Resaw by hand video

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There's a bit of a gap in the authenticity of Fidgen's videos. He may be a nice guy, I'm not commenting on that. What I mean about a gap in authenticity is that the pace and the work and the tools used strike me as someone who makes one piece, and then makes 5 videos and writes a book. I don't know if there is a "members" thing, too. Maybe? There is more than one person charging for advice without any notable history of making - when we are in a world where sharing it is free. The other things that don't add up (that I've seen in the past) are dimensioning work with bevel up planes, etc. It's just off.

A handsaw would've been as fast, and a coarse tooth handsaw faster for the work he did in the video. Frame saws for resawing are generally larger saws, heavier for heavy resawing and light - but still long - and with small teeth for veneer sawing. A frame saw 2 1/2 or 3 feet long is a losing effort. One 4 feet long with some weight will get you where you need to go if you're just splitting lumber that is too big for a coarse toothed hand saw, but still also works better (without any kerfing) if you can get someone on both ends.

If I rack my brain for someone who does this work by hand in general, I can think of people like Brian Holcombe. He's not got that much time to address folks, though, because the piece needs to be made for a client and there are more pieces after it. As a watcher, we're second to the payer. If we are the payer as the watcher, then the product is bound to lack some depth.

(Of course, there are old colonial williamsburg videos about the instrument maker, the cabinet maker and the gunsmith, and those are done by hand and are illustrative).

I never thought much of this until I built two framesaws and bought some coarse hand saws in anticipation of dumping my band saw. The first lighter frame saw was useless. I have found use for the large frame saw four times to date, but not for stock like in this video - that would've been done with a hand saw, and no time wasted on "kerfing" is required.
 
I will say that I am wrong about one thing above (I don't believe in editing posts to take out parts where I was wrong), since it's lunch I went out and watched the video. he does use a strange modern narrow razee jack, but it's hard to tell much from it.

I also clicked through to the links and find that he has a "school", and a "store" with $35 t-shirts and very expensive $400 steel-backed dovetail saws - gahhh. Those are things that are sold well to a captive audience (like people in a class). I think the business doesn't exist without the students, but it can certainly exist without complete projects, which is a little troubling.

That said, who is out there working entirely by hand and sharing their information (and I don't mean people like me who do most of our work by hand, but have zero business obligation) for free while selling the finish product. Seemingly nobody. Maybe a couple of violin makers.
 
Oh God, the awful trend diamond hone for $190 (don't know if that's loonies or USD - edit...just looked: $153 US) and an "online school". I can't look any longer.
 
I think the key to resawing is you need the workpiece to be held firmly and in the right position. It's one of the few jobs where not having a vice is a real disadvantage.

It looks to me he's standing too far from the workpiece; he's only using about half the length of the saw. And his action seems to be really jerky, the saw is going all over the place with a stabbing motion.
 
JohnPW":yfjay6gq said:
I think the key to resawing is you need the workpiece to be held firmly and in the right position. It's one of the few jobs where not having a vice is a real disadvantage.

It looks to me he's standing too far from the workpiece; he's only using about half the length of the saw. And his action seems to be really jerky, the saw is going all over the place with a stabbing motion.

That's what I thought. If he'd turned the wood 90° he could have stood in front of the bench, with no need to reach across his end vice.
I shouted at the video, but it didn't help. :wink:
 
JohnPW":1pav92di said:
I think the key to resawing is you need the workpiece to be held firmly and in the right position. It's one of the few jobs where not having a vice is a real disadvantage.

It looks to me he's standing too far from the workpiece; he's only using about half the length of the saw. And his action seems to be really jerky, the saw is going all over the place with a stabbing motion.

It requires a lot of clamping if there's no good vise, and you still need something to clamp to that doesn't move. If things move around, it's terrible.

A good vise is the best policy, and as Andy says, so is having plenty of room to do it. It's like rowing (at least the plenty of room part).
 
Certainly something you can make, of course. I haven't tried to make one, though I did make a half length handsaw with really deep teeth. I can't tell if it saves any time or not on wide boards (when you have the kerfs, you don't have to flip the wood back and forth). On narrow ones, it's definitely faster to saw without that if you can saw without wandering.

In the "kerf" saw, the time to make an entire kerf isn't shown. The biggest issue with them is that once they get to a reasonable depth, the teeth pack with material quite quickly, which packs in the groove and becomes very hard to get out.
 
D_W":23k49amn said:
I will say that I am wrong about one thing above (I don't believe in editing posts to take out parts where I was wrong), since it's lunch I went out and watched the video. he does use a strange modern narrow razee jack, but it's hard to tell much from it.

I also clicked through to the links and find that he has a "school", and a "store" with $35 t-shirts and very expensive $400 steel-backed dovetail saws - gahhh. Those are things that are sold well to a captive audience (like people in a class). I think the business doesn't exist without the students, but it can certainly exist without complete projects, which is a little troubling.

That said, who is out there working entirely by hand and sharing their information (and I don't mean people like me who do most of our work by hand, but have zero business obligation) for free while selling the finish product. Seemingly nobody. Maybe a couple of violin makers.
The making of the saw and the razee plane are covered as projects in one of his books. Having experienced a lot of difficulty and unusable results with a rip saw, I liked the idea of a frame saw for resawing/deeping and made one loosely inspired by his. It's the only tool I've attempted to make and couldn't be more flawed but I have found that it makes resawing much easier than with a normal rip saw. (That said, I still get far from perfect results as it is a far from easy discipline to get into your hands.) The upshot is that if I had the choice of a professionally made frame saw or a rip saw for resawing, I would go for the former. I do understand that with enough practice one could get up to standard with the latter.

I get the impression - and I could be completely wrong here - that Tom Fidgen has an almost philosophical commitment to his use and indeed making of hand tools (he lets the odd new-ageish/hippyesque comment drop in his writings). It's impressive that he can produce a load of veneer by using his kerfing plane (also a project in his book) and his frame saw but I personally would have thought that would have been where a band saw would have been called for.
 
I don't disagree with anything you say about saws, though my experience with the hand saws has been a little better on smaller stuff.

I made this saw a couple of years ago, a mock up of what should be a temporary saw, but I've never had the motivation to build another one, ,.. yet. Maybe next year.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A1GHQwYoux0

This one is made of off cuts from my bench, I think either screwed or doweled ( can't remember), and the metal parts are scrap except it stock to file the blade was new 1095 from peebay. The metal strapping was cut from a jointer belt guard.

This was only my second cut, and it's a bit misleading because in the comparison, I work a lot harder to push the handsaw. I almost jammed the handsaw, an you can hear the handle hitting the board. For stuff like this board, it's clear the frame saw is better, but it can really make you sweat. It's also become easier to steer, but it will be less wide if I build a nicer one. The amount of dust that it creates is incredible, you can see it on the bench top and floor, and pouring out of each cut.

I also agree on the band saw, veneer is a two man job with a frame saw, and I've only seen it demonstrated well in the colonial Williamsburg video on violins and harpsichords. It's easy to be philosophical, though, when the product is really the books and classes.
 

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