Reply To: Hand Saw Restoration
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Just to be clear, a ‘kink’ is where the saw is straight, bends at an angle, and then goes straight again. A bend is a gentle curve the length of the blade. The bending trick isn’t really to fix kinks so much as to test the quality of the blade steel.
To fix a kink, you can try hammering it out by gently tapping the affected area between a large hammer in the vice, to act as an anvil, and another hammer. Don’t whack at it, that much force isn’t necessary. You need to imagine that the bend has stretched the steel on one side of the blade. You can’t easily shrink the steel back, but you can stretch the steel on the opposite side to take the kink out. You probably won’t be able to get it back to new, but you might be able to make it useable.
Another option, depending on the location of the kink, is to shorten the saw. If the saw is a full length 26-28″ blade, you could take anything from 4-8″ off of it and still have a serviceable saw.