Benefits of Japanese Pull Saws
George VondriskaDescription
George Vondriska demonstrates the benefit of using Japanese Pull Saws to make cuts on your woodworking projects that aren’t quite right for a power tool. He explains why the saw has two different sets of teeth – fine on one side for cross-cutting wood and aggressive on the other for ripping – and makes a cut with the saw to show you how simple it is to use.
I'm working on this bedside table and in order to make the shelf that'll fit into the table, I have to notch out for the legs. This is a case where, rather than try to find a power tool set up that'll make those notches happen, it's a lot easier to simply do this by hand. I'm gonna use a Japanese pull saw and it kinda begs the question, what's the dealio with the two edges on a Japanese pull saw? On this side, the teeth are very fine. On this side, they're more aggressive. If I was just handing you a handsaw, you'd probably know what the dealio is which is more aggressive teeth are used for ripping operations where you're cutting with the grain, the finer teeth are used for operations where you're cross-cutting, cutting across the grain. Perfect tool for this application because, in order to cut this notch out, one of those cuts is a cross-cut, on one of them, we gotta get ripped. So, I'm gonna use the cross-cut blade first. And then, using the other side of the blade, come back for my rip cut. And with our double-edged Japanese saw, we can make short work out of notches that require both cross-cutting and ripping.
Awfully shaky workbench. I'd expect you'd have one which was more stable.
I've found that although it might not be the proper way to use the saw, the crosscut side works better for short ripping runs, and leaves a much cleaner cut, in the same way a normal crosscut saw does.