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Your Common Handsaws

Hello , and welcome to Home Construction Shop, In this presentation we are going to look at the handsaw and a couple very common woodworking  handsaws. To the learned tradesman they are a part of his life , but to the learning layman , there may be just a few important things to be pointed out. But all in all, there is always something to learn here at Home Construction Shop. Lets take a look a very common woodworking hand tool , the handsaw. There are a few different types of  hand saws , used for different types of cutting such as ripping and crosscutting. Whenever we cut in the direction of the grain of the wood, we are said to be ripping, and so to rip a piece of wood we use …yes… a Rip Saw. In turn, to cut across the grain of a piece of wood , we use the cross-cut saw.

RIP SAW

CROSS CUT SAW

Now when looking at each handsaw , there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference from this view except the rip saw has larger teeth. Having these two types of saws in your shop, it is important to understand their differences.  For each hand saw to do the work efficiently for their purpose, their teeth must be configured in a certain way. Lets look at the difference between the two teeth patterns between the rip saw and the cross-cut saw.

As we take a closer look at the handsaw images above,

we see a huge difference. On the left we have the Rip Saw and on the right we have the Cross Cut Saw. Notice the beveled teeth and serrated edges of the Cross Cut Saw on the right. Designed to tear into the wood expelling large wood fibres as it cuts across the grain. With the rip saw the teeth are not beveled and not much of a serrated edge.

These teeth are designed to take a finer cut through the wood as the cut is made along the grain rather than across. The wood fibres during a cut with a rip saw are much finer and the cut is much smoother.

Below we take another closer comparison between the two types of handsaw.

You can easily tell which is a rip saw and which is a cross-cut saw.

The top handsaw is the rip saw, and the bottom is the cross cut saw, if your still guessing. The teeth on each hand saw are bent to the left and to the right alternately which makes the kerf, which is the width of the cut, the teeth are bent enough to make the kerf wider than the saw to make smooth passage through the wood without binding. If you notice, as it is clearly indicated in the images of each handsaw shown, the teeth on the cross-cut saw are smaller. Since the teeth are smaller then you would have a smaller and more shallow kerf, since the bends in the teeth would not be as extreme as a rips saw.

When acknowledging that characteristic of each saw, you will understand that when using a crosscut saw to rip, you will run into continuous binding.
With this short study at the of two very commonly used handsaws, we can see as common as they are, they are quite different in their configuration and purpose.

I hope some of you gathered some new understanding for the use of each handsaw in your next home construction project.

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