to watch both lines at once so we tend to just to watch one at a time. For a cross cut we concentrate first on making a shallow cut right across the board, starting from either the front or back corner. We position the saw using the thumb or finger of our free hand as a guide, so that the critical edge of the saw kerf runs down the middle of the guide line, and the remainder of the kerf lies in the waste section of the wood.

Note well however, that for a rip cut using a Western saw we need to begin the cut from the front corner, whereas with a Japanese saw we need to begin from the back corner. This is necessary for the saw to be cutting with the grain (if you doubt this, try both ways and you will feel and hear the difference).

Once we have positioned the saw, we get it into motion, beginning with a back stroke, and without allowing the saw to touch the wood. Then we slowly lower the saw until it just kisses the wood at the corner we have chosen as our starting point.

How easily the saw engages the wood will depend on our feel for the saw, and the angle the blade makes with the upper surface of the wood (as we have already discussed). Provided the saw is at some angle to the wood surface, it will begin the cut at one point only. We then lay the saw down so the cut, as it begins to be made, travels along the line on the top surface of the wood. If the angle the saw makes to the wood is small, the cut will travel the length of the line quite quickly, with a small decrease in this angle. If the angle is higher, the movement of the cut will be slower as the angle decreases, but as we have already seen, the cut will be more difficult to begin.

What we need to aim for is a very shallow cut that splits the line right across the top surface of the wood, and with the bulk of the kerf in the waste section of the wood. The cut needs to be shallow because we have not yet looked at the other line we need to follow. A shallow cut does not commit the saw to a vertical direction. However, it does commit it to a horizontal direction, so we can forget about that line now and switch our attention to the vertical line.

If we are using a good handsaw (an Adria or Lie-Nielsen dovetail saw, for example) we need to establish this vertical direction very quickly. Because the teeth on good saws are sharpened with very little set, the blade is a snug fit in the kerf and so the cut will very quickly reach a depth where the blade cannot be tilted either way to change the direction of the cut. That is the downside of a good saw, but the upside is that once the cut is established on the line, the saw will tend to follow that line and not wander off it.

For the saw to move in one plane it is important that the saw, hand, wrist, forearm and upper arm are all moving in a single plane.

Correcting technique

Most people, when learning how to saw, find their cuts missing the line in a consistent pattern. For example, I have learned that if I don’t consciously compensate, my saw cuts tend to drift into the wood on the right hand side of the line. To prevent this I know I have to apply the slightest amount of tension to my hand—it is so small as to be almost just the idea of tension—that twists my hand in the opposite direction. I know my cuts tend to go one way, so I consciously tense my sawing action against it.

The right rhythm

By this stage we have the saw moving in the cut, on the line and heading in the right direction. All that remains is to concentrate on our sawing action and allow the saw to do the work. Specifically, we need to attain an easy rhythm with a long stroke, with downwards pressure that increases towards the end of the stroke, and ceases entirely for the return stroke. Most handsaws do not cut efficiently, if at all, on the return stroke, so any downwards pressure will only increase the friction, and hence the heat, generated by the cutting action, and help to dull the cutting edges of the teeth more quickly. This habit of reducing the downward pressure on the back stroke allows you to effectively rest between cutting strokes, and helps you to pace yourself through a long cut.

The right plane

Finally, you need to concentrate on the mechanics of your cutting action. Obviously, the cut needs to be straight along both its length and depth, so if we think of the geometry of our sawing action, the plane of the required cut should be exactly the same as the plane of our arm and the saw during the sawing action.

One simple way of knowing if this is the case is to concentrate on keeping the sawblade moving freely in the saw kerf throughout the cut. This is because any bend or twist of the saw in the cut will cause the blade to jam in the saw kerf, and any bend or twist will also destroy the flat plane of our sawing action. If we reverse this, we see that if the saw is moving freely, it must be moving in one single plane (or close enough, anyway).

Summary

The bottom line here as with most skills is that you do need to practise sawing until it feels very, very familiar. Only then will you know what it means to feel your way into a saw cut. Using any tool in a highly skilled way is, I think, a sensual experience. It is a total body experience in that all of your body is involved in it, not just one arm. The position of your feet, the bend in your back, what you do with your free hand—all of these things matter. You need to feel comfortable and relaxed all the time. This will not be the case in the beginning, but it will slowly happen for you.

First published in Australian Wood Review, issue 60, September 2008.

Robert Howard is a Brisbane woodworker who teaches regular woodcarving classes.