Hand Saw Sharpening

[Richard T]

Reading some of the prices quoted for sharpening hand saws leaves me very suspicious. Most of the second hand saws that I see need partial or full re-cuts, not to mention many jointings and touch - ups.

When you do it yourself it's just part of the job and you can take your time but what would you charge to do it for someone else? By the hour/day?

Anyone who charges £10 to sharpen, set (and what about straightening?) a saw unseen, with a file, ... will starve.

 

[custard]

Deema I agree with your conclusions I recently had a student who liked the Veritas saw but said he may just treat it as disposable when it gets blunt which is a shame but reality.
We do sell Veritas saws which are very good but I can't advise anyone wholeheartedly who they should get to sharpen them . I do know of local saw doctors who say then can but will just do them by machine they will not hand file.
I know that Thomas Flinn will resharpen the saws they supply us either by machine or hand file. We stock two ranges of hand filed saws made by them - the Dorchester and the Pax 1776. Although they are both hand filed you would expect them to cut the same, but they don't. They are both better than the machine cut Lynx that they make for us which is a fair saw for the money. The Dorchester is hand filed, but for the Pax 1776 a new file is used every time and this does give it the edge over the Dorchester. I can try to cut my own hair you but would I want to, or do I think it is a job for a professional? The same goes for using the Thomas Flinn's saw doctor to file my saw - yes I am able to do it but he can do a far better job than me ... For me this is reason enough to supply and support our one remaining Sheffield saw maker.
I did sharpen saws with my grandfather who would do his saws every week but they were large hands saws which are OK to do but I feel a 20TPI saw is a different thing altogether.
If anyone can recommend Wholeheartedly a good saw doctor for the Veritas saws please let us know.
Cheers Peter

Excellent post, lot to think about there. Thanks for that.

 

[Corneel]

The sawdoctor overhere only punches new teeth in the plate. So you loose a lot of plate on each sharpening and the teeth are very precise but not very sharp.

 

[bugbear]

Reading some of the prices quoted for sharpening hand saws leaves me very suspicious. Most of the second hand saws that I see need partial or full re-cuts, not to mention many jointings and touch - ups.

When you do it yourself it's just part of the job and you can take your time but what would you charge to do it for someone else? By the hour/day?

Anyone who charges £10 to sharpen, set (and what about straightening?) a saw unseen, with a file, ... will starve.

I hope (for their sake) a "normal" sharpen is a tenner, but fixing a basket case is extra.

I have seem some quite remarkably bad saws offered s/h. I assume the culprit/owner doesn't notice,
since they get bad very gradually, one botched filing at a time.

BugBear

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Reading some of the prices quoted for sharpening hand saws leaves me very suspicious. Most of the second hand saws that I see need partial or full re-cuts, not to mention many jointings and touch - ups.

When you do it yourself it's just part of the job and you can take your time but what would you charge to do it for someone else? By the hour/day?

Anyone who charges £10 to sharpen, set (and what about straightening?) a saw unseen, with a file, ... will starve.

Good point.

To just touch up a slightly dull saw, £10 is probably about fair (15 to 30 minutes). To joint, re-shape, set and finally sharpen a saw (which is what you have to do if it's blunt, but the toothline is still straight) is about an hour's work, allowing for re-packaging and paperwork. To recondition an Ebay saw with a hollowed toothline and all the other horrors that turn up is about half a day's work if you're lucky - assuming the blade is straight.

Anybody running a business hand-sharpening handsaws would have to charge an average of about £25 a saw plus postage, to cover all business expenses and leave a wage of (frankly) not a fortune. Most people, I suspect, would regard £35 - £40 a sharpening, including postage both ways, as excessive.

That's probably why there are so few commercial handsaw sharpeners using files.

Seriously folks, sharpening saws is no more difficult than cutting dovetails - there's plenty of 'how-to' information out there. It's worth overcoming the initial apprehension and having a go yourself - sharp saws are a pleasure to use.

 

[Brit (Andy)]

This is a very interesting discussion, which I must confess makes me a little sad. When I taught myself to sharpen saws, I gave some serious thought to starting a sideline business offering a saw sharpening service to other UK woodworkers. If I was retired I think I would definitely have done it, but I'm not yet and probably won't be for at least another 12 years.

I would genuinely like to help other woodworkers out and return their saws to sharp, but I just couldn't see a way to make it work. Let's say I was to charge £10 + postage to sharpen a saw. I would have to make it very clear what condition I would expect your saw to be in for me to just have to 'sharpen' it. To me, sharpening a saw would involve giving the teeth a light jointing (a couple of passes with a mill file), reset the teeth if needed and sharpen the teeth with a couple of stokes of the appropriate saw file, returning the saw to its owner tested and razor sharp. The trouble is that people would want to send me their latest ebay purchase to sharpen which invariably would require a lot more than that. I have purchased and restored quite few saws and almost without exception the plates had a wave, the backs were often not completely straight, the teeth needed heavy re-shaping or re-cutting prior to sharpening, the handles were ill-fitting, and the plates had varying degrees of pitting. Now whilst all of these problems can be rectified (except the pitting unless you install a new plate), it would take me a hell of a lot longer than it would to just 'sharpen' a saw. Whilst I know that some of you understand exactly what I'm talking about, there would be many people wanting to send me there saws who wouldn't understand and it isn't the easiest thing to explain to someone over the phone. Until I got to see each saw, I wouldn't be able to tell what needed doing to it. Then when I told the sender, they wouldn't want to pay the extra and would ask me to send it back. :lol:

Add to that the fact that I work away all week and at the weekends have a house and garden to maintain and wife who expects me to talk to her. As it is, I'm lucky if I get a couple of hours a week on average to do some woodworking. I wish it was feasible for me to sharpen some saws for some fellow UK woodworkers, but it just ain't.

That's one of the main reasons I produced my 2 1/4 hour saw sharpening video and posted it on YouTube (http://youtu.be/u-_MF2Mnxwc). I think if you are physically able to sharpen your own saws, you should really have a go. You can't do any damage that can't be put right and you might amaze yourself. We have to keep the art alive guys don't we?

Take care,

Andy

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Andy, if you need a little more free time in your day you could always stop talking to your wife. :lol:

 

[Brit (Andy)]

Yeah but then she'd leave me and I'd have to clean the house as well, so I'd have even less time to do some woodworking. (I hope she never reads this or I'll be for it)

I wish there was a way to help out, I really do. I'd have to give 40% of that £10 to the tax man straight away and I would need to buy a new saw file every three saws I sharpened. It doesn't leave much does it?

 

[AndyNC]

Axminster tools in Basingstoke offer a hand saw sharpening service for about £10. As far as I knwow they it was a new service but I don't know if they work was done locally or whether they shipped it off to central local.

I was thinking of getting and old S&J I had most of my married life done as a tester. I think they charge a little more if the teeth need re-cutting.

Hope this helps

Andy

 

[KevM]

Another option, unless I missed a mention of them - I've never used them, these guys are advertising on Ebay - but they do seem to exist in the real world too..

Most of the feedback seems to be for lawnmower blades, so maybe take the earlier advice of sending a saw you're not too attached to as a tester.

Set & sharpen £10
Recut, set & sharpen £16

Seems to be charging an additional £4.95, presumably for return shipping.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tenon-Saw-Han ... 7675.l2557

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