Lately I’ve been shopping eBay in an attempt to build my hand tool arsenal. I’ve seen a lot of saw vises up for sale and wondered if this isn’t a bad idea. Sharpening my scaper blades in a bench vise is a pain becuase the vise jaws are so fat they get in the way.
Anybody have an opinion?
Replies
In the days when we used handsaws on site we made our own saw vises from offcuts.
The basic design was two pieces of 2" x 4" about 4' long with straps to hold them about 18" apart.
A 'vee' was cut in the top of each 2" x 4", about 1 1/2" wide at the top, tapering to nothing over about 3".
Two pieces of roughly 1" x 3", about 20" long, each piece had two sloping grooves, 2 1/4" wide, cut into one side in positions that matched the 'vee' groove in the 2" x 4" uprights and the slope of the grooves matched the slope of the 'vee'.
The two pieces were placed back to back so that the position of the grooves matched up and the saw blade placed between them then the whole thing was wedged into the uprights -- the sloping grooves fitted into the 'vees' in the uprights and were wedged tight together, gripping the saw blade firmly.
Refinements:----
1. When the 'vee' was cut in the end of the 2" x 4", a saw cut was made from the bottom of the 'vee' a couple of inches long and a hole was drilled right through the timber at the end of the saw cut. This was to stop the 2" x 4" splitting when the 1" x 3"s were wedged into place.
2. The 1" x 3"s were placed in position without the saw and the filing angle marked at intervals along the top with a bevel gauge.
3. The top of each 1" x 3" was bevelled so that the file could be used at an angle to the horizontal to taper the tips of the teeth to enable the saw to cut better in wet wood.
4. Your initials were cut into an upright so no thieving scumbag could pinch yours!!
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