How to make your own dovetail saw

Workshop 7 988 0

Such instruments are usually made in Europe, America or Japan, so their price is corresponding, that is, high. But you can make a dovetail saw yourself without much expense, using ordinary tools and without having high qualifications.

Will need

Before starting work, you should prepare the following materials and products:

old hacksaw blade;
brass strip;
brass pins;
oak blank;
pen stencil;
drying oil and napkins;
bolts and nuts.

We will need: files, hacksaws, clamps, carbide scraper, axe, plane, drill with attachments, chisel and chisel, semicircular rasp, emery, etc.

Saw manufacturing process

Using wet polishing at the finish, we tidy up the fragment cut from an old hacksaw blade, wiping it dry with napkins.

We clamp the workpiece in a vice with wooden pads and a flat metal file, align the edge for cutting teeth, checking with a measuring tool.

We stick tape along the processed edge onto the workpiece, and marking paper on top and cut it along the contour of the workpiece.Using the markings, we cut the teeth with a triangular file and check them by cutting the wooden blank lengthwise.

Using a hacksaw, we separate two blanks from the brass strip, which we clamp one by one in a vice, cover the width of the part with a steel strip and press it with clamps.

We remove the metal layer from the open part of the brass strips using a file and a carbide scraper, the total thickness of which should be slightly less than the thickness of the blade.

In the brass blanks we drill two holes approximately in the middle of the sample at some distance from the ends. We insert the pins into them and place the saw blade into the sample until it stops in them.

Then we pull out the pins and flatten them with a hammer at one end. We compress the ends and the canvas with pins with clamps and cut off the excess from above. We flatten the protruding part of the pins with a hammer on an anvil.

We clean the butt with a file, controlling the geometry with a ruler.

Using a wedge, hammer and ax, we make a saw handle from solid oak wood.

Next, we process it with a plane, forming a flat surface in order to paste the handle stencil.

According to the stencil, we process the workpiece with a drill with a Forstner drill, a hacksaw, an axe, a plane, a chisel and a chisel until the required outline is obtained. We finish the handle with a semicircular rasp, an abrasive wheel and a semicircular file.

We make a cut in the handle and sand it with sandpaper. We shorten the brass cap at one end, and select a groove in the handle into which we insert one edge of the blade and the pad.

Through the handle, butt and blade, we drill two through holes with a drill with a refractory plate. We sand the handle with fine sandpaper and wipe it with a napkin soaked in drying oil.

We put the handle in place, insert the bolts with a semicircular head into the holes, tighten the spherical nuts on the back side and correct the teeth with a file.