Building A Lie-Nielsen Saw Vise

This simple saw vise took about 30 minutes to build from scraps. The upper and lower spacers provide clearance for saw handles and backsaw spines. The halves are hinged with squares of leather.

In his videos about sharpening rip and crosscut saws, Tom Lie-Nielsen uses a simple plywood saw vise that he says they use every day in the saw shop. It sits on the screw and guide rails of a bench vise and grips the edge of the saw for filing. I like its simplicity and ease of use for both tiny backsaws and large panel saws.

I made mine 8"x18". That's larger than necessary for joinery backsaws, but accommodates my largest rip saw. It's made from 1/2" plywood and 3/4" pine. Since I have a leg vise on my Roubo workbench rather than a bench vise with guide rods, I added cleats to the sides, 4 1/2" from the bottom edge; they sit on the top of the bench and leg vise chop to support the saw vise when the leg vise is loose. They also work well with my bench-on-bench.


Cutting the sides from 1/2" plywood.


Ripping a pine 1x2 (actual dimensions 3/4"x1 1/2") down the middle for the upper spacers.


Nailing on an upper spacer; the lower spacer is 3/4"x1 1/4". The spacers are also  glued on.


A sharp chisel makes a good leather cutter.


Nailing a leather hinge onto the lower spacers.


Nailing on a side cleat.


With the saw vise clamped into the leg vise, chamfering the outside edges and planing the spacers down even. Other than good mating surfaces, there's not much precision required here.


My largest saw clamped up for sharpening. The bottom edge of the handle just sits on the lower spacer, leaving the teeth exposed for filing, but fully gripped by the upper spacer to minimize vibration (i.e. SCREECHING as you run the file across).


My smallest backsaw, a fine LN dovetail saw, going in for sharpening. You can see how the cleats on the sides support the saw vise when the leg vise is loose.


This vise also works well with my bench-on-bench, bringing the sharpening work up to a good height so I don't have to stoop over. Again, the cleats support the saw vise when the twin-screw vise is loose.

Sharpening saws is easy, only takes about 10 minutes and well worth the time, but is a bit close and tedious. A 26"-long saw plate filed at 6 PPI has 156 little teeth, and a 9" backsaw plate at 15 PPI has 135! A decent saw vise is a big help.

Making A Cutting Gauge

The finished gauge. I should probably chamfer the ends of the arm a bit.

Bob Rozaieski recently did a very nice video blog post on making Dean Jansa's marking gauge from the December, 2006 issue of Popular Woodworking. I remembered wanting to build that gauge then; this finally gave me the kick to do it, so I dug out my old copy.

However, I ended up making one change. The original was a pin marking gauge based on one in the Seaton chest, but I turned it into a cutting gauge instead, for several reasons.

The first was watching Steve Brown of the North Bennet Street School on an epsiode of Rough Cut, where he and Tommy Mac built a "Shaker-inspired night stand." Steve marked out the leg mortises with a cutting gauge, and it was beautiful to see how smoothly the gauge flowed along the wood as he pulled it. He also had a particular way of holding it that I'll come back to.

Second, in Ian Kirby's The Complete Dovetail, he strongly recommends a cutting gauge rather than a pin gauge, due to the clean cut line. He pushes it, using an overhand grip.

Finally, I met Matt Kenney, Fine Woodworking associate editor, at the Lie-Nielsen hand tool event at Phil Lowe's Furniture Institute of Massachusetts last Friday, after I had already started making my gauge. He had a bench setup with grooving planes, gauges, and bench appliances, all of which he had made. His gauges were cutting style, and he said he made the cutters from sabre saw blades with the teeth ground off. As I was admiring them, I decided to adapt the one I had in progress to a cutter.

So yes, it took inspiration from five people to get me to make this gauge.

This is a good project for using up scraps. I had a few small scraps of mahogany, so used those. Mahogany probably isn't the greatest wood for a gauge due its relative softness, but as I started working it I was reminded once again what a fabulous material it is. It works like butter.


Ripping the piece for the head.


Final smoothing to width with a #4.


Resawing to thickness. The waste will provide the wedge stock.


Chopping out the tapered wedge mortise.


Final cleanup of the mortise with a plane float (which is meant for a different kind of wedge mortise, but it's the same operation).


Chopping the arm mortise. I didn't have a 5/8" chisel, so I did it with a 3/8".


Ripping out the arm piece.


Final very careful smoothing of the arm. I still managed to get it a little too thin, so there's gappage in the mortise, but the wedge locks it tight.


Grinding the teeth off a sabre saw blade. I sanded the paint off the sides, put a round profile on the end per Kirby's recommendation, and sharpened it up on oilstones.


Mortising the arm for the cutter and wedge. This is getting pretty delicate, so the machinist's parallel clamp prevents splitting.


After hogging off most of the waste with a chisel, tapering the wedge by running it over the bottom of the #4. Just watch those fingertips!


Final delicate paring on the bench hook to shape the wedge with a little finial at the end.


Roughing out the curve on the head with a chisel.


Final shaping with a cheap four-in-hand rasp. The file card on the bench is necessary to clean out the dust in the rasp's teeth periodically.


Last step before wedging it up is to pare down the bevel on the bottom edge of the head.

I may have to remake the arm wedge. I ended up paring it down a little too much, so when I push it in to lock the arm, the wedge goes almost all the way into the head. When I loosen it, the finial is too small to keep the wedge in the head; it can fall out if I'm not careful.

Now, back to the way Steve Brown used the gauge. He held it in an underhand grip, thumb on top, the arm between first and second fingers. The fingers curl around the bottom bevel.


Marking out on some scrap for practice. Smooth!

This is very comfortable, but more importantly, as you draw it back along the wood, your fingertips press the bottom bevel against the side face of the work, while your thumb presses the gauge down on the top face. This gives very smooth control, even if the grain tries to carry the gauge off course. With a sharp cutter, the result is a crisp clean line. Very subtle, but very effective.

I tried it with the bevel on the cutter oriented both ways, toward the head and away. It works best with the bevel facing the head, due to the wedging action of the bevel drawing the head against the work. That's good for rabbets, fillisters, dovetail baselines, and tenon shoulders. However, for mortise outlines, bevel away from the head is better. Depending on the operation, put it on the waste side of the line, leaving a flat cut on the good side.

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Building A Gramercy Bow Saw

Wow, summer's here and the time is right for ... everything! Too many things competing for too little time. I'm a little behind on posting projects here.

Back when I ordered the Gramercy holdfasts for my Roubo workbench, I also ordered the parts to build one of their bow saws. This consists of the blades and brass pins. Joel has all the plans and instructions posted on the website.

Let's get one little faux pas out of the way right off. Joel uses hickory for the frame. Great, a couple years ago I bought one board each of a bunch of different domestic and exotic species from The Woodery, so I had a piece of hickory buried in my stack. I dug it out, thinking I had gotten a bigger piece.

After a few different steps working it, I started to think this was more like a tropical hardwood, especially on the glass-like end grain. This wood was darker than the wood in the Gramercy photos, but it was clearly not rosewood or padauk or bubinga or cocobolo. Finally I checked a little deeper in my stack, and I found that 8' piece of hickory. So what was this stuff? It had a wonderful scent when I cut it, peppery with a strong cinnamon.

Checking the Woodery website, I finally identified it as Honduras rosewood. I was used to seeing darker rosewood. No problem, Honduras rosewood is a good choice for tools. The only issue is that it has at least a 20% higher specific gravity than hickory according to the figures I've seen, making the saw a little heavier. Part of the charm of this saw is its light weight for easy handling.

Rough-cutting the pieces to length.

Planing to proper thickness. This wood is like planing a piece of glass; it requires a very sharp iron.

Notching the end for starting the saw to rip an arm to width. This is especially helpful in this hard wood to keep the saw from jumping when starting the cut.

Initial rip cut.

After flipping the piece over, ripping from the other end to complete the cut. And hopefully the twain shall meet.

Jointing the cut edge of the remainder so I can gauge it for the width of the second arm. Not really necessary, but this wood is fun to work, it's so crisp.

Using a bow saw to make a bow saw: cutting the curved outline of an arm.

Using a coping saw for the tighter curves.

For best match, I used the first arm as the template for the second.

How do you make a bow saw if you don't have a bow saw? The kerf-n-chisel method: cutting a series of kerfs down to the outline.

Chiseling off the waste between the kerfs. Be sure to stop the kerfs well before the line in case the chisel chips too much out.

Cleaning up the rough-chiseled edge with a spokeshave.

Forming the curved mortise shoulder for the stretcher with an in-cannel gouge.

Refining the shape with a rasp.

Final shaping with the scraper.

Using the scraper on this wood was a revelation, the second big lesson on this project (after learning to tell the difference between hickory and rosewood). It took wonderful curls, acting more like some kind of carving tool. The surface it left was like polished glass. While this wood is hard and dense, it's a bit brittle across the grain, and I think it's that brittleness that makes it work so nicely with the scraper.

Next step will be tapering the arms.

(Continue to part 2)

Ryoba Tenon Cheeks

In this blog post, Chris Schwarz used a flush-cut saw and guide block to cut tenon shoulders. It produced excellent results, and got me to thinking about  using a ryoba and guide to cut the cheeks.

A little trial and error showed it could be done with a simple jig. Like the flush-cut saw, the ryoba has no set to its teeth, so it won't damage the jig (not too much, those teeth are wicked) and leaves a smooth surface.

The jig took all of 10 minutes to make. The only requirements are a flat base board and guide pieces of equal thickness. You can see where I let the saw flex too much and the sides of the teeth chewed on the jig. It uses my favorite all-purpose precision shims, children's flash cards. The ones here are notched to slip over the parallel guide on my leg vise.

A test piece of cherry ready to cut, with enough shims to leave the desired tenon thickness.

Cutting the first corner. Use the rip side of the ryoba.

The next corner. The teeth of the ryoba actually work quite well against the grain like this.

Taking it flat down to the mark.

After flipping the piece over in the jig and cutting the other cheek, resulting in a perfectly centered tenon. Notice how uniform and parallel the cuts are.

Setup for the flush-cut shoulder cut.

Cutting the shoulder.

The photo just doesn't capture how clean this cheek is. Notice the small reddish streak lower right on the bench: the back edge of the flush cut saw is sharp, so don't flatten your fingers against it while sawing!

The other shoulder. I did a lousy marking job on this test piece, so my shoulder lines don't match on both sides.

The finished tenon straight from the two saws. Provided the mortise is an accurate match, this will be a nice fit.

My personal goal is to develop the skill to saw tenons like this free-hand with a backsaw. I'm not there yet, so it's nice to know this technique is available.

Stupid Sawyer Tricks: the precision of this cut got me to wondering just how thin a slice I could take. I added 6 flash cards to shim it up a bit higher.

Ridiculously thin resawing.

The slice isn't much thicker than the saw kerf.

Finally Monsieur, a waffer-thin mint!

There are some practical applications for such thin stuff:

• Slice off small veneers of really expensive stuff like zebrawood for book-matching on a small box lid. 
• Make matching veneers for shimming up a loose joint or dutchman patches. 
• Do a series of slices for a small bent-wood lamination.
• Make various small craft items, like bookmarks, wooden cards, or Christmas ornaments.
• Use the jig to cut key slots in the mitered corners of a frame (make two cuts, leaving thin waste that you can clean out with an extra-thin mortise chisel), then cut contrasting key stock this way.

The jig and card shims give you very precise control of the slice thickness. You could probably continue for some distance down the piece for longer slices, although at some point it would be worth putting a guide piece down the other side of the stock. Then you have your own custom micro veneer mill!

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