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Tenon saws are one of the three essential backsaws for building furniture (the other two are the carcase saw and the dovetail saw), but until recently your choices were limited to:

1. A vintage tenon saw that you resurrected from the dead
2. A Japanese saw that may or may not be suited to cutting tenons
3. The excellent Lie-Nielsen tenon saw
4. Some other frustrating new English-named saw.

A couple years ago, sawmaker Mike Wenzloff started making tenon saws, including my freakishly huge Kenyon-style tenon saw that I have waxed on about so endlessly that you’d think that Mike must be washing and waxing my car every weekend. (He’s not, though he’s offered; it’s a long drive from Oregon to Cincinnati.)

And now Wenzloff, his sons, his lovely spouse and probably the family dog all make thousands of Western saws for Lee Valley Tools. It’s a lot of work for the Wenzloff family, I know, but it’s an absolute boon to woodworkers because now we have more choices in the marketplace. (Also, as noted in the comments, I don't own an Adria tenon saw, another new premium brand. I've used the Adria carcase and dovetail saws and they are good. I have no reason to suspect the tenon is any different.)

At issue here is not which brand of saw cuts better tenons. That point is honestly and truly moot. Both the Lie-Nielsen and Wenzloff brands come sharp, accurately filed and well-set. They both cut well once the saw has been broken in with some work and wax.

Instead, what’s important is the handle of the saw and the number of teeth. These factors will help you determine which saw is right for you. I’ve had a Lie-Nielsen tenon saw since the day the company started making them. I’ve had the Kenyon tenon saw for a couple years, and two weeks ago I ordered the Wenzloff Large Tenon Saw from Lee Valley. After a weekend of breaking in the new saw during a sawing class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking, I have a good feel for the Wenzloff tool and how is compares to the Lie-Nielsen version and the Kenyon tenon saw.

Let’s start with the teeth: The Kenyon tenon saw sold today is 10 points per inch (ppi). On my unit, Wenzloff filed the first couple inches with progressive rake. These few extra degrees of rake in the starting teeth make the saw easier to start, though not as easy as a progressive-pitch saw. Wenzloff says he'll add this rake (no more than 4°) to custom saws by request.

The Wenzloff & Sons Large Tenon Saw has 12 ppi. And the Lie-Nielsen has 10 ppi.

I was surprised how the difference in the number of teeth made a difference in the tool's cutting speed. The Kenyon tenon saw was the fastest because it was the longest, heaviest and (tied for) coarsest. The Lie-Nielsen was the second fastest, and the Wenzloff Large Tenon was a bit slower.

I prefer fast and coarse saws, but not everyone does. Beginners like finer saws, and people who do work in thin stock really like finer saws. So don’t judge a saw on its speed. It’s not a race. But if you work with thick stock, think coarse. Thin stock? Think fine.

The handles are also different. The Kenyon tenon saw has the most curves and feels more “made by hand” than the other saws. But the Lie-Nielsen is the most comfortable handle to my hand overall. I’m told that I have “girl hands,” but these girl hands seem to like slightly larger saw totes.

The Wenzloff Large Tenon Saw has a tote that appears to have more hand work than the Lie-Nielsen. The flats on the sides of the tote have been well-faired into the curves, and I suspect it is a process done by hand or with an inflatable drum on a sanding machine.

The tote of this Wenzloff saw feels good in my hands, but it’s just a little on the small side for me.

The other differences are aesthetic. The Lie-Nielsen comes stock with a maple handle (usually curly maple) and it looks like a 19th-century Disston. The Kenyon tenon saw is traditional European beech and reeks of the late 18th-century aesthetic. The Wenzloff Large Tenon Saw is bubinga, which matches Lee Valley’s house line of Veritas planes, and looks quite old school.

If you’ve read this far, you probably feel like I owe you a solid recommendation. I’m going to let you down. I’m delighted with all three saws and wouldn’t sell a single one. (Yes, Scott, I’m talking to you.) But what delights me even more is that we have a choice about what to buy. Not as many choices as the 1808 furniture-maker, but it’s a start.

— Christopher Schwarz

When you buy a handplane (even a Veritas or a Lie-Nielsen), it's not going to work well out of the box. You really need to hone the iron to do decent work.

However, with saws, it's more complicated.

If you buy a cheap Western handsaw or backsaw, chances are that the teeth aren't sharp or properly set. So you need to either learn to sharpen your saw or send it to somebody who already knows.

But if you buy a premium Western saw – Lie-Nielsen, Adria, Wenzloff & Sons – the challenges are different. The premium saws are set up and sharp, but I think you need to break in the saw before it will cut smoothly. Most new Western saws are too grabby at first, especially for beginners. But after about a dozen tenons the saw will be easier to start and will run more smoothly in its kerf.

I was reminded of this when I was teaching a class in precision sawing this weekend at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking. Many of the students brought new premium saws to the class, and several of them brought their new saws up to my bench and asked the question: "Could you try my saw and tell me if it's cutting well?"

On a couple saws, the teeth were set too strong on one side. We stoned those teeth (a couple strokes on a #1,000-grit stone) to help straighten out the way they steered.

But with most of the students' saws I tried out they cut true, but they were harder to start than my saws or they didn't run as smoothly in the kerf. In fact, one student, Glen Koopmans, had a heck of a time with his new tenon saw. It was hanging in the cut and just not working well at all.

He stayed late into the evening trying to figure out if it was just him or just the saw.

The next morning, we cut a few tenons with his saw and then lubricated the blade with some paraffin wax (I use canning wax from the grocery). By the end of the weekend class, Glen's saw was running as smoothly as mine, which has logged a couple hundred tenons by now.

What happened? Three things. One: The wax helped lubricate the blade in the cut, which helped reduce the grabbiness of the new teeth. Two: the dozen or so joints that Glen cut with the saw helped ease the freshly filed edges on the teeth. And three: After about a dozen tenons, Glen was a much better sawyer.

At the end of the day Sunday, Glen was cutting the cheeks of massive half-lap joints in resinous yellow pine for the sawbenches we were constructing. Even all the way across the room, you could hear how smoothly his tenon saw was cutting. And the resulting cheek looked as good as the cheek of a table-saw tenon.

So before you send your new saw back to the factory, put some wax on the blade and cut some tenons first. You might just be surprised how nice your saw is and how easy it is (really!) to saw.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I first built my French Roubo-style workbench, I put a sliding deadman on it to help support doors and long panels. But I have long intended to replace that deadman with a sliding leg vise.

Roubo actually shows this arrangement in one of his volumes, and it is a tempting morsel. However, as you will soon see, it is also an engineering challenge.

I'm tempted to build it because it would be the final solution for dovetailing and working on the long edges of boards. One end of the work would be held in the regular leg vise (located on the left leg). And the other end would be grasped by the sliding leg vise. With a long bench (mine is 8' long) you could hold almost any piece of wood you would find in a furniture-making shop.

The engineering challenge comes when you try to build it so it is sturdy and won't damage the bench. It can be done, of course, but adding the sliding leg vise as an accessory requires some careful thought.

Luckily, industrious reader Bill Liebold has built the sliding leg vise on his 12'-long Dominy-style workbench with an end vise. He is smitten with the functionality of the sliding leg vise, but is still working out the engineering aspects of it.

The real issue is that the sliding panel moves in a groove that is routed into the underside of the benchtop. When you really cinch down the sliding vise, it can bow out the front edge of the workbench.

"I was able to bow the front edge of the bench top but that was with far more pressure than I need to hold a piece of wood," Liebold writes. "I did it to see what would happen if I overtightened the vice. I like to experiment."

If you are considering adding a sliding leg vise, you are going to want to change the groove in the underside. Personally, I'd locate it as far back as possible from the front edge of the benchtop. Liebold thinks it would be best to have the groove start 3" in from the front edge, and to use a 1"-thick tenon on the sliding panel. I think that sounds about right.

There are lots of other ways to go about this, I'm sure. And now I'm toying again with the idea of adding a sliding leg vise if I can just get the engineering worked out in my head.

— Christopher Schwarz

The fore plane is a traditional English tool used to get rough boards fairly flat so that you can then make them really flat with a jointer plane and ready to finish with a smoothing plane, scrapers and (sometimes) sandpaper.

Fore planes are supposed to be about 14" to 18" long. If you want to use an old metal plane as a fore plane, a No. 5 jack plane or No. 6 fore plane would be a good choice. I use a Hock Tools A2-steel replacement blade in my fore plane. A2 is a little harder to sharpen for me, but this modern steel takes a heck of a beating before it gives up, so it's perfect for a fore plane. I also have a couple wooden-bodied fore planes that are nice because their light weight makes them less tiring to use.

Fore planes are supposed to have a curved cutting edge and are used directly across and diagonal to the grain of your board. Most people understand the idea of working across the grain (it allows you to take a deeper cut without tear-out). But many people are flummoxed by sharpening the curve on the edge. In fact, I've had about a half dozen readers send me their irons and ask me to do it for them.

Because I don't want to open a sharpening service, here is how I grind and hone the curved edge of a fore plane's iron. It's a simple process. And if you take your time the first time you do it, I know that you will succeed.

This week I noticed that the edge of my metal fore plane was chipped up and the tool was getting quite hard to push. It was time to grind and hone a fresh edge. The first thing to do is mark the shape of the curve on the iron so I can replicate that shape. I use a curve that is an 8" radius. I've experimented with lots of curves between 10" and 6" radii. I like 8".

I have a wooden template that is the same width as my iron and has the curve shaped on one end. I place the template on flat face of the iron and mark the curve with an "extra fine" point Sharpie.

Place the template on your iron and trace its edge on your iron. A thin, consistent line is best.

Then I go to my grinder to remove all the nasty chipped-up metal. I keep my grinder's stock tool rest set to always grind a 25° bevel. I don't futz around with the tool rest. The first thing to do is to grind away the excess metal right up to your marked curve. This is done with the iron at 90° to the stone. I just balance the iron on the tool rest and go to town.

Grinding at 90° to the stone removes metal quickly to the shape you want and it creates a small flat on the edge of your iron. This is a good thing. The flat helps prevent your steel from overheating while you grind away the bevel at 25°. Thin steel heats up really quickly.

Hold the iron 90° to the wheel and show the edge to the iron. Remove all the steel right up to your Sharpie line. The first time you do this, take your time. It gets easy real quick.

When you get to the Sharpie line, put the iron flat on your tool rest and start grinding the bevel until the flat spot on the end is almost – repeat almost – gone. You remove the last little whisker of the flat on the sharpening stones.

Start by showing the middle of the iron to the grinder wheel. You'll feel when the bevel is flat on the stone. Then sweep the iron right to grind up to the left corner. Try to keep the bevel in full contact with the wheel the entire time. Then repeat this process and sweep left.

Continue to grind and watch the flat shrink. Don't use a lot of pressure when applying the iron to the wheel or you will cook your edge (it will get black).

Show the center of the iron to the wheel and sweep left or right. Here I'm sweeping right to grind to the left corner.

Here is my completed edge, ready for honing.

Here is the flat left on the tip of that edge. The reflection makes it look bigger than it really is. It's a little less than 1/64".


You can then hone the edge freehand. The edge doesn't have to be perfect because the fore plane never produces a finished surface. However, you can use your cheap little side-clamp honing guide to help you (and your edge will look a lot sweeter, as well).

Put the iron in your honing guide and set the iron to hone a 30° secondary bevel. Place the iron on your coarse stone (#1,000-grit or coarser if you've got it). Put finger pressure hard on one corner of the iron and press that to the stone. Pull the guide toward you and shift your pressure to the other corner. This will feel awkward at first. But eventually you'll rock it smoothly and naturally.

Repeat this process by starting with all your finger pressure on the other corner. If you are doing this correctly you should see an X-shape appear on your stone. Then it's just like sharpening any tool.

Rock the edge back and forth as you move the jig. This might look hard. It's not. It also tends to shape the wheel of your honing guide into a slight barrel shape – which is a good thing.

Remove the flat bit on the end of the iron – you'll know it's gone when you can feel a burr on the other face of the iron. Then move up the grits until you run out of grits or patience.

Now reassemble your chipbreaker and your plane. Sight down the sole of the plane and tweak the lateral-adjustment lever until the curve of the iron is in the center of the sole. This is easy to see.

When you are done sharpening you should have a nice even secondary bevel.

Then work directly across the grain of a board. Increase the projection of the iron until you are removing material quickly and can easily push the plane. The shavings should be thick – I shoot for 1/32"-thick with most woods.

You can probably take a larger shaving in a softwood, but I usually poop out if I try to take a shaving thicker than 1/32" – but yet, that's a lot of material for one stroke of a plane.

The fore plane is really useful for me, even though I have a nice powered planing machine. It allows me to remove material in a localized area with ease or to peel the edge off a rough board faster than my jointer (because I can work only the high spots). And it allows me to flatten boards and panels that are too wide for my jointer and planer.   

— Christopher Schwarz

“After many vain attempts at ornamentation ‘on my own’ I learned that choice classic designs had been well thought out and established before my birth. It was for me to study them, to revel in their line and proportion until the spirit became my own and controlled my perception.”

-- Walter Rose, “The Village Carpenter”

Among all the many types of handplanes, it is the so-called moulding planes that generate the most confusion, consternation and frustration among beginning woodworkers.

Drawing a fair moulding profile, selecting the tools to cut it and actually proceeding with the work is enough to make many woodworkers cling to their collection of router bits forever.

If you’re curious about cutting mouldings by hand, then I heartily recommend a new DVD from Don McConnell and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that will lay the groundwork for you to understand the tools and how they are wielded.

And as valuable as these lessons are, I think the most eye-opening aspect of the DVD is that you get to watch McConnell make several profiles from start to finish. Seeing the profiles appear stroke by stroke, plane by plane, is a convincing argument that the work is fairly straightforward and do-able. And plus, the results are more beautiful than anyone can achieve with a routed and sanded moulding.

McConnell is, in my opinion, one of the most knowledgeable scholars on early woodworking tools who is working today. Plus, McConnell spent many years as an interpreter at The Ohio Village, a professional hand-tool furniture-maker and a highly regarded ornamental carver in the Columbus, Ohio, area. I’ve always thought of him as the Indiana Jones of the hand tool world – his encyclopedic knowledge of early woodworking is backed by years of putting his book-smarts to use at the bench.

As a result, this entire DVD is a jewel. McConnell, now a planemaker at Clark & Williams, explains the basic anatomy of mouldings so you can understand the difference between Grecian and Roman shapes, and you can see how complex mouldings are in fact the assemblage of simple forms.

McConnell then demonstrates a couple basic complex moulding planes (the side bead and the ovolo) so you can see how a complete (usually simple) moulding can be created with one plane.

Then he moves into the hollows and rounds, which are the tools that you can use to create almost any shape or size of moulding. McConnell efficiently shows how to lay out a moulding on your work and then prepare the profile with cuts from either a rabbet, plow or moving fillister plane. Finally, he demonstrates how the hollows and rounds bring the final moulding to shape with little fuss if you have followed the correct procedures. Proper rabbets help guide your hollow and round planes as they do their work.

In addition to creating several mouldings, McConnell also demonstrates how to sharpen moulding plane irons and how to maintain (and fix) their cutting profiles. He also shows how to properly saw (and shoot) your moulding so it can be applied to your project. That is followed by an eye-opening discussion of snipe bill planes, one of the least understood wooden moulding planes in the traditional toolkit.

When you’re done watching the DVD, be sure to print out the accompanying glossary and bibliography on the disc. The glossary will help reinforce the names of all the shapes McConnell discusses in the DVD. And the bibliography suggests some books on furniture and tools that will help you build on the basic principles in the DVD so you can create well-proportioned, classic and crisp mouldings for your own work.

— Christopher Schwarz

There is something deep inside our DNA that ties us to the chest as a form of furniture. First off, how many other kinds of furniture do we have that are named after critical parts of our own bodies? We are all, in essence, “chests on stands.” The feet give way to the legs. The legs are attached to the waist. And the waist supports the chest itself.

Also, few forms of furniture evoke such strong emotional response in both men and women. Whenever I mention among acquaintances that I’m building a chest, the women (sorry to generalize) always seem far more interested in this work than they are in my table-, chair- or cabinet-building enterprises.

“Is it a blanket chest?” is the first question. And that’s usually followed by, “Is this for you or will you sell it?”

Men react differently, though equally with emotion. “Is it a tool chest?” they ask. “And what will happen to your old tool chest?”

So with our species’s strong attraction to the chest, it’s surprising how many of them are designed so poorly. This became evident as I reviewed about a dozen plans for chests from the last 100 years that I dug up from my library.

Unlike the “chest on stand” that I mentioned above, most chests are low-slung affairs with three major components. The plinth, sometimes called the base, the waist moulding and the chest itself.

The plinth is almost always wider and deeper than the chest above. And the waist mould provides the transition between these two separate assemblies. It is this transition point between plinth and chest where many woodworkers make the construction far too fussy, complex and apt to fail.

Perhaps the most difficult way to build a chest goes something like this: Build the chest proper. Take your four plinth pieces and mould their long, top edges. Then wrap the four (sometimes three) plinth pieces around the chest, joining them at the corners. Finally, cope the mouldings at the corners so the moulding profiles wraps seamlessly around the chest.

If you’ve ever built a chest this way, I don’t need to tell you why it’s a bear to pull it off. First, fitting the plinth pieces around the chest requires persnickety layout. The joints have to be dead-on, or your plinth won’t sleeve nicely over the chest. Also, the exterior of your chest has to be completely true and the assembly dead-square, otherwise, you’ll have ugly gaps between the plinth and chest proper. Finally, it’s quite trying to execute the moulding at the corners of the plinth because you are moulding end grain with rasps, files and chisels.

One improvement over this form is to sleeve the plinth over the chest and then to miter and nail moulding into the transition. This is better, but it still requires a lot of fussy layout and fussy fitting of the chest to the plinth.

The third method looks like more labor than these other two methods, but it’s not. You assemble the plinth and chest assemblies separately. Then you add either a web frame or just a couple runners into the top of the plinth. It’s best to sink the web frame or runners into rabbets in the plinth.

Then you attach the chest to the plinth with screws and wrap the transition with moulding that is a wee bit wide. Finally, trim the moulding flush to the plinth with a plane.

I’ve built chests all three ways, and I can tell you that even though the third method requires more wood and one extra assembly, it is easier to fit all the parts and a faster way of building a chest.

The next issue of Woodworking Magazine (Summer 2008) will focus on building chests, both with and without plinths. The only thing we haven’t been able to answer in our research on this topic is if the chests we’re building will end up holding tools or plushy things.

— Christopher Schwarz

Some tools are like high school girlfriends. It’s all hot and heavy and kissy-kissy for the first few weeks, and then things cool off and you wonder what you were thinking. Other tools are like good spouses. The relationship gets better with time, even when you are both a little worn around the edges.

I’m happy to say that the Veritas Bevel Setter is more like a spouse than a girlfriend. (I don’t expect that blurb will show up in any advertisements.) When I first reviewed the tool, I was quite taken with it and its cleverness. The Bevel Setter lets you set or draw angles with much more accuracy than a child’s protractor or even a machinist’s protractor. It allows you to transfer angles more easily than with the other bevel-setting devices on the market that merely have the angles engraved on them. Plus, its small size allows you to get into tight spaces.

And now, a couple years after first getting the tool, I couldn’t imagine not picking it up during a project. As my work has become more angular and curvular (yes Megan, I know that’s not a word) I find that I always need a device that can measure any angle, transfer the angle to a piece of work, or even transfer the angle to my sliding T-bevel with zero errors. Plus, the sucker is so easy to dial in that even if you discard one setting, it’s simple to get it again.

The real genius in the device is its metal fence, which locks down tightly (and stays there) with a brass thumbscrew. The underside of the fence has a couple little grippy feet that make the fence stick to the steel plate like a magnet.

Finally, the thing is a darn-decent ruler in a pinch and can substitute for a small combination square when laying out the position of drawer hardware, for example.

The device ($33.50 from Lee Valley Tools) is available in both metric and Imperial measurements. For some reason, I ended up with the metric version in my toolbox, but it doesn’t seem to bother me. That fact, however, is a bit bothersome. I worry that the metric system will worm its way into my life. But then, that’s basically what happened with my wife.

— Christopher Schwarz

We have completed work on Issue 9 – our first ever issue for subscribers – and we are just about to send the issue to the printer. That issue will mail out to subscribers (boy that is nice to type!) on the week of March 3.

To give you a small taste of the issue, you can now download the digital eDrawings of two versions of the cover project – a Gustav Stickley Tabouret.

This interactive 3D illustration can be opened and manipulated using a free program from eDrawings that is available both for the PC and Mac. Even if you’ve never used a CAD program before, I think you’ll find an eDrawing easy to use.

With the help of the eDrawings you can rotate the projects around, make parts transparent and move parts around to examine the joinery. It’s an excellent way to figure out how a project goes together before you start cutting.

These eDrawings were prepared by Louis Bois, a draughtsman and good friend of Woodworking Magazine. He also prepared all the construction drawings for the tabourets that will appear in Issue 9.

Tabouret-Corbel-Assy.zip (11.84 KB)

Tabouret-Trumpet-Assy.zip (11.99 KB)

— Christopher Schwarz

Legacy Planeworks officially opened its doors on Tuesday and began selling kits that allow a home woodworker with no metalworking experience to build an English-style shoulder plane with naval brass sides, a steel sole and an exotic wood infill.

The company currently offers two sizes of shoulder planes – 1" wide and 3/4" wide – with prices starting at $425. And two more infill kits are on the drawing board: a chariot plane and a Norris-style A6 smoothing plane with a mechanical blade adjuster, says Marty Sivar, one of the owners of the company.

The kits have been in development for many months, Sivar says, and the parts are so finely machined that you can literally snap the metal dovetails in place when you take the parts out of the box.

"We wanted to offer a refined kit," Sivar said today in a phone interview, "not something you had to spend hours prepping the parts for assembly and cleaning them up."

The kits come with all the metal components you need (even the drill bits for boring the wood components). The home planemaker will need a ball pien hammer, a steel plate (or anvil) and a handful of files to complete the project, Sivar says. Legacy Planeworks also sells all the files required for planemaking on its web site: legacyplanes.com.

Some woodworkers might remember the kits that were sold by Shepherd Tool, a Canadian company run by two partners outside Toronto. After Shepherd's early success with its first Spiers-style smoothing plane kits, the company ran into some rocky times and shuttered its doors in early 2006 with a crowd of angry customers who were upset about a variety of problems, from not being able to get technical questions answered, kits that were missing parts, and credit cards that were charged with merchandise never shipped.

Sivar was one of those angry customers of Shepherd, and he said he and his partner, Ernie Barber, have set out to make sure that Legacy Planeworks is everything that Shepherd Tool was not.

Sivar says that the company's web site will not sell you a kit unless there are more than two in stock, and that every order will be shipped within two or three days of it being placed. Plus, Sivar says that Legacy now has plenty of kits on hand to sell right away (one of them is heading for our office for a full review, by the way).

The kit components for a Legacy shoulder plane (both photos courtesy of Legacy Planeworks).

Every kit has a money-back guarantee and includes a 52-page instruction manual that includes many step photos that will walk the planemaker through the process. The manual, Sivar says, has taken a long time to develop and has been through many revisions to make the instructions as complete and foolproof as possible.

"I think our customers will be very satisfied from the minute they open the box," Sivar says.

Sivar has experience both as a woodworker and a metalworker. He started his career as a machinist and then went into the military. After a short stint as a corporate pilot, Sivar completed some marketing and management training and went to work for a petro-chemical company, where he is now an area manager and nearing retirement. Barber works in law enforcement and is an accomplished woodworker and carver who specializes in 18th-century furniture.

Sivar says all the plane components are going to be professionally made by other metalworking companies to Legacy's specifications; that will leave Sivar and Barber to focus on working with current customers and developing future products.

Personally, I'm quite pleased to see someone getting back into this business. I built several of the Shepherd kits, including a couple smoothing planes, a chariot plane, a shoulder plane and a panel plane. Despite the glitches (my kits were missing critical parts, too) the overall experience was fun and you learn a lot about plane mechanics by building one of the tools.

I think it's especially encouraging that Legacy has started out offering just the shoulder plane kit. Of all the kits I built, that one was the easiest to complete and will likely give would-be planemakers a good taste of the process.

In the coming weeks, I'll post photos of the new kit and my progress building it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Last year while I was teaching a sawing class in Michigan, one of the students brought along a dovetail saw he had purchased almost 10 years earlier but had never used. When I spied it on his workbench, I snatched it.

It looked like the classic Lie-Nielsen Toolworks dovetail saw, but there was something different about it. When I took it out of its package, I had my answer. This was a mint Independence Tool dovetail saw that was made before Lie-Nielsen purchased the company in September 1998.

Holding this pristine little saw was a little like driving a 1948 Porsche 356. This was the saw that changed everything for hand tool woodworkers. And it started with a friendship between an Army officer and a software developer that was struck up during early days of the Internet.

The story of Independence Tool isn't well-known among woodworkers, and so I gave one of its founders a phone call to chat about the early days of the market for premium Western-style saws, which has blossomed in the last 10 years.

The primordial stew for the story begins with an Internet listserv called "oldtools" (it's still around and thriving – I'm a mostly lurking member). Oldtools is an e-mail based discussion group that started in 1995 where the members chat about hand tools and hand work – anything meat-powered that cuts wood, really.

Two of the founding members were Pete Taran, then an Army officer in Maryland, and Patrick Leach, then a Boston software developer. They struck up a friendship through the oldtools list, Taran said, and that led to a discussion of quitting their day jobs and starting a tool-making company.

"Patrick was burned out," Taran said. "And I was ready to leave the Army."

The question was: What tool should they make? Taran said they had to pick a tool that didn't require a lot of heavy metal-working machinery to make. While Taran had some machine training in his background, it wasn't like he had a fully-equipped metal shop at home.

Coincidentally, Leach had just purchased a nice Groves & Sons dovetail saw that had beautiful lines.

"I was the resident engineer," Taran said. "So I sort of deconstructed the saw and figured out how we could make it. We made a prototype."

Leach and Taran showed off the prototype at an old tool sale in March 1996. Everyone who looked at the saw said they would buy one, Taran said. So they bought a couple machines and got to work on nights and weekends (they kept their day jobs at first). Taran was in charge of production of the tools. Leach was in charge of sales, marketing and the company's web site. (An early flyer for the company is pictured above. Click on the image to see it full-size.)

(While little Internet start-ups like this are now common, Taran points out that it was quite rare in 1996 to start a company that was little more than a web site and a couple guys working from home.)

By the end of 1996, Taran had made 500 saws.

"The word spread like wildfire," Taran said. "We couldn't keep up with demand."

Dovetail maestro Frank Klausz ordered one off of the Independence Tool web site, and Taran delivered it to him personally.

"Frank Klausz is the quintessential perfectionist," Taran said. "He became our biggest supporter."

With craftsmen like Klausz and others speaking out for the saw, the catalog companies began to call, but Taran said they resisted getting into the wholesale business. Eventually they sold their saws (both a dovetail saw and a carcase saw) through Highland Hardware in Atlanta, Ga., but the rest of the sales were direct to the customer.

After two years, Taran said that he had made about 2,000 saws. He had figured out how to outsource some of the parts (such as the brass backs and the special split nuts that attach the blade to the handle). But Taran said his relationship with Leach was strained by the work. Taran bought out Leach's part of the business, but that wasn't the cure-all.

"It became drudgery after two years," Taran said. "I looked at my life and said, 'This is fun, but I don't want to do this the rest of my life.' "

Plus, he had a sweet job offer on the table from a former superior officer who was working in the private sector. Taran said he put out some feelers about selling the business. One of those feelers made it to Thomas Lie-Nielsen through Clarence Blanchard, owner of the Fine Tool Journal.

Lie-Nielsen bought Independence Tool in September 1998 and has greatly expanded the line of saws to include tenon saws, gent's saws and a variety of saws with different filings and tooth counts.

"He's taken it and run with it," Taran said.

The original Independence Tool saws and the Lie-Nielsen versions are in many ways identical. The tooth configuration is the same. The length and depth of the blade are virtually identical. The brass back has the same crisp bevels. But the handles are different. The Lie-Nielsen handles have crisp details – a product of machine manufacturing. The Independence Tool saw has rounder edges throughout, a product of all the hand work that Taran put into the saws.

Though some people would disagree (one way or the other) I found both to be quite comfortable and wouldn't say that one was markedly superior to the other. But dovetail saws are a personal thing, so it's a bit beside the point.

Australian woodworker and writer Derek Cohen has done a nice side-by-side comparison of the two tools on the WKFineTools.com site if you'd like to read more and see some photos.

It's now been 10 years since the saw business was sold to Lie-Nielsen, and both Taran and Leach still have a hand in world of hand tools. Leach buys and sells some of the finer vintage British and American hand tools through his site at Supertool.com. (Be sure to subscribe to his monthly e-mail newsletter. It's filled with hundreds of excellent tools and photos – plus Leach happens to be a great writer.)

While you're at the Supertool site, visit the "Blood & Gore" section of the site – it's required reading for handtool geeks-in-training.

And Taran is now a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and a Cleveland-based corporate consultant who helps weed out inefficient processes in companies. He also runs the excellent VintageSaws.com site. He sells hand saws and back saws (all of which are sharpened and ready to go). And he has posted a great series of articles he wrote for The Fine Tool Journal on selecting, cleaning  and sharpening saws. They are in the Library section of the site.

And Taran said he may someday make some more saws, perhaps if only for himself. You see, Taran said he doesn't even own one of his own production saws from his Independence Tool days, though he does own the prototype he built.

"And I probably have parts for 50 or 60 saws still lying around," Taran said. "Some day I should dig those out and make a nice set of saws – just for me."

Coming soon: We take a close look at the Independence Tool prototype, on loan from Pete Taran.

— Christopher Schwarz