Any Crosscut Sawyers?

Hello Permie world. I thought it would be interesting/interest some of you to throw a thread about crosscut saws out there. Seems like they might be a hit with some of you.

Im going to include a few pictures of various saws I have fixed up over the past few years. Yes, filing is not particularly fun but it pays off in the performance of the saw. Im but a









If you get them set up right you can put up quite a bit of wood without that much effort. With another good sawyer I can cut through a 22 inch pine in about a minute and a quarter, and 10 inch hard maple in around a minute going at a sustainable pace without crowding the saw.

I have a 2 man in the standard pattern like the one man in your top pic, and a one man with a champion tooth pattern. 5 foot 2 man 3 foot one man. both acquired for 10 dollars. and fixed/sharpened in a few hours. now i keep the one man in the car with a small axe and some other hand tools in case i have to build a cabin all of a sudden.

I have 2 plain tooth saws, the one in the top pic and another thats the same length but a little different feel to it. They are great, really easy to sharpen. Not quite as fast as a raker tooth saw and maybe a little harder running but they make up for it by being simpler to maintain.

I want to be!! Does that count?

I just found a decent 3 footer, but am still looking for a larger one man/combo (for firewood production) and a 5 or 6 foot two man (just for fun).

Any hints/tips you can give for sharpening and tuning would be appreciated.

3 footers take some skill to use because they are so short. Good for stuff under 8 inches though. A good 4 foot one man saw and a standard 2 man 5 and a half footer should fill out a good cache of firewood saws. double bucking is way faster, so find another good sawyer to help.

There were a bunch of great videos from Warren Miller on filing crosscuts on vimeo a while ago, but they are not up anymore. Those were great, the best videos on the web. There is a video on youtube by a guy named PATCsawyer who did a little how to. It was a good general intro to filing. There is also a crosscut forum called crosscutsawyer.com, that is probably the only place I know of to really pry some info from. The rest I just kind of picked up here and there.

The 3 footer will be for my pre-teen boys to use. The bigger saws for the teenagers. I will just have to supervise Or that is the plan...

Thanks for the leads on sharpening.

Yup. If you have any specific questions about filing or straightening I can try to help, just ask.

I'm just getting geared up and looking forward to sawing this fall. I picked up a 5'-6" 2 man bucking saw with handles and in great shape for $35 also a 5'-0"2 man felling saw with handles also for $15 but my one man 3'-6" was alot more but was in great shape. Any pointers would be good.

just make sue your saws are sharp, and if you're working with another person- make sure to have good communication between the two of you. theres nothing worse than trying to cut smooth and working against each other. keep your blades oiled when not in use, and get some old firehose to protect your saw teeth.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=crosscut+sawyer&oq=crosscut+sawyer&gs_l=youtube.3..35i39.4205.7319.0.7479.15.15.0.0.0.0.90.966.15.15.0...0.0...1ac.YQs93qV2sAM

check these out. the forest service videos are nice, if a little slow.

Id swing over to the crosscutsawyer.com forum. If you want to learn to file that is a great place. Sounds like you got some nice saws. Im still trying to find a 5 and a half soft wood bucker, they are popular though with the trailcrews so hard to find cheap.

On her site, Dolly chapman has some PDF downloads with some good general info:

http://www.sharpcrosscut.com/saw-flyers

This past fall I bought a 42" one man with tuttle tooth pattern for hardwood. I am stillworking on my technique, and will need to sharpen it soon. While the saw buck plans I found were suited for cutting with a chainsaw, they did not do well with the lateral forces the saw was causing. I did some mods to help with that, as well as holding down smaller wood so it didn't spin in the buck. Here is an early photo of the concept. I have since made a more permanent setup, and it works fairly well.