Greetings,
I have recently been honing my skills on handsaw sharpening to include cutting new teeth on a terribly abused back saw I picked up at a flea market. My question relates to the amount of set for the teeth. I have been using SOMAX No. 250 saw sets, both fine and coarse. The anvils on both sets have numbers from 4-12 which appear to arbitrary. I have never seen manufacturer instructions on these saw sets and have always just used the trial and error method for getting a good amount of tooth set for a given saw type. Is there a rule of thumb for the amount of set (and the corresponding number on the saw set tool) based on the number of Points Per Inch (or Teeth Per Inch) on a saw blade? Thanks for you time.
Replies
In dry wood you don't need a lot of set, just enough to give the blade some clearance. Note that some saw blades are taper or hollow ground which means they need little or no set to the teeth, but a back saw typically is a flat blade and will need to have it's teeth set.
A general guide line is that the depth of the set should be no more than half the depth of the tooth, bending the tooth any further down can cause the tooth to crack. The adjustment on the saw set moves the anvil up and down so you need to move the bend point on the anvil to a position where it is at or above the midpoint of the tooth. Some saw sets are better than others, poorly made ones can distort or crush the tooth rather than giving the tooth a clean bend.
John White
Thank you.
That was the exact type to information I was looking for. Minimal set is best, I'll work up from there if needed. I'll also will watch closely to ensure I'm bending the teeth and not crushing them.
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