Thursday evening I went a great class on sharpening hand saws at the Metro Woodcraft store. The class was taught by Ralph Truesdell. I signed up because I had recently been to an excellent presentation he gave on refurbishing hand planes. The main point: With a couple hours of work you can make a $2 garage sale saw cut like one that would cost $100 at a woodworking tools store. I have read some articles about how to do this, e.g. Saw Filing–A Beginner’s Primer and watched a couple videos, but this was the first time I was able to try it out under the eye of an expert. That was enormously helpful, and has given me the confidence to attempt it on my own without too much fear of ruining the saw. A couple points that I had not known before:

1. Ralph thinks most saws available now have too much set — the amount the teeth are bent to either side of the plane of the blade — for normal work with the usual dry hardwoods around today. This was good to hear because setting the teeth is another operation that I can avoid. If anything I might need to rub a sharpening stone along the sides to reduce the set.
2. The class focused on traditional western style saws, but Japanese saws were mentioned. Many of these have hardened disposable blades, but some others can be sharpened. Japanese cross-cut blades have a complicated geometry that is difficult to work with, but their rip blades are conceptually similar to their Western counterparts. The angles are different, but with the right files they can be sharpened. This was good hear because my best rip saws are Japanese.

It was an excellent evening. I am going to be watching the Woodcraft flyers for more of Ralph’s classes.