Simonds Saga: part one

Just in time for Halloween...scary teeth. Here we're going to labor through sharpening my Simonds hand saw. I know, I know, "Mark, you've already done a sharpening post." Yeah, well this thing needs special attention.

Another shot of the scary tooth line. Baby's got rake. And gnarly teeth.

"Cast it into the vise of pain!"

The big ole mill bastard ready for jointing...

Good thing that bastard has nerves of steel! This is where I ended up (for the first round of jointing...there will be more, oh yes, there will be more).

Shaping the teeth starts with running the file perpendicular to the tooth line. The plan is to bring all the teeth into the same shape. Hopefully, we'll keep them close to the same height.

No, you're drunk...that picture is perfectly focused. Hic...

Trouble is on the horizon. I bet you can tell already that these teeth are going to need serious work.

After making my way part through the initial stage of reshaping, I wanted to try an idea. I put a very fine line down the length of the blade. This was in an effort to establish a baseline of sorts.

I'm still dealing with teeth of different heights. Pretty frustrating, but we'll get there eventually.

Down towards the toe.

Here's that baseline. You probably don't have too look to close to notice that the teeth are still pretty bad.

Highs and lows. Believe it or not, by this point I've tried to bring down the high teeth three times.

Before we conclude part one, I just wanted to show my solution for ringing blades. These little clamps dampen a lot of the vibration and cut the noise significantly.

This concludes part one...there's more carnage to come!