Pocket Saws

I recently posted about the wonderful little pull saw I bought at Lowes and how I use it constantly while working on the new cedar shingle siding.  My only complaint about it is that it is just a smidge too big to fit neatly into any pocket of my old Skillers carpenter vest, a shortcoming I decided to address with other tools.  So, I now have three more saws that do fit into one of the pockets, saws that are getting used with ongoing frequency.

The first of these is the little folding Japanese saw that I have had for ages.  When fitting individual cedar shingles as one must, I find that there are many times when for several shingles in a row each and every shingle has to be custom cut and fitted, requiring lots of sawing.  This is going to occur either on the ground or at the top of the ladder, and given the age and mileage on my knees I prefer it take place up on the ladder.  When folded this little beauty fits perfectly in the breast pocket of the vest alongside at utility knife.  Perfecto.  It is so robust and inexpensive I will probably order another bunch of them so that I can keep one wherever I might need it.

Two other saws were shop made for beefier tasks like localized small scale demo work, which also needed to occur with some regularity as I was cutting away the old cedar siding paneling.  Either of them allows me to work efficiently but under fairly delicate control as I was cutting away old materials from around electrical or coolant lines, places where I did not want to fire up the reciprocating saw.

The first of these two saws use a leftover piece of bowsaw blade about 10 inches long.  I rounded one end on the grinder and cut the other end of the blade with my rotary tool to remove the teeth and make a shaft for embedding into a handle.

I scuffed the surfaces of the blade handle then sandwiched it between two scraps of wood, using Gelfex epoxy to glue it all together.

I trimmed and filed the handle to fit my hand and it was off to the races, working perfectly for its intended function.

The second shop-made saw employed a blade from the reciprocal saw, the butt of which was inset into another two-piece scrap handle and embedded with epoxy as the handle halves were screwed together.

I now have an elegant sufficiency of little saws with large performance.