Make a Japanese style saw vise.....finally!

 

 

Sebastian has been badgering me mercilessly (rightly so!) for quite a while now, to make a Japanese style saw sharpening vise. The style is as such....

A nice example of the real thing. Mine surely won't be as nice as this one, but hopefully the functionality will be similar.

 

 

 

This is a diagram that I found, a cross-section of ChoMasaru's saw vise.

Who better to emulate, right?

 

The saw vise itself is a simple device, being two boards joined together at a hinging point, then tightened using a separate wedge that gets tapped into place at the bottom of the assembly.

 

Simple stuff, but very handy to have. Why is it taking me so long to make one? I blame my butterfly brain......flitting from one interest to the next, la-di-da da....

 

 

 

Right off the bat, I'm deciding to do this slightly differently, seldom a good idea, but I want to use some of the salvaged materials that I've got on hand. I think that stock a true 1" thick and 18" long would be a good size for me, but I don't have anything handy, so I go with two 18" chunks of 2x12.

 

That's fine, I don't think that the extra weight will bother me and I intend to thin down the material during the shaping phase, but the big issue is that the grain direction of my vise will be running the "wrong" way. Mainly, the wedge will be trying to split the wood every time I tighten the vise, so I question whether I will be able to tighten this guy effectively. I guess we'll see.

 

Not enough time to do the job right the first time......How does that saying go?

 

 

A few years ago, I started working more by hand power, less by machine. That ( and learning how to sharpen my damn tools!) has done great things for my abilities to make nearly everything. Even my use of power tools has improved through this. Well....what started as more of a novelty.....

 

Hand tools are now all that I've got, haha.

I love the off-grid lifestyle, but occasionally I do still miss my tablesaw.

 

 

Two hatchet, West and East meet.....who shall be victorious?

Actually, a broad hatchet would be the right choice here, but the main idea is to remove some excess wood quickly, and they both did that task well. The Japanese one is sharper, haha. I rough out the shape using the hatchets, then finish the shaping using the kanna.

 

 

 

The inner surface of the vise is reduced, to allow room for the body of the saw or to accommodate the back/spine of a dozuki.

I cut the shoulder lines of the rebate using a saw, then hog out the rest using whatever plane will work.

 

 

After watching every Japanese YouTube sawing video that I can find, I have noticed one common act. The carpenters start every cut using the crosscut side of the ryoba, then as soon as a tiny groove is started, you flip the saw and start ripping.

It only amounts to 2-3 light strokes, PUSHING the saw slightly, but it makes starting the cut SO much easier...and accurate, too. The shape of the teeth on a Japanese saw being what they are, if you push the saw slightly the teeth are exactly like little knife blades, scoring the wood fibres. Just as with a marking knife, use a light touch for accuracy.

 

 

 

After the shoulders are cut, I make some room using a Japanese groove plane, a Shoko-sakuri kanna. While good ones are very expensive new, old ones that are at least as good go for about a dime-a-dozen. I think they are handy to have around. And the blades are (usually) beautifully forged.

 

 

There are a couple of pointers here, regarding fixing up the old beaters....from one of my favorite Japanese carpenters.

 

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ariari_1946/e/2db2ac9b3b4bf945158e8767b14de8fa

 

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ariari_1946/e/44edfdbbda68955db45c10f943fa0e6f

 

 

 

After cutting out the grooves to make some room, I hog out some more material using one of my oldest, ugliest kanna.

I love this old thing. How many people have touched this, used this tool, over the years. And it has been used! The blade still has 3/4" of steel left, but I don't think that the dai can be used for much longer, haha.

The softwood body ( not oak, someone just decided to use what was at hand, obviously. Hmmmmm....familiar.) is gently rounded in width, a hollowing plane, a sotomaru kanna/scrub plane.

 

 

 

 

Getting closer.

 

 

 

 

 

On the home front, we were all set to put in an offer on a nice piece of Hawaiian property, two paired lots on a dead end street, warm lower elevation, and just all around nice. Our realtor suggested that flooding in that area is occasionally a concern.

This is the intersection of 39th and Pohaku during the deluge of 2008, right where we would turn right, to get home.

 

We decided to pass, haha. Thank god for conscientious realtors.

 

 

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Sometimes you get lucky....my first Japanese/Hawaiian saw

 

My newest treasure.....

 

 

A very rusty kataba rip saw.

 

Oh goody! More rusty saw fixes! Just part of my ongoing effort to maintain my status as "Author of the most boring blog ever". Actually, hammering on these thin steel saw plates has been one of the most enjoyable pastimes that I have found in the recent past. Wow! I guess that someone needs to get a life, haha!

--------------

 

 

So Ellie and I were out scrounging some used building supplies, bought from a nice young Minnesota transplant who had some leftovers from a construction projects that he had been working on here in Hawaii.

 

 

Mostly tile remnants, natural stone though, and I am beginning to see a marbled tile bathroom sometime in our future.

 

 

 

A nice stack of jalousie glass.

 

Now all we need are the frames.

 

 

 

So, me being the notoriously hard bargainer that I am, I gave the kid even more money than he was asking for. He was so pleased, that he threw in this old wooden tool tote, and wouldn't you know it, there were some rusty tools inside. Sweet!

 

After picking out the REALLY junky stuff (shocking though it might seem, some tools are so trashed that even I don't want to bother), this is what followed me home. The selection is actually kind of interesting.

• A good Stanley saw set.
• Disston "Philada" keyhole saw from 1896-1917.
• A "Warranted superior" saw.
• Japanese kataba saw.
• Japanese pruning saw.
• A weird 3 bladed Japanese tooth utility saw.
• A Japanese kiri hand drill, and....
• Two folding rules, one metal and one wooden one.
  

 

 

But the real prize, for me at least, is the kataba. Here she is, in all her 245mm rust covered glory.

It even has the wrong style of handle, haha. Zelikova wood, I think.

 

 

 

There are very faint markings........

 

 

S.T. Co Honolulu ......hmmmmm.....ST Co....rings a bell, but I can't place it.

 

 

 

 

Here's the interesting part. "Z-saw"!

 

Okada hardware manufacturing company in Miki city has been making saws since 1943, and today is one of the leading manufacturers of "modern" Japanese saws. This saw is also stamped "Made in occupied Japan", dating this guy at being manufactured sometime between 1945-1952.

 

 

 

This saw doesn't strike me as being overwhelmingly high quality, but neither is it some mass produced piece of junk. The tang of the saw was forge welded, the saw plate is strongly tapered in thickness, teeth to spine and tang to tip....... possibly I see evidence of sen scraping marks.....although with so much damage from rust, it's hard for me to say.

It has cleaned up tolerably well so far.

 

 

 

It is slightly bent, haha!

Teeth......

 

 

...and spine.

Look at how thin that spine is though. A knife's edge!

 

 

 

 

 

The primary bend is focused right here at the line drawn on the blade. The line is where I start. A reciprocal bend at the back of the saw is focused approximately at the dot.

 

 

 

When I flip the blade, directly opposite the "line", is a semicircular area of raised metal. This area needs to be worked at the same time, alternating back and forth.

 

I strike fairly gently (using my square face tack hammer that I we are all familiar with by now. As much as I have been playing with bent saws.....I need to make a good cross-pein hammer!) at the line, perhaps 4 light taps. Then I flip the blade and strike along the semicircular line, maybe 4x but only 1/2 as hard. The greater danger seems to be striking too hard, as this saw is rather thin. I repeat this strike/flip/strike process 3 or 4 times and the major bend comes away nicely.

 

 

 

The blade is also cupped. It is as though each of the corners has been independently bent just a bit.

 

 

 

These lines that I have drawn show the angle and approximate number of times I strike, to work out most of the cupped portion.

 

Pretty close.

 

 

 

I sight the tooth line and it is looking much better, a good start I feel.

 

 

 

 

There is some distortion and twist deeper in the body of the saw, closer to the tang. The circles show where I will strike, this time using my light ball-pein hammer.

 

 

 

The blade is very close to being perfectly straight now, although the the set of the teeth will need some attention.

 

 

 

The back of the saw is looking very nice as well.

Such a thin taper!

 

 

 

Things are coming along very well, but seeing the remaining distortions is becoming difficult for my novice eyes. A light rubbing with my Washita sharpening stone brings the high/low spots into focus.

As before, I strike selectively, using a combination of the square face hammer to direct lines of force, and the round face ball-pein for a more general influence.

 

 

 

And here is where things start to go bad, haha.......ha. Yeah.

 

 

I get the saw *very* close to where I want it, close enough to start doing some test cuts. There is a slight amount of binding in the kerf, indicative of some remaining distortions in the body of the saw, and it is two things that I am trying to do here. I want to get rid of the remaining distortions, but I also want to try inducing some tension into the blade. I have only been hammering on this blade for about 15 minutes so far.

 

I get to having too much fun, and start thinking that I am actually getting halfway proficient at this un-bending saw stuff......

 

Remember Mark's rule # 17....."Know when to stop".

 

 

 

Two hours later, I have a saw that is starting to look frighteningly like a potato chip, haha.

Greatly distorted steel, bent along multiple axis, combined with stretched and thinned metal.......poka-poka in the extreme! When the oilcan dent pops back and forth, the sound it makes is high pitched and ringing.

 

Tap the blade itself to check the tone........

 

Flat.

 

Sigh.

 

Back to school......and may tomorrow might be a better day.

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Some handsaw wisdom, tension and excercise.

No pics, just the good stuff.

Handsaw tensioning has been on my mind.....I guess that I should get a life, yes?

Anyways....somehow I had missed this earlier. When the information pertaining to handsaw tensioning can be counted on one hand, you would think that I would've found this treasure before now....

http://www.crosscutsawyer.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=750

Here is one nugget.....

To make the tensioning efficient, the expansion of the steel has to be "enclosed". So on a saw blade, the roll-tensioning tracks must stop a few inches before the ends.

We are specifically talking of factory manufactured handsaws, but the philosophy remains. There is more that I am still digesting. Good stuff.

Even better, a few weeks ago I found some older writings by Mark Grable, referenced repeatedly over the years, but not something that I had previously found.

http://www.daikudojo.org/Archive/2001_mark-grable-handsaw-exercises.pdf

There is true treasure here not just for the beginning sawyer, but also for the more advanced. The first time that I read this, I thought...."Awesome! Some good pointers here, definitely.". Today I read it and think....

Today I read it and think.

Does that make sense?

For starters......this is from Mark (The parentheses are mine).

There are some rules that are indispensable.

• Before disposing of a scrap of wood, mark a line on it and practice cutting to the line.
  
• Examine the resulting pieces to see what happened, like examining the shavings from a plane.(So huge, I can't emphasize enough!)
• Support the wood so that it doesn't,move or vibrate.
• Use sharp saws.
• Composure. Speed comes later, after a full measure of control is in hand. Cut only as fast as you can stay on plane and on line. You can't rush this acquiring of skill - except by increasing the frequency of practice (Ditto....huge!).
• Lift the weight of the saw off the teeth on the return stroke, just as you would when using a plane or file, to keep it sharp longer.

Some of these thoughts go together, but the main ideas are that you need to look at the resultant cut, then analyse the results, and also to SLOW DOWN!

I have recently cut my sawing speed to about 1/10th of what it was, but my overall speed has increased, as has my accuracy. No s**t.

Ultimately your speed is measured by how long it takes you to cut the line. If you cut wide, then pare to the line, that takes time. Likewise if you cut right at the line, but you push the cut and it bows or goes astray....you are using the chisels to finish the cut. That wastes time. Cut correctly the first time.....slow = fast.

More than just the avoidance of screwing up the cut, cutting with intent is just plain faster. If I envision 100 tiny knives scribing the line...faster. Cut on the pull, but lift oh so slightly on the return...faster (and you will have extra appreciation for this, come re-sharpening time). Breath out on the pull, breath in on the return......it is a meditation on force. This has benefits beyond just sawing.

This is just a start. I read this today, but next week/month/year I will read something different.

One more before bed....

Cutting a line in half means controlling 70-140 knife points, on the edge of a thin flexible saw, so that the line is reduced in thickness by half while not removing any excess wood. Thus, the start of the cut is crucial. There is the guide block, or there is the thumb; then there is the short shallow groove; then there is a kerf as deep as the teeth are tall; then there is from left to right: half the line, the left shoulder of the kerf, a gap, the left side of the blade, the right side of the blade, a gap, and the right shoulder of the kerf. The saw returns, then rests against one shoulder of the kerf as it cuts and returns, then rests against the other shoulder of the kerf and returns. This cycle is repeated until the saw is 3/4" into the cut. It keeps the kerf from twisting. Finish the cut with gaps on either side of the blade equal - the that is, with the blade centered in the kerf, 90* to the work.

Holy s**t.....subtle and oh so true.

What will we know next year?

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