I have been assembling a ‘nest’ of saws for some time now. It began when my Japanese Ryoba started loosing some teeth and I thought it would be better to build my western saw knowledge (explained in this post here). The following is a list of the saws I aimed to have in the tool cabinet (guided by articles such as this one by Chris Schwarz);
| Length | TPI | Geometry | Plate | |
| Dovetail | 10″ | 14 | rip | 0.020″ |
| Carcass | 14″ | 12 | crosscut | 0.025″ |
| Tenon | 16″ | 10 | rip | 0.025″ |
| Hand-saw | 26″ | 8 | crosscut | tapered |
| Hand-saw | 28″ | 5.5 | rip | tapered |
My first saws were some large vintage Disstons for rough cutting lumber. This was a good place to start as the large teeth are easily seen with the naked eye – so much easier to sharpen than the small-teeth on dovetail saws.
I then picked up a Wenzloff dovetail saw for small work and, of course, some dovetailing.
An opportunity arose for me to assemble my own carcass saw from an old abused Disston D4 (see part 1 and part 2 of the blog post). I learned how to attach a handle to a saw plate and found a source for saw-spines (thanks to Ron Bontz).
So all that is left is a 16″ tenon saw.I gathered the parts from various sources and then made my own handle. In my next post I will talk about acquiring the saw components, fashioning a handle and assembling the saw.
