Gramercy dovetail saw kit

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Hi mods, I wasn't sure where to post this thread please move it if you consider it so.
Some years (yes years) ago I bought the Gramercy dovetail kit. I kept it as I had other projects ongoing and forgot about it. Last week I made a major tidyng up on my shop and found it so I decided to make it.

I have some small pieces I cut from a pear tree that my FIL fell and cut into pieces as firewood, which made me mad when knew. So I took some of the pieces and they were already split and checked ( you can see it)so I tried to save as much as I could (I'll post the process later on).

In order not to mess it up I'm following the instructions step by step.

Planed the piece to thickness.


Stuck the paper template

Made the holes for the bolts and screw nuts that hold the blade.

Rough cut the shape of the handle.

Mark and cut the blade slot holding the blade between two pieces of maple of the exact half thickness of the handle. ( Here I should have made first the holes for the rib)



to be continued...

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Made the holes for the rib when I was half way done with the blade slot. In order to maintain the stability of the piece I held it with a scrap that I was sure was square. LAter I will have to pare down those holes to accomodate the rib.


This is all for today, I hope to continue tomorrow.
Thanks for watching

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

Knowing your skills as a sculptor, I'm looking forward to seeing how this comes out, Toni.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

Should be really pretty with that pear wood!

 

[Stuart Ablett]

Making one of those is on my bucket list!

 

[Tom Niemi]

Here is a finished one just in case you want reference, but then again, you may already have pictures of it since you made it

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Here is a finished one just in case you want reference, but then again, you may already have pictures of it since you made it
View attachment 114463

In fact I was trying to remember how I did it. In that one I neither had a router bit to make the radius nor a chamfer one to make the chamfers. That one has more hand work if I may say so.

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Well guys...
here is the contiuation:

I used my bran new spindle sander to sand down the curves and get rid of the bandsaw marks.




Then I routed the edges with a radius bit. I got some burn marks that tell me I should have used a slower speed ( noted down for the future)



Sanded it and I could'n resist the temptation of assembling it. Note before these steps it ook me a while to adjust the rib and blade to its socket as I noticed a slight curve on the blade caused by a misaligment of the rib receptacle and the blade slot. (See further down)
)


Mounted the bolts and nuts and sanded them together to make them level with the handle.

Applied tung oil, and this is the result. Sorry for the flash reflection and the bad pictures quality. The real colour is like the picture on the right.

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Final comments:
THe are thing that I should have done differently:

Drill first the holes for the rib and check thoroughly its parallelism with the handle, by inserting the rib without the blade. I didn't do it and as it was slightly misaligned with the saw blade slot it created a bend on the blade, until I fixed it. The result was a not so good fit of the rib in the handle as you can see here:



Use a slower speed on the router to avoid burnt marks.
Use some sort of depth stop when drilling the receptacles for the bolts as I made two of them too dep and I had to put a cardboard whaser underneath to raise them to the right height.

Thanks for watching

 

[Tom Niemi]

Came out nicely Toni and you are already getting use of the spindle sander, great tool aren't they now lets see some of your great dove tails of yours!

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

Came out nicely Toni and you are already getting use of the spindle sander, great tool aren't they now lets see some of your great dove tails of yours!

That's a different story Tom. I have tried the saw and feels great in the hand and cuts perfectly straight. One thing I noticed is that the blade is a tad thicker than the Veritas Gent's saws I have.
This is the Veritas saw


This is the Gramercy one


The measures are in mm. To me it doesn't make any difference, in a way a prefer it because the gent's saw are too flimsy when cutting hard woods.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I somehow missed the end of this thread, Toni. The saw handle came out looking great!