Kissing cousins: Japanese saw sharpening — I
It’s often said that the angles on Japanese crosscut sawteeth are complicated and confusing. I think that they don’t have to be. There is that third facet that is characteristic of Japanese crosscut sawteeth that doesn’t really exist in western saws, but if you temporarily ignore it, it’s easy to see where the three facets of a Japanese crosscut sawtooth fit in.
Here’s a mockup of crosscut sawteeth on a western saw (with apologies to well-known Japanese saw aficionado Ron Herman).
Now make them tall and skinny, which increases the volume of the gullet. This is a good thing, as it means that there’s more room in the gullet for sawdust to go, which helps keep the saw from clogging.
From a topographic standpoint, there’s really no difference between the crosscut teeth of a western saw and this mockup.
Now let’s lean the saw teeth to the right a little.
Now we can slice off the top of the sawtooth.
This is very close to what a Japanese crosscut sawtooth looks like. Since the teeth are leaning to the right, that’s where the handle would be, and the saw would be pulled to the right to make the cut.
UPDATE: I wasn’t happy with the mockups that I originally used for this post, so I finally got around to making a new set of mockups that I like a lot better, and used them to reshoot the photos.
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