Right?! My neighbour (in his seventies) offers to let me borrow his electric saws every time he sees me sawing away with these tiny handsaws. I laugh and wave him away. I can be through a 2x4 with less effort than lifting my mitre saw off the shelf. No noise, no airborne dust. I’ve been using the same blade for 6 years with no loss of performance.
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Full-on shop asshole here- We love giving students these saws because they’re easy to use, precise, sharp, and harder to hurt yourself with than the compound miter saw.
It’s always a journey to watch them go from disappointed that we’ve given them the saw with training wheels, to delighted at how fast it cuts through pine and poplar.
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I’m in love.
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If you live in a United State, Irwin make a ryoba (though I don’t think they call it that), which is available everywhere, basically free, and has an easily-removable blade. It’s not so much that you’d replace the blade as that it’s convenient to break it down for storage or transport.
Also: there is some guy on youtube who uses a sort of bandolier with some magnets on the back which allows him to wear this kind of saw like a sword. It would also work with western saws, I guess, but idk why you’d ever use one.
If you live in an apartment, you probably don’t want to store power tools, and would be complained at for making noise anyway. But for me the bigger appeal is that making stuff by hand causes you to think much more carefully about the design. At least if you’re going for the kind of Bauhaus squat aesthetic that I am interested in, using only a saw, chisel and drill is a great approach. (I do plan everything out in CAD, and I often 3D print custom jigs; it’s not an Amish thing)
ETA: also, if you are using a pull saw, then you can use a magnetic saw guide (like this one, though the one I use is completely different), which gives you results just as good as a table saw, at least for cross cuts.
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I do minor woodworking projects (made a few radiator covers in my time) and I love hand-saws since I don’t have a pro-shop. These things are great for a basement where you have to share the space with laundry, storage, and a spouse who doesn’t like sawdust everywhere.
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A lot of such advice is fairly situational and enthusiasts have a tendency to assume everyone is in their same situation. “Buy the big one it’ll do more” is pretty good advice. If you’re interested in doing the things it can do, and have the space for a decent sized dedicated shop. But for a lot of people, especially anyone apartment bound or garageless. Multiple smaller tools is a hell of a lot more practical and hand tools often do what a big machine will in a smaller cheaper package.
You see that a lot these days. Go looking into any sort of practical clothing, even if its “yo what are good socks?” And information is all clogged up with advice about outdoorsy technical cloths for very specific cold weather environments (almost exclusively the Pacific Northwest and Vermont). Sure cotton kills in a survival situation, but not on the way from the subway to your office on NYC summer day. And not everyone is into ultralight backpacking.
Ran into it again looking into sausage making. I’ve done it before and stuffing through the grinder just ruins the sausage and turns it into a 3 person job. Any place with info is all “buy a $200 sausage stuffer! And don’t bother with a 5lb one. When you’re making those 25lb batches and processing whole animals you really appreciate the 15lb electric wizbang one”.
But I’m not doing any if that, and figuring out if there was a sub $50 way to do it that was worth a shit took a while (Jerky gun is apparently the way to go).
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i agree with teknocholer; it isn’t cheap steel, but the hardness of the teeth and the multi faceted grind. the crosscut teeth typically have three separate angels per tooth, making hand sharpening them a discipline unto itself. one reason the blade might feel cheap could be due to how thin it is. because japanese saws cut on the pull stroke, the blade is in tension during the cut. this allows it to remove a much narrower swath of material (kerf), thereby requiring less effort. a western saw cuts under compression, on the push, so the blade has to be thicker and stiffer to resist folding in the cut.
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I could really use one of these, but I’d be mostly using it to cut plastic–UHMW PE, Delrin, polycarb, and the like. I’ve googled around, but am having trouble finding out if these blades would work well on plastic. Anyone have any experience?
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The cool thing about Japanese style pull saws is that, because they cut on the pull stroke, they rely on TENSION for rigidity. Shoving a western handsaw through woodgrain has a tendency to bow the blade, whereas pulling has a tendency to stretch the saw straight. Because of this design, the pull saw’s blade can be much thinner than a push saw because it doesn’t need to be nearly as strong. The resulting cut wastes less material as well! These things are win-win-win. You can do much finer work with these saws, even the cheap ones. They are a joy to use, nothing like a quiet workshop and no need for ear protection.
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You can take my chop saw from my cold dead (potentially dismembered) hand!
I have felt the pains of not having the space though. Shout out to one of my happy places Hammerspace KC!
https://hammerspacehobby.com/
Every hobby has gear fetishists who spend approximately ten hours obsessing/evangelizing/shaming over the tools to every hour actually spent engaging in the hobby, woodworking being the platonic ideal of the phenomenon.
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One of the YouTube channels I follow recently posted a video about trying out a ryoba style saw for the first time. He’s a convert.
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Got your Japanese utility saw right here. Specifically for PVC, but also for chipboard and such that you don’t want to use your expensive saw on.
Bonus is that it’s less expensive than most such saws. That said, my general-purpose woodworking saw cuts PVC just fine.
I’d say that’s more audiophiles.
The frustrating bit is that for a lot of subjects info from the hardcore set has begun to crowd out the rest. Looking into whether this small cooler right here is worth buying leads only to e-commerce and ad sites and claims that you shouldn’t waste your money on anything but these particular bear proof, rotoformed coolers large enough to hold a human body.
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Oh, that’s a good one too, with the difference being that there is actually a performance gap a human can distinguish between a $2,500 Powermatic saw and a mid-range alternative, as opposed to the $1,000 audio cable and the $10 alternative.
And I think you’re being ridiculous to dismiss out of hand all the common reasons someone might need to spend $800 on a cooler they bring to the beach that can keep ice frozen for a week. Think of all the reasons!
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Its entirely valid advice if you need a large bear proof cooler. But when the query was about lightweight, soft sided, small coolers for bringing a six pack down the block its not exactly usable information.
Much like the sausage stuffer that’s a thing I had to wade through this week. All I needed to know was where to get a cute, purse looking soft cooler for a moms day gift. And I was hoping to figure out which brands were better.
I’ve used these types of saws to cut lots of PVC pipe and for that they work fine. I tried it on the thin polycarbonate roofing material and it’s not very good, that material is too brittle and shatters. Best thing I’ve found to cut that is a high-tooth-per-inch blade mounted backwards in a circular saw. I don’t have experience with the other kinds of plastics you mention, but feel it would work well on UHMW PE and anything that is fairly soft like that or PVC. You will just need to clear the crumbs from the teeth every so often.
Just to put in a plug for the budget-conscious low-end tools, I’ve had great luck with Ryobi gear. I have not used many other types so I don’t know what the deficiencies might be in comparison. But they are inexpensive, tough and durable, and the batteries go for a good long time on a charge. My original drill is from back when they were dark blue, the battery is a Ni-Cad and still holds a good charge. It works on the same chargers as the more recent 18V “One” series. I also got one of the hand vacuums that work with the same batteries, very effective, way better than any of those “shark” vacuums.
I also got all of my Japanese pull saws at Home Depot (one maybe at Lowes) and they are cheap and great. Made by Irwin. My favorite one is branded as Marples and is a shorty flush-cut saw.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/IRWIN-Marples-7-25-in-Dovetail-Cut-Pull-Saw/1000235177
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It is probably not that the steel is cheap, rather it is because it is stronger than sharpening files.
Personally I am a fan of the Japanese “Z saws”
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Also, the blades are thin by design (not pushing, pulling), so if you misuse one, it’s a lot easier to F-up the blade.
I’ve got a few of these for woodworking, and I’m a huge fan of the Kigokoro “Hard” “W” saws. Not super cheap, but not expensive either. I’ve had bad luck with some of the really cheap saws (lost one of my nicer saws, and bought a cheapie knowing that my original would show up at some point. A couple of the teeth actually bent a bit on hardwoods…).
