Barnacle Bill Magazine March 2016 issue 3 | Page 34
34
The
Bosun’s Mate
Given that boat building, even of a modest design, is time consuming and has cost implications, especially if
you live in a part of the world where timber and ply are pricey, it is worth taking your time and doing the best
job you can. This often means it is worth consideri ng investing in a few quality tools before starting. Using
decent tools can be the difference between completing the job or filling the garage or shed with a pile of wood
and half finished projects that end up on the bonfire after 10 years. It can be the difference between spending
hours sanding and just having to touch up a surface with a plane. Sharp, well maintained and suitable tools are
also considerably safer to use. You are far more likely to injure yourself using a blunt chisel than you are a sharp
one, why? Because a blunt one will require more force and if that force moves laterally when applied the blade
can slip and the tool bury itself into your thigh, if you are really unlucky, into an artery.
Cheap and nasty saws.
When affordable power saws started to become ubiquitous in the west about 30 years ago the DIY hand saw
market saw a considerable decline in demand. This in turn resulted in cheaper and cheaper saws being mass
produced. Now most ‘western’ saws are stamped out on presses with the teeth in situ, the stamping process
creating the edge on each tooth. Whilst OK for cutting up an old chair for firewood, saws like this are next to
useless for our purposes, yes, you can use them but it will be very difficult to keep the cut straight, the saw will
blunt quickly and the teeth are so rough that the cut edge will require excessive treatment with a decent block
plane to get it smooth and square, if you don’t own a decent saw, you are unlikely to own a decent block plane.
However, there was still a demand for new saws but increasingly in the USA and in the UK, this demand was
being met by the Japanese who, with their culture of timber framing and complex wooden joints, had never
given up mass producing quality saws.
As the historic stock of quality western saws made up until the 1970s wore out, was lost or hoarded by jealous owners and quality saw making in the west ceased almost disappearing, in the case of western back saws.
Customers who wanted to do carpentry still needed quality hand saws to make some cuts, in particular, tenon
cuts, increasingly Japanese saws became the affordable solution.
I can recall a woodwork teacher friend in the early 1990s prizing the 100 year old set of 24 identical Sheffield
made tenon saws he had in his classroom and he warned his pupils about the dire punishments that were meted
out to anyone who dropped one, what the penalty for breaking a tooth was, he never told them because the
answer was too terrifying. His reason for this was because to replace the 24 saws with similar quality saws in
1993 would have cost an absolute fortune, the manufacture of them had moved back to the craftsman already
by then. None of the major tool manufacturers were producing really good quality mass produced saws. At
that time, unless you parted with a lot of money, your best bet was to trawl car boot sales and friend’s garages
for quality antique saws.
Over the last 15 years we have seen resurgence in western saw making with quality saws once again made to
western designs. A new set of quality western saws has become an option again.
Power saws for boat building.
When I founded Barnacle Bill Magazine, I did so in part to encourage my fellow countrymen to start building
boats again. As I wrote the business plan I factored in a workshop in an industrial estate complete with table
saws, drill presses, hoists and all the toys you see in a modern professional carpentry shop. Until I realised
that to do this would be of no benefit to my readers at all. No, what I needed to do was to only invest in those
tools that the home based amateur boat builder would consider acceptable in terms of space, cost and ease of