Great job! You are the only KZfaqr I could find that had enough sand in the sac to show how to do this difficult task! Thank you so very much! Well Done.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="306">5:06</a> Sorry to hear about Steven 'I kinda collect those' Shepherd. I haven't heard from him for a few years and now I know why... The topic of saw tensioning is a lost black art of saw sharpening. Very few saw sharpening guys talk about it, and it's proportionately difficult to find any useful information. Most guys I talk to just say 'hammer it straight' without any understanding of how to do that task. Thanks for sharing!

So rare to find good information on this. thx

That was nice to hear you mention Stephen Shepherd. I enjoyed many a night on a hand tool forum that he moderated.

This channel is a true gem for hand tool woodworkers. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge

Just want to say thank you for sharing content on youtube. I've just found you channel and watched many videos. It's an absolute treasure trove. You are definitely one of the most skilled I have seen on YT. Many times we see someone proclaim to be an expert on saws, chisels, planes then when they demonstrate it looks like they are still learning the tool. Which is fine to share the process of learning (and I do that too), but it is refreshing and also rare to see someone who is a true expert create content on these topics.

Thank you, Bob! Your hints allowed me correct the blade of a hand saw. Best!

An incredibly useful video covering a topic that I haven’t seen covered before. You explain your approach clearly. Now I want to find some saws to rescue. Thank you for making and sharing this video. - Jim

Thank you Bob. Very good pointers! I will give it a try on my old nice fine tooth saw

Thank you for the solid advice and real world application. Very concise and well done video. Much appreciated.

I appreciate your teaching so much. Thank you for sharing!

thanks for adressing this! one of the more elusive aspects of using saws, and even more important therefore to get out some information on this

Very interesting and helpful. Thanks!

great intro and a blessing of info. Thank you sir!

Very interesting, especially the tensioning. It sounds so logical, but i would have never thought about it like that myself

Thank you, did this with an old saw I wanted to restore and it worked far better than I expected.

Great tips. Thank you for sharing. Greetings from Brazil.

Excellent explanation! Thanks.

Thank you. This is really worth watching and learning from. Excellent.

God bless you and your family. I'm sure this will help me. A tip to me mates if you can't straighten a saw blade. Don't throw it away. You can make a card scraper out of it or use it to train saw sharpening.

Incredible video. Thank you

Thanks, Bob. I have two saws from Habitat For Humanity that I need to straighten and tension before I "return them to the wild." This helps tremendously.

I'm so glad I found your channel! I have been looking for good information on correcting or straightening bends in hand saws for a while now. While there is a ton of info on most woodworking tools, this is a topic I've even found difficult to find bad info on lol. This is by far, the absolute best info I have found in my searches. I'm going to try my luck with this method on 2 of my saws shortly. Again, thanks for the good info, and for presenting it clearly!

Excellent tutorial. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks a lot for this video it was very informative. I was able to follow Along I actually had no idea you were able to do this whatsoever I've been practicing restoring and sharpening saws. This pleases me because when I was a young child my father and I made a toy box together when it came time for me to do my part he handed me his saw first cut went fine he told me to fly more pressure and slightly faster when I did well it was too much and I saw he was very upset it ended the project for a few days period but we did finish it together and I used it for years. I never asked but I wonder if my dad knew about straightening saws this way thank you

Thanks for sharing that!

Thanks so much for showing this process! I bought some old Diston and Grove saws that need help...No collector value in these blades, but if I can straighten, they should make respectable users. Your video should help me with doing this...So once again, Thanks!

many thanks for this video!

Thank you, great info !

Thanks for the video and for clarifying the myth with the anvil :-)

Good to see you. Great video. Glad to see you're feeling better. Tom from Mike's crew in MN

I’ve had some luck doing this with a saw that had a bowed blade. Although it was beginners luck I’m sure of that! It was binding in the saw kerf and would drift out of the cut. After straightening and sharpening its cutting straight and true. That being said I feel much more confident doing this after watching your instruction thanks Bob very well explained.

HI Bob, another very informative video. I'd be keen to hear your polishing process. I have an old rusty saw that I'd like to do up, and I'm happy that it's straight enough, but the surface is very rough. Perhaps a topic for another video? Thanks for sharing your knowledge

For me your videos are ones of the ost interesting. You dont dind people making videos of topics like this

When he mentioned end grain anvil, I thought about using a telephone book in the past. I guess my idea wasn't that bad. lol

very good

I found a pre-1928 Disston d-15 that shows signs of having been kinked and then hammered on in the past for $5. I pick this saw up, notice the nickel-plated nuts and beautiful Brazilian rosewood handle I go to sight down the blade and I can make out the keystone etch with D-15 still visible. I see that it is nearly perfectly straight but had a small deviation right by the toe, whoever hammered this saw did a good job. This deviation looks similar to saws I have hammered from kinks in the past, notably less pronounced. I put on my poker face, look at the sticker on the handle reading $8 and offer the guy $5; he accepts my offer and I walk away to look for more tools. The plate is extremely stiff, stiffer than even nearly NOS D-8 saws I have encountered. I have had saws in the past that were all floppy and were a pain to saw with, I have since hammered a few to make them stiff enough to not be a nuisance. I picked up a no 12 5-point rip saw with 2 small bends for $10 that everyone was passing up at the same flea market and got it arrow straight in a few minutes using this method. I will be tensioning this saw to make it stiffer, how can I get it as stiff as this D-15 that was hammered perhaps 90 years ago? On another note, I found a D-8 that was obviously bought nearly NOS but allowed to rust but for $1 I could not pass it up. The saw has -6 permanently etched into the blade from when someone used sharpy to mark a price. I will probably be keeping this "etch" to add to this saw's history.

Don't sell your self short on the presentation. This provided me the missing information to straighen my kinked saws, and retension my old fatigued saws. Recommend the hardwood anvil for beginners.

Thanks for sharing how to do this already have some for practice but I have 2 saws I really could use in the shop so hopefully I'm able to get them back to working. Thanks again you explained how to go about this really well.

I’m trying to work out why you have such a small number of subscribers. Your videos and information are excellent. They are also well presented, easy to follow. I have watched you for awhile and I’m surprised you’re not at least 500,000 by now.😉👴🏻🇦🇺

I recently picked up 30 hammer heads that were saved when a well known Sheffield saw manufacturer closed down many years ago.. Most were cross and straight pein combinations and also five double diagonal pein hammers. They range in weight from 4 to 9lbs and some had 14 - 16" remarkably thin handles [sadly badly worm infested] Some heads have never been used and these are ground to various radius rounded peins. Those that had been used, had clearly been dressed to have a central flat 'island' which would be the part actually contacting the blade. I tried out one of the heavier ones on an old saw blade on my anvil and it requires very little effort. The hammer just bounces back for the next blow [to be fair though, the anvil is cast steel and weighs 350lbs]

Yepper well done

Great video and your tips are welcome for straightening saws. I use Japanese saws that are pulled instead of pushed to cut. No bending issues.

Anda sangat hebat,..saya sudah lama ingin tau cara ini,..

You can make them into scrapers or other forms of blades.

Bob, I think that of all the challenges I've faced in woodworking, handsaws are the most daunting. I've gotten to the point that I can use a saw fairly well but when it comes to straightening or sharpening and setting one, I'm at a loss. I think a hands on class would have helped a lot. I think the advice you gave in this video is good. I have a pile of handsaws I've bought for less than $5 and I think I should just pick out a few of the worst of them and resign myself to ruining them as a learning experience. I think that, more than anything, the inability to maintain western saws is what is leading to their demise. You use a japanese saw and when it gets dull you throw it away.

Is it possible to remove visible kink indentations near the middle of the blade? If so, could you do a video showing the method?

What a great video! Thank you for sharing this information. I just rehomed a Disston D-8 with a small curve near the toe that I was hoping to use as my primary saw. In the video you say that although the saw isn't perfectly straight it is still serviceable. Is there a way to correct for the slight blade curvature while in the middle of a cut, or do you reserve cuts requiring precision to your perfect saws?

I don't recall hearing anyone say to start in the middle of the bend, or to retension the plate afterwards. That would help explain why I'm rarely satisfied with my results.

Bob, you mentioned cleaning and polishing the blade. If not worried about the etching, etc., how do you do this for best cutting results? Simply finer and finer sandpaper until shiny, steel wool? Also could you tell us if you use wax or oil, etc? I think a smooth surface might reduce my blades getting stuck and leading to bends in the first place. Until U-tube I'd never heard of lubricating the saw blade.

Thanks for this video Bob. Any advice on getting a rusted screw out of the Handle? I got an old Winchester No. 10 saw at the thrift store and one of the screws is rusted into its binding post. I've used a little rust remover but don't want to damage the handle. I may have to drill it out, but I can't find an exact match replacement screw, so that wouldn't be ideal. Thoughts?

Sadly where I live there are and have been no woodworkers. There are no used tools anywhere of any kind. No flea markets, tag sales, or anything of the sort. Just prairies... and lefsa.

I just did this with a Simmonds cross-cut -- ... all I had was as 12 pound sledge hammer (for an 'anvil') and a ball peen hammer -- but I was able to get it much closer to straight and usable! You mentioned the possibility of 'ruining' a saw in it's more fragile parts -- do you mean actually 'cracking' the saw plate, or is there some other indicator of ruination that you typically are cognizant of?

Interesting! Personally I almost only use frame saws, wich almost never bend in the kerf, and never stay bent when they do. Their only issue really has to do with twist, and you're correcting for it by playing with the blade holders.

Every time I straightened a saw plate by hammering over the entire breadth as you show, a crosswise bend was developed while the lengthwise bend was being solved. I suppose this is the inevitable consequence of the hammer deformtin metal in all directions, not only in the lengthwise direction. For this reason, I now use a "saw doctor's cross-peen hammer" kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oappapl_0d7Wg3k.html (which I ground out of a square-faced hammer) with peens sensibly more curved in one direction than in the other. This hammer allows me to easily address the lengthwise problem and then the crosswise problem.

I admire people who can do this but I can't imagine that this is cost effective. The number of hours spent on this would probably pay for two saws.

I was able to get 3 junk saws straight, went to an 1850s 14 inch disston and fucked it up!

Good videos but a re hash of Paul Sellers work

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ,🇺🇸