Saw Plate Tensioning
#25
Nice rescue of an old discussion, too! 

I read Smalzer's Tensioning article a few years ago and scribbled a column note that it was too much voodoo for me and went back to my pull saws. However, those have issues too. Price of sharpening is the big one; in this case, replacing. In Japan they may respect legacy tools, but no one does in the USA. 

I've been mentally designing a western saw conversion to a "pull" format. No video, please.[/quote]

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I've been playing around with this for a while.

Here's a pdf of Smalzer's article.
.pdf   Straightening Bent Handsaw Blades.pdf (Size: 1.86 MB / Downloads: 423)

And an old Scientific American article that I forgot I had and have to read carefully... 
.pdf   Straightening Saws-Scientific American.pdf (Size: 885.17 KB / Downloads: 442)
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#26
A recent look on YouTube turned up 2 videos on cold-hammering saws (one of them by Eric Florip).   Whether it's a pure "straightening" or also a "tensioning" process, I can't say.   I found the videos to be a bit easier to assimilate than I did the written articles.   I do need to watch them again because it was 3 AM in the house and I had the sound turned off....

If someone comes up with 2 identical saws, he could try "just straightening" one of them, and "straightening plus tensioning" the other, then compare the musical pitches of them.   Then the question could be answered once and for all
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Chris
Chris
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#27
Looking at Admiral's S.A. article [note date] the "voodoo" reminds me so much of the car body repairs I watched in my youth. One of the jobs was courtesy of yours truly, my first accident.
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#28
(01-31-2019, 11:10 PM)hbmcc Wrote: Looking at Admiral's S.A. article [note date] the "voodoo" reminds me so much of the car body repairs I watched in my youth. One of the jobs was courtesy of yours truly, my first accident.

Believe me, its a black art more than a science.  I learn a little bit more from trial and error every time I take a saw to the anvil.  One of those things you have to watch, in order to learn.  But those hammer swinging sawsmiths at Disston's Keystone Works are long, long gone.  Wish I could resurrect one or two and pick their brains...... maybe take a drive to Tacony and have a seance!  Ha!

I'm in the middle of the final sharpening of a 22 inch panel D-8 from around 1917, and whilst filing, I wonder about those guys.  There's a lot of history in each saw I work on.
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