My first attempt at sharpening a handsaw!

jack of all

I recently acquired an old Disston, in good nick but needing a good sharpening. It's a 6 point crosscut; the teeth were uneven and the tooth line was concave. First step was to joint the teeth with a mill file- this was the scary part as it revealed how uneven the teeth were! I then used a part-worn 5" slim taper file to shape the teeth, applying pressure to the right or left in each gullet to shape each tooth, removing enough metal to leave just a very small flat on each tooth point. The saw was filed perpendicular to the blade (no fleam required for this stage), with the rake angle (15 deg) set using a simple jig (thanks to the excellent vintage saws.com tutorial for all the info). Once shaped I then switched to a new 6" slim taper file and used a simple guide to help establish fleam angle of 20 deg as I worked along the blade, from handle to toe, working on each tooth pointing away from me only and sloping the file handle downward slightly to provide some clearance in the gullet. Once this was done I turned the chops around to work on the other side. I felt the set on this saw was bit too much so I only reset those "new" teeth which were exposed after shaping. Very satisfying work and the finished saw cut very well when I was done. Shaping and filing on this saw was easy enough as the teeth were so large, my next challenge is a 10 point crosscut which belonged to my great grandfather and a couple of tenon saws!

Fingalian

Those Disstons are fabulous saws once sharpened up. I was cutting a keel out of a 2x8 recently , tried in on the bandsaw but could not control the cut with the weight of it, skilsaw kept binding on the shallow curve, jigsaw wandered all over the place . Tried the old Disston and had the keel out in 20 minutes nice and quiet like but sure would warm you up:)