Tenon saw expectations

Hi there, this is my first post and I have enjoyed much of the material for a while
I’m quite new to finer woodworking and attending a furniture making school here in Norway

Saws have been on my mind for some time now, and I never owned a tenon saw until recently, I am generally taking to heart the advice of buying as good a quality as I can afford.

I wanted a rather large tenon saw of 14″, after a lot of online research, trying some saws at school and tiring rounds of ebay bidding, I found a really beautiful saw I wanted to buy, yes, in large part it was due to it’s beautiful looks and nice proportions, I could not find much about it online but figured in that price range and how workshop heaven blogged about it and described the process of having it made it ought to be a well made high quality saw for generations to come

The saw I ended up ordering was the Pax 14Pax 14″ 13tpi heavy tenon saw

It arrived, and such a beautiful tool, elegant walnut handle, folded brass back, good proportions and an oveall good feel to hold

I started testing it, and immidiately it tracked off to the left, I tried it, and I had a more experienced friend try it, we made the cuts in the picture side by side, teeth were good, but the blade had a long bend stretching almost the entire lenght of the blade

Ok this post is turning more into a story then a simple question 🙂 , anyhow, I contacted workshop heaven, they told me it was almost sure it was a problem with blade tension, and that i should try to hit the back of the folded back against a flat piece of wood to reset the tension of the blade.

So I watched Paul’s video of the process and tried it the next day
It turned out the blade had to be banged all the way to the “socket” of the back in the toe of the saw, in order for it to start cutting straight, this also resulted in the back being elevated at the heel, giving the saw a rather skewed look.

Upon closer inspection it was also revealed that a crack had formed in the handle due to the stress of banging, and to top it off the lambs-tongue (unsure about the name) of the handle, which was protruding below the much more solid nose of the handle broke of when I tried deep cuts (it hit against the top of the workpiece) this last part being my own responsability of course, but still i would argument that it could have been designed in a better way, not letting it protude

So now I think this post is more turning into a frustration outlet over what has been months of trying to accuire a good tenon saw :0 😮 but bare with me, here’s the whole point:

Is this to be expected when buying a brand new tenon saw or have I gotten the odd bad saw?
The whole thing has costed me more then buying for instance a new LN but i was able to try one out and to me it felt far to aggressive and big

I am sending the pictures and a description of the problem to worksop heaven also, to hear what they have to say, but I am feeling more and more I should just send it back and start looking again

Thanks for reading and any comments would be appreciated 🙂
Best Regards, Tomas

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by  Tomas Lavoll.
• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by  Tomas Lavoll. Reason: Pictures appear as text in post, not pics