I realise that in my public-spirited research into cheap chisels, I may have given the impression that I was recommending cheap tools (by which I mean tools made now to sell at a low price, not bargains where the seller let something go for a fraction of its value.)
Time for a corrective!
I invested another whole English pound of my own money and bought this:
I felt a bit dirty buying it, but nobody was looking and I was doing it for your benefit.
I hesitate to call it a saw. It says 'saw' on the packaging and looks like one from a distance, but I look like Tom Cruise if the distance is great enough...
What do you get? A strip of unidentified metal to which a magnet will stick, covered in varnish, with a lumpy bit on one end. And one edge of the metal is a bit rough:
I've not seen teeth like that before. The rake angle is 10° which is a bit steep for a rip and too shallow for a crosscut. The real stroke of originality though is that the included angle between the teeth does not slavishly follow hundreds of years of sawmaking but strikes out in a new direction of its own - it's 45°.
The teeth have been stamped out from the blank, but the clever designers have saved the trouble and expense of sharpening them at all:
though they have followed tradition and bent some of them out to one side:
They have also included a handy angle marker on the handle:
but UK readers should note that this is marked in Chinese degrees, and the conversion rule is that 90° Chinese = 95° rest of the world. (Don't get misled by that!)
But frankly, the whole concept of right angles becomes boringly irrelevant once you start to use this "tool".
Now I should point out that I can use a saw. New readers may get the impression that I just buy cheap rubbish and sharpen it, but that's not true. So this is what happened when I put a bit of ordinary softwood in the vice and tried to take a vertical rip cut, 'letting the saw do the work' as my old school woodwork teacher used to say:
And this is what happened on a cross-cut:
(Note too how the saw won't start to cut until it has jumped about enough to chew a little valley for it to rest in.)
So I hope my message is clear. This saw is not a saw. It really is beyond hope. I am not going to waste a file trying to improve it, even though its teeth have not been hardened, so could be sharpened. I have already spent five minutes taking the photos and a bit longer typing this up.
So, be warned, anyone hoping to fill a toolbox cheaply - do not buy this. Spend a few quid more and get one of the remarkably good hardpoint saws that are widely available, with teeth that are properly shaped and set.
Is that clear? ;-)
Time for a corrective!
I invested another whole English pound of my own money and bought this:
I felt a bit dirty buying it, but nobody was looking and I was doing it for your benefit.
I hesitate to call it a saw. It says 'saw' on the packaging and looks like one from a distance, but I look like Tom Cruise if the distance is great enough...
What do you get? A strip of unidentified metal to which a magnet will stick, covered in varnish, with a lumpy bit on one end. And one edge of the metal is a bit rough:
I've not seen teeth like that before. The rake angle is 10° which is a bit steep for a rip and too shallow for a crosscut. The real stroke of originality though is that the included angle between the teeth does not slavishly follow hundreds of years of sawmaking but strikes out in a new direction of its own - it's 45°.
The teeth have been stamped out from the blank, but the clever designers have saved the trouble and expense of sharpening them at all:
though they have followed tradition and bent some of them out to one side:
They have also included a handy angle marker on the handle:
but UK readers should note that this is marked in Chinese degrees, and the conversion rule is that 90° Chinese = 95° rest of the world. (Don't get misled by that!)
But frankly, the whole concept of right angles becomes boringly irrelevant once you start to use this "tool".
Now I should point out that I can use a saw. New readers may get the impression that I just buy cheap rubbish and sharpen it, but that's not true. So this is what happened when I put a bit of ordinary softwood in the vice and tried to take a vertical rip cut, 'letting the saw do the work' as my old school woodwork teacher used to say:
And this is what happened on a cross-cut:
(Note too how the saw won't start to cut until it has jumped about enough to chew a little valley for it to rest in.)
So I hope my message is clear. This saw is not a saw. It really is beyond hope. I am not going to waste a file trying to improve it, even though its teeth have not been hardened, so could be sharpened. I have already spent five minutes taking the photos and a bit longer typing this up.
So, be warned, anyone hoping to fill a toolbox cheaply - do not buy this. Spend a few quid more and get one of the remarkably good hardpoint saws that are widely available, with teeth that are properly shaped and set.
Is that clear? ;-)
