The saw till

It seems to be to-do list time in the shop, and the next item is a long overdue saw till. I want a simple design without many bells and whistles – just a rack for my hand saws, nothing more. Kind of…

Recently, I made a spokeshave rack – an item on a rather long to-do -list for my shop that were long overdue! So is a nice saw till. A rack for my saws, so that they don’t scatter about. The risk of damage is real – one of my saws got a small kink in the blade because something fell over on top of it. Not to mention the possibility of dulling the teeth. A saw till was needed badly, so I decided to make one and move on with my life.

Just a friendly advisory thingy – this was SUPPOSED to be a very easy and quick project. Man, how wrong I ended up being! The page count alone should indicate that things got a lot more complicated… Oh, well. I personally love lots of images and details when I read blogs, so if you like that too you are in for a treat! If not, skip to the last page and save yourself!

I don’t want an overly elaborate thingamajig with drawers, bells, fog horns and whatnot. I need something to hold my saws, period. Perhaps the saw files and sawset as well, but first and foremost: keep the saws organized. I opted for a very simple approach, but decided to use rather exclusive materials: quarter sawn white oak and lovely dark brown teak!

I have hundreds upon hundreds of board feet of quarter sawn white oak lying around and picked two pieces that looked promising. I placed my saws on top of them to see if they would be big enough. My Veritas tenon saw is the biggest saw I own (not the longest), and it barely will fit. Good enough for me, I doubt I will buy bigger saws than this so it is a good measure stick.

The saw till will be open at the top, so it can hold much bigger saws if need be. I decided to cut the plank slightly shorter than needed for the longest saw I own, my Spear & Jackson 9500R’s. I drew the outline for all my saws on the plank to plan where the cross members should go, added a few centimeters and cut the plank to length:

The spacing of the saws needs to be big enough so that they are easy to retrieve and to put away.

After messing around with this a bit, I found that 3cm (13/16”) edge to edge would give me enough room for my fingers. This means that the 2cm (3/4”) wide handles has 1cm (3/8”) space between them. It is too tight for my fingers, but I can grab the blade easily enough.

The idea was to get a compact yet functional saw till. I decided to make room for up to 9 saws. I currently own 6, so I have taken JBOMTS* into consideration (see facts box below). This gave me a width of 29cm (111/2”) between the sides of the till.

*JBOMTS

Just Buying One More Tool Syndrome, a well-known condition among woodworkers.

Studies that used nationally representative samples across multiple countries have estimated the prevalence of JBOMTS to be 96–110%.15,16 However, the exact classification system or cut-off points for JBOMTS, which have an impact on previously reported prevalence rates, are still being investigated.17 Across all classification systems, males show about half the double of the prevalence of females, which is consistent with higher levels of woodworking activities generally, though contradictory to the average number of shoes per foot found in the stereotypical female population.1 Prevalence is dissimilar in childhood, adolescence and adulthood, as should be expected.

Due to a paucity of longitudinal studies, the course of JBOMTS and whether it is a self-limiting or SWMBO regulated condition is not yet understood. Of the very few longitudinal studies undertaken, results are leaning towards that JBOMTS is long-lasting and possibly requiring intervention for improvement.18,19 As yet, studies have not been conducted over periods much longer than two years, and all have found individuals differ in their JBOMTS trajectories.18,19

And yes, this is all pure BS, in case you did not get that. 🙂

With the layout and measurements decided, I started prepping the wood. If this was a Disney cassette, you’d hear chimes right about now. Go to the next page.

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