Cutting wood is mostly fun and easy for me. If something is difficult or boring I seek a better method. This article is about building a better tool for cutting curves in thick stock.
I was stricken by the difficulty of cutting curves in 8/4 hard maple when I made my first chair. Maybe I could have a better time with a better turning saw? The bowsaw I have is fine for thin stock or soft wood, but I need something bigger and heftier for thick stock.
Inspired by Paul Sellers, I used a bandsaw blade, a beast with a mere 6TPI, more aggressive than any of my other saws. I snapped the blade by bending it back and forth, then bored holes in the blade for pins. The pin (a metal dowel I ordered from Amazon1) seats in a hand made, rived, hard maple dowel.
The idea to use a dowel rather than metal hardware came from a field trip my oldest went to. Delightfully, this field trip was days before making the saw; no one expected to find tools there.
The turnbuckle in this saw is an improvement over my 12” saw’s simple toggle:
The 12” saw has a simple toggle (stick) that is fixed into the string. Tightening the saw requires twisting the toggle in addition to spinning it. With this saw, there’s a wooden housing that is fixed in the string. The toggle slides in the housing. This means the initial turns are easy and once you are really cinching it down you can get good leverage without having to do the annoying twist.
Before building my cubit frame saw I built a small proof of concept to replace my least favorite saw of all: the hack saw. I learned that I really wanted nylon string. All other string I had (kite string, twine) broke easily. This saw is better than my junior hack saw.
So how does the cubit saw work? I cut a circle over 9’ in circumference of 8/4 hickory. I thought the saw was just OK until I tried to do some other stuff with the hickory.
That’s when I discovered that hickory is the hardest wood I’ve worked with so far. The saw must have worked beautifully. What if this had been oak?
I’m happy. It’s not beautiful but I chose not to spend time making it pretty and instead to make progress on my table.
If I had it all to do over again, I’d make a few of these saws rather than buying nice Veritas saws. I enjoy my nice back saws, but they were expensive. On the other hand I built this saw after already having a bench, a vise, those back saws, hand planes, and a bunch of experience. I think you could build a frame saw quickly (especially if you skipped the mortise and tenon in the middle, which is optional) and bootstrap with them much better than trying to buy vintage or new.
The pin started as a small drywall nail that I filed till it would fit. After using the saw for a few hours the nails were sickeningly bent. That’s when I ordered the dowels. They fit nicely but haven’t seen any action yet.
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