How to sharpen a hacksaw for wood Traditional hacksaw for wood is still relevant today. Therefore, in order to achieve high productivity and quality of the manufactured product, it is important to know how to sharpen a hacksaw on wood.
How to determine when it is time to sharpen a hacksaw
An experienced carpenter can tell when the saw is ready to sharpen by:
- The sound of sawing a tree changes;
- The teeth change their shade.
A number of signs are also available to the less experienced:
- Increased material resistance;
- It is difficult to maintain the perpendicularity of the cut;
- The blade does not adhere well to the mowing line of the cut, the line is deflected or bent;
- The blade gets wedged in the wood.
Before sharpening the saw, it is imperative to separate the teeth, that is, to ensure that they are deflected from the plane of the blade at a certain angle. Correctly set teeth guarantee a kerf wide enough to prevent the blade from getting caught in the material. If the teeth are too set, the kerf will be too wide, this will increase the loss of material, the pulling force, and also reduce the accuracy.
If you sharpen the saw correctly on wood, it regains its working qualities.
During sharpening, the following geometrical characteristics of the teeth are restored:
- Step;
- Height;
- Profile angle;
- Bevel angle of cutting edges.
Leveling Height
With different heights of cutting teeth, the efficiency of woodworking is greatly reduced. The higher ones take on a greater load and are subject to accelerated wear, while the lower ones do not participate in cutting. The broach becomes uneven, jerky. Both the accuracy of the cut and the quality of the cut surface are reduced.
Alignment of the height of the teeth should be carried out before sharpening the blade. The height is checked as follows: the canvas is pressed against a sheet of paper lying on the table. The profile is printed on the sheet, and from the print you can determine the height of a particular tooth. To align teeth of different heights, the blade must be clamped in a locksmith vice. The teeth protruding above others must be filed down.
Tool for equalizing the height of the teeth
How to sharpen a hacksaw on wood
Despite the widespread use of circular saws, reciprocating saws and electric jigsaws, the traditional wood saw is preserved in the workshop of every household. With a small amount of work or in hard-to-reach places, where you cannot crawl with a power tool, a hand saw still helps out. For the tool to work with sufficient performance, accuracy and quality, it must be sharpened on time.
How to sharpen a hacksaw yourself
A hacksaw for wood is one of the eternal values.
But, in order for the hand saw to always perform its functions, it must be sharpened correctly.
Basic knowledge of the type of cutting edge and its features will come in handy here.
Of the existing methods, we will consider the safest and most popular, using improvised tools and available for home conditions.
How to sharpen a hacksaw
Question How to sharpen a hacksaw with your own hands? Does not lose its relevance, despite the presence of a modern power tool in every home.
The saw is needed on the farm, irreplaceable on vacation, used for cutting boards, logs, chipboard.
It is also necessary for construction, carpentry and installation work; in the garden and workshop.
In the city, in the country or in the garage, everyone has this time-tested tool.
How do you know when it’s time to sharpen your hacksaw?
How to tell if it’s time to sharpen your tool teeth.
An experienced owner knows when and how to sharpen a hacksaw, but it is not difficult for a common man to determine this moment on his own. Typically, the operating sound and the color uniformity of the cutting edge change.
Sharp cutters are characterized by even wear on the cutting edge.
The following signs indicate the need to correct the saw:
Cutting is hard and uneven;
the cut is uneven;
the web often gets stuck;
it becomes difficult to maintain a given trajectory.
In addition, a blunt hacksaw often gets stuck and requires a lot of effort to complete the process.
How to sharpen a hacksaw with your own hands
How to properly sharpen a hacksaw yourself, if the need arose?
First you need to decide what material the working blade is made of.
Ordinary steel can be corrected independently, and teeth with victorious solders can only be processed on specialized industrial machines.
Some craftsmen, at their own peril and risk, undertake to sharpen a hacksaw with an angle grinder, but this is an unreliable and dangerous method.
To tidy up an ordinary hand saw for wood at home, you need to determine the shape of the teeth, prepare everything you need, and be sure to follow safety precautions.
Hacksaw teeth set
The movement of the blade must be free, for which the saw teeth are set at the same value.
To reduce the coefficient of friction and the clamping of the hacksaw in the cut, its width must be greater than the thickness of the working blade, otherwise the metal heats up and expands, which leads to the saw to jam.
The setting of the hacksaw teeth is performed by bending the cutters to the sides.
The use of pliers does not allow you to get the same angle of inclination with such a tool you can only cut firewood.
To spread the cutters evenly and get an even, neat cut, a homemade setter is used.
To make it, you need a metal plate of arbitrary shape with a thickness of 2-3 mm.
In a simple way, several slits are made to indicate the thickness of the web.
The prong is gripped into the hole and bent back until it reaches the selected stop.
In the second version, a cut is cut in the bar with a metal file, and two holes are drilled to install the limiter.
Turning the sector to the sides allows you to adjust the bend angle.
The figure shows a simple model and wiring with emphasis.
The device circuit is intuitively easy to manufacture and use.
It should be noted that the bend width has its own parameters.
Required tool
Sharpening a hacksaw with a sander or angle grinder requires some skill.
Sharpening a hacksaw mechanically is much safer and easier.
Before starting work, prepare a vise or clamp, a caliper, a hammer and other necessary tools:
Cross saws are sharpened at an angle of 60 degrees with a triangular fine file.
Longitudinal with an angle of less than 60 degrees, use a large file or a diamond file with a fine abrasive.
For the mixed type, you will need a coarse cut file or a fine cut diamond file.
For this operation, a special device for sharpening a wooden block with a cut out socket is useful to protect hands from cuts.
To sharpen a hacksaw using a grinder, you need a cutting wheel with a thickness of 1.2 to 1.4 mm, a diameter of 115 or 125 mm. The angle grinder should be adjustable between 5000 and 8000 rpm. Installing protection is a prerequisite for using this method. As a rule, a self-made transparent plastic shield is used.
Hacksaw sharpening technology for wood
The correct sharpening of the hacksaw should maintain the working tooth profile.
It is determined by the following parameters:
Step and height;
taper angle;
radius of curvature.
The sharpening angle can be set between 30 and 60 degrees, depending on the material.
So, for soft woods, the optimal indicator will be 50 degrees.
It is important to properly fix the blade in a vice, do not clamp it tightly, as the steel will vibrate under the file.
With the help of a workbench and a clamp, you can conveniently fix the hacksaw.
Sharpening is performed by alternating double-sided sharpening, first, one row is passed along the left edges of all teeth.
Then the tool is turned over, and the pass is repeated along the right half of the cutters.
The one-sided method for dressing hand saws is not used; it is only applicable to some types of knives.
Saw set
Sharpening a hacksaw for wood begins with a procedure such as setting teeth. The setting of the hacksaw teeth is performed for such purposes as ensuring the free movement of the blade without jamming. The setting is the bending of the teeth in different directions, alternately, by one amount. This leads to the fact that the kerf width increases, which means that during the sawing process the chip removal process is accelerated.
The amount of tooth spread depends on the thickness of the blade, and is usually 1.5-2 mm. To bend the teeth by the same amount, you will need to use a special device. This device is a metal plate with a special slot. The blade is clamped in a vise so that the links protrude slightly. After that, the process of bending the teeth is carried out. Sharpened teeth must also be bent to the same distance.
How to sharpen a hacksaw on wood
To sharpen a hacksaw on wood, the blade should be fixed in a vice in the same way. Needle files or triangular files with a fine cut are used to sharpen the saw links. Not many people know how to properly sharpen a file on wood, so you should pay as much attention as possible to this process.
- Initially, you need to pick up a file. A file with a fine cut should be used, which should be held with one hand by the handle and the other by the tip of the tool.
- The sharpening angle is determined, which usually ranges from 15 to 30 degrees. The angle is usually determined by eye, but if it is difficult to do this, then you can use special home-made devices, for example, a wooden block. To do this, the bar is turned until it has the shape of a right-angled triangle with angles of 30 and 60 degrees.
- The most important thing when working with a file is the pressure on it. To ensure uniform sharpening, the same number of file passes must be made over each tooth. With experience, you will learn to ensure that the top layer of metal is removed evenly.
- With the help of the prepared device, the sharpening angles are controlled. The process is carried out in a similar way on the reverse side of the web.
Now you know how to properly sharpen the teeth of a hacksaw blade for wood. But the process does not end there, as it will be necessary to align the teeth in height. If they have different heights, the uniformity of the cut will be disturbed. If there are links that are higher than the rest, then their shortening is performed using the same file. The check is carried out using a sheet of paper, to which the blade should be applied with the teeth down. After that, the sizes are compared, and the shortening procedure is repeated.
Why and when to sharpen
The tool under consideration is subjected to various loads during operation, which leads to dulling of the teeth. If you cut with a saw that has dull teeth, the result will be much less effective than a sharp one. In addition, using a saw with blunted teeth is not recommended for the following reasons:
- Decreased tool performance. Not only the powers of the master will be spent, but also his time.
- Decreased accuracy of work. It is impossible to cut wood materials evenly with a blunt-toothed hacksaw, much less to do it neatly.
- Danger of using the tool. In the course of work, the saw will get stuck, jammed, and come off the mowing line, so such work can be dangerous for the master.
A sharp hacksaw is not only easier to work with, but also much safer. To determine that the time has come for sharpening the saw blade for wood, you should pay attention to the following factors:
- The canvas emits a characteristic dull sound. If the master often uses a hacksaw, then it will not be difficult for him to identify such a sound.
- The tips of the teeth are rounded.
- The saw refuses to perform its task when trying to cut wood.
These factors indicate that it is time to sharpen the hacksaw on wood with your own hands. But before you take up the file, you should determine whether these links are subject to sharpening.