question-and-answers number eight we're moving along we've got lots of these
coming out and they're really working wonderfully this is from Richard this
first question I was wondering if instead of throwing away modern hand
saws after its edges dull could you heat the edge with a blowtorch in order for
the edge to loose it's hardening then sharpen it well the question
is whether it's worth it for one thing and it does depend on the nature of the
steel that was used if it was carbon steel it could be a hardened steel it
could be oil hardened steel there are different ways that manufacturers harden
their steel this is impulse hardened this this is where the teeth are impulse
hardened as you get with Japanese saws now most Japanese saws will have impulse
hardened steel which means they cannot be resharpened except by the
manufacturer which they don't do and so what do we do with this can we do we
just throw them away I think when he says throw them away he probably means
recycle am I right Richard so mostly the steel of disposable saws does get
recycled but so the question is can you use a blowtorch to softer the steel
I don't know if it's air hardened I would say no because you have to apply
the heat but then the air hardens it again so you have to use a different
technique to soften the steel but you could try it and I think it would be
worth trying you could though as an alternative just stick the saw in an
oven I think at 350 degrees Fahrenheit these mythologists out there will tell
me differently and let the steel heat through for 45 minutes in the oven and
then try it with a file and see if it will file it might just be hard enough
then you may have annealed the teeth which means you can it's still hard but
you can sharpen it so that's an alternative to so different strokes for
different folks you could try it I'm a great believer in experimenting so just
get out there and do it safety is your issue you have to look at
that this one is from Jerry he says you seem to use sapele wood a great
deal this could be sapele sapele I've heard it pronounced different ways aside
from its obvious beauty why do you use it well you took away my glory there I
was going to say because it's very beautiful but it is a lovely wood it's a
very stable wood and it's sustainable but we did deplete it for many decades
it was depleted depleted because it was such a lovely wood and it was very good
but it came into popularity because the genuine mahoganies the different
Spanish mahoganies and so on from South America were depleted so badly that they
needed and then they became protected which is wonderful that's what we want
protected species want to be good stewards of what we've got but in this
case sapele then came under attack and now that's been protected in so many
areas and it's revitalizing itself and it's coming back into glory again but
buying sustainably responsibly harvested resources is the answer in my view is
certainly not a native species to Britain that's for sure
it's a lot more dense than oak it's a wonderful wood I think we just like it
and it's a good substitute for the color of mahogany so let me see here's a piece
sometimes I've seen it where I couldn't tell the difference sometimes it's
called African mahogany but it's real name is sapele or its common name I
don't know what the Latin name is but there you go it has all these swirls
deep rich grain I think it's a lovely wood it goes much deeper the as it ages
and oxidizes in the atmosphere that's for sapele. this is from Lynn i'm not
sure about whether this is a male spelling a female spelling it doesn't matter
I'm making some 10 inch round bread boards and would love to know how you
would put a bull nose profile on them so let's do this with Lynn and see what we
can do let's say we're going to make some round cutting
boards we've chiseled everything we've got this shape coming together we're
going for an oval here but it could be round it could be any shape we want
cheese board there we've got our board coming together and you're asking how
you can round this over this is the most wonderful tool it's a spokeshave flat
bottom you don't need a round bottom very much take your spokeshave you get it
set take the corner off at 45 degrees till it's about six to eight millimeters
wide like this I know you're already wanting to get out in the workshop and
do this now get that nice and even like that and then bring the corner I take
that corner off take this corner off and now you have a quadrant and then you go
in on the hard edges and just round it this is wonderful for learning to work
with the grain which way do I go I'm going against the grain here and it's
still working because I've got a shot-up sharp spokeshave but this feels like I
can you hear this I'm stroking the cap backwards we've got to go the other way
for the bulk of this so I'm going the other way now taking out my damaged edge
here take the corner off again and you can go with ovals now this is a nice
thing so that's one great way to work with that then the other way can you see
this nice shape here now you scrape this some day whatever you want to do with it
get it super smooth here's another way that I think is a great
you could use tools like these these are called rasps they're a lot they're quite
expensive this one will cost you 15 pounds $20 something like that
these might cost you a lot more you can get inexpensive one so this one is
basically taking the 45-degree corner off it works very rapidly so we do it
the same way this is coarser and I don't know the spokeshave works better I think
so we've taken this down by abrading it really then we go in here and take off
the hard corner again work on this one
and then we work it around like this and we still have flats on there but that's
another way of working this thing called wood like that and you keep working it
that way and I don't think that's too taken too long to do that the spokeshave
is much easier on your body and it works more quickly than the rasp the rasp you
could use after this spokeshave you can use fine ones like this and refine it
but you can also use sandpaper after that and then you've got your round
overdone so that's what I would recommend wonderful for working with
children great for learning about the orientation of the grain when you're
working with the wood Dave what tools are needed to resaw timber by hand
when you say timber we might have different vernacular here because timber
in the US would be a tree so we're not going to get into that because then we
have to drop the tree slab one face off it flip it over slab the other face off
we dig a hole in the ground we're not going that route are we that's the old
method other than that you've got big resaw machines but I don't think that's what
you're talking about I think you're talking about how do you resaw a block of wood
saw this down the middle it's very simple if you want it wouldn't matter if
this was a eight inch wide piece ten inch wide piece and three inches thick
you would use the same method set the distance you plane up your first face
like this one's already smooth plane up that first face set your distance
here set your distance here and then work along these outside faces and then
you take your saw depending on which type of saw you want to use so these are
the tools you've got your plane this is the first one saw down this face square
across that end like that down here turn it around saw down this one and
then saw all the way down the wood flip it one way saw it again flip it the
other way saw it again we do have some videos on this type of work it may not
be for resawing but that's what I would do if I was using hand methods
you can't get very far the most efficient way is going to be by using a
bandsaw probably that would be a great recommendation but if you just don't
have the facilities to do that then that's what I would use just a hand saw
a bow saw frame saw something like that and you'll get there eventually so
that's how I would do it those are the tools you need a plane and a handsaw
oh there's one thing about saws when you are rip cutting you don't want your saw
to be if you if you are re sawing you need to use a ripsaw not a crosscut saw
so that means the teeth are square across rather than pinnacle teeth and
then also pick the right size tooth size I think when I'm resawing I
tend to go with a fairly large tooth size so six points up to eight points so
down to eight points ten points it gets a little bit too fine for this type of
work four points work on heavy material and
especially on pines particularly well oh
okay so Ronald do you recommend high glue for
a long open a longer open time open time is the amount of time the glue will
allow movement while you're assembling a frame some glues go off very quickly
five minutes five minute epoxy things like that
so it cures very fast and you have to get you joint together and get
everything in place sometimes we have big glue ups like a big chair or
something like that usually we glue up in what we call sub assemblies so we
work out how we can glue up frames together first and then we gradually
unite all the different frames together in larger assemblies open time and
animal high glue is a great glue because you do get that extended open time you
can move your components about for fifteen or twenty minutes
often during assembly and the glue gradually coagulates and dries and
eventually sets like glass hard it's very brittle so I think I would use
that for traditional repairs on antiques and I would certainly use it for
instrument repairs on instruments that depend on being able to take the glue
apart after it's together like a violin or a cello I generally use PVA because
it is proven it does last a long time you can re glue when a joint comes
apart things like that if I was looking for a glue for more open time I might
look more at a chemical glue like epoxy of some type which is usually a
structural epoxy that has great strength and will glue the different components
together and give me some of these glues might take 24 hours to cure so I might
have an open time of an hour or even two hours with some of them to work with
animal hide glue I probably wouldn't because it's not always that easy you
can get animal hide glues that have a long open time and you don't
have to cook them and stew them to make them work so but generally I don't use
animal hide glue very much Matt says while setting the teeth on a 20 inch
long 8.4 inch distant the saw became quite wavy and bent it was straight as
an arrow before setting I'm using a Dunlop pistol grip saucer is this come a
common problem it's not common us all Matt I've never had a saw edge become
wavy like I think we're talking here where it bent a bit like a hacksaw blade
might I've never had that happen but I can see such a thing happening if the
saw set is too much if it's too deep and it's going onto the saw plate too far
there may be that this particular type of saw set is going too far down onto
the plate and that's causing this rippling effect so I would abandon it
and get an eclipse possibly I don't know I would look at the saucer and the
method you're using though thank you that was great another series done hope you
enjoyed it as much as I did