New Saw

I've been reshaping the handle of the Spear & Jackson skew-back saw I got from Amazon. It will have very little effect on the usefulness of the saw, but I'll like it better. I've given it a few coats of shellac, which should probably have been a bit thinner to get a properly smooth finish, but never mind.

The original handle is fitted with brass-plated locking studs, and they work just fine — if they ever get a bit loose, all you have to do is hit them with a hammer. However, it does mean that the handle can't be easily removed as they have to be drilled out and destroyed to do so. I replaced them with connector bolts and caps, since actual genuine brass saw nuts are amazingly expensive.

I had to anneal the saw plate around its holes so that I could drill them out to 8mm. I could have just drilled them out without all that faffing around if I'd had any 8mm cobalt bits, but I don't. As far as the saw's function is concerned, the discoloration is just aesthetic, but one side-effect of the annealing is that the plate got a bit deformed in that area, which makes it a bit more difficult to get the handle on to the plate. Not impossible, just more difficult.

The discoloration on the plate came away with a bit of scrubbing with emery tape, so that's all right then.