Jasper, before I (sort of) got the hang of sharpening saws, I studied with great care charts like the one you provided above, which seemed to require different saws for hardwoods and softwoods. (I also noticed saw dealers advertise ever so precise numbers for the amount of set in their saws, numbers I would never be able to reproduce when sharpening.) I also noticed that Paul did not seem much worried about such things. My sharpening, and my sawing, improved greatly when I pretty much followed what Paul does. I use the same saws for hard and soft woods. I file my joinery saws pretty aggressive (accept for the first few inches, which seems common) just as you talk about. I do not like a straight 90 degrees, and usually go just a bit off of that. Personal preference? Focusing on unweighting the saw, again as Ed mentions, solved the problem of teeth catching: one day i realized it almost never happens any more, even with a pretty aggressively filed saw.

Also, as Ed talks about, the biggest problem I have is if I have too much set in the saw. It creates ragged cuts. Yah, I do always end up with too much and have to take some out. For some reason, I have never had uneven set which causes the saw to wander off course.

I do like the Lie Nielsen dovetail saw. I had to change how it was sharpened a lot: it was not nearly aggressive enough. Hm . . . maybe they had optimized it for softwoods! I don’t know. I also have a Veritas medium tenon saw. It came with so little rake that it almost wouldn’t cut. At first I thought it was me since I was a beginner. But I finally sharpened it following more or less Paul’s suggestions and it cuts well.

One thought: if you have several saws, it makes perfect sense to try different things on different saws. I have several tenon saws I bought here and there at reasonable prices and have played around a good bit with rake, set etc. That is how I learned to sharpen. I did settle in on a rather simple formula, but it seems others differ.