I started writing “Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening” in 2015, but the background work started long before that in the early 2000s. For me, learning to sharpen saws was trial and error, and there wasn’t much to guide me. I looked for written instructions but was always left wanting. I had no teacher to direct me, and whatever texts I did find seemed vague and superficial like the author didn’t really file saws all that often or at all.
That said, during the last 20 years or so I’ve collected a small library of books that describe saw filing and care. The story begins with Joseph Moxon, of course, and continues through today. Some of these books are fascinating and entertaining, others are not, but they are all important to me. While reading and re-reading them over the years I started creating a mental list of what they got right, what they got wrong and what they missed all together.
As my book begins to make its way out into the world, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorites. For simplicity, I’ll present the books chronologically as they were published, and separated into three general age groups: Really Old (authors wore wigs), Old (authors wore jackets and ties), and New-ish (authors wore shorts).
This is certainly not how I discovered and read them mind you, and this list is by no means all inclusive. I’m sure there are works out there I am not familiar with, and while I’d like to say that I have read (and know) everything there is about saws, my wife is sitting next to me on the porch as I write, and she won’t feed me dinner if I act up. So please do suggest other books or articles in the comments that you know of and find relevant. She would greatly appreciate you keeping my feet on the ground and my head out of my…..well, you know. 😉 Here we go…
Mechanick Exercises by Joseph Moxon, 1680(ish)
This is said to be the first book on woodworking written in English, and it is one of my favorites. It has a tangible charm in its prose, which is relatively simple to understand and (mostly) clearly written. And I love the old English long “s” that looks like an “f.” For some reason (probably linked to my warped reality), I like to imagine Moxon narrating the words to me with a slight speech impediment and actually pronouncing the long s’s as f’s like they appear. I think it adds to the charm and helps distract me from the fact that for all we know everything in the book is completely made up. Regardless, Joe does include a brief description on how to sharpen a saw in Section 26 of the Joinery chapter.
He writes, “…with a three-square File they (the Workmen) begin at the left hand end, leaning harder upon the side of the File on the right Hand, than on that side to the left hand; so that they File the upper side of the Tooth of the Saw a-slope towards the right Hand, and the underside of the Tooth a little a-slope towards the left, or, almost downright.”
Pretty clear, right? When I first read this, I twisted myself into a pretzel trying to find “the underside of the Tooth.” What, for the love of King Charles, is the underside of a tooth?!? No matter how many ways I turned the saw end for end I couldn’t find it. With that cleared up, he moves on to setting the teeth, which makes only slightly more sense. It’s pretty clear from Moxon’s use of ‘They,’ that he wasn’t talking about himself filing saws, and thus was established the important precedent of fancy white guys spouting off about things they know nothing about. Despite this, it actually is a fascinating early look at saw sharpening. It certainly raises more questions than it answers, but it’s just about as close as we can get to T=0 for saws. My first copy of Moxon was acquired years ago in a paperback reprint from my friend Gary Roberts at Toolemera Press, and I believe it is still available. I have acquired several other copies and reprints over the years including the first Lost Art Press book from Mr. Schwarz, “The Art of Joinery,” and the later Lost Art Press full-text version so I can learn bricklaying in my spare time, too.
With All the Precision Possible by Andre-Jacob Roubo, late 1700s
Across the Channel and a few decades later comes A.J. Roubo, hellbent on setting the craft record straight and not letting some English puddle chaser set the standard for woodworking. Like most, I didn’t read Roubo until it was translated into English a few years ago by LAP, but when I (we) finally could it did not disappoint. “Wow” is all I can say. What struck me most was Plate 5 regarding “The Sawing of Wood.” In the lower right-hand corner, tucked between figures 9 and 12 is a revelation. Clear as day are shown a row of teeth with alternating bevels at their points: fleam!
Roubo (translated) describes filing these teeth as such: “They are not filed squarely, but on an angle, each tooth in opposing direction one to the other. One must note that this angle is not present except in the leading edge and that the base is at a right angle, or squared, with the saw.”
Over the years I have been intrigued by an argument that I first learned of from Roy Underhill (if I recall correctly) that the joiners at Colonial Williamsburg do not file their saws with any tooth bevel, or fleam, as it is also known. The reason as I understand it (in chatting with the joiners at the Williamsburg cabinet shop) is that they cannot find any historical evidence that saw teeth were in fact beveled in the 18th century, and that they simply filed their saws straight across and with a raked back tooth for crosscutting. This argument has never made sense to me. It seems like the kind of logic that would suggest colonial English folk didn’t put jam on their toast because we haven’t found any toast from that period with jam still on it. Saws, like toast I would assume, would tend to get used up and erased as evidence, right? And tooth bevel is not all that complex as technical innovations go, either. For me, Andre ended the argument with Plate 5, but I imagine that 18th-century Englishmen are not so inclined to take direction from the French (unless you count plagiarizing their work…Moxon!). It is worth mentioning that Roubo was describing how a pit saw was filed, meaning a large frame saw for turning big slabs into usable planks, which curiously is a ripping operation and would not seem to benefit at all from a beveled tooth. As far as I can recall he doesn’t describe saw filing anywhere else, nor ever specifically the smaller saws used at the bench. And did AJ ever file a saw himself? He must have if he was a trained joiner, right? This certainly lends more credit to his saw descriptions in general, but it is clear that like Moxon this is not a description of how he files a saw, but how “they” file a saw. Similar to Mechanick Exercises this description is far from helpful, but it’s a solid second showing. Either way, it’s the oldest and most significant evidence that fleam was in common use on saws in the 18th century, at least in France.
Mechanic’s Companion by Peter Nicholson, 1812
To round out the early period of notable saw writings comes Peter Nicholoson some decades after Roubo and comfortably back across the Channel, thank goodness. He is said to have been a trained cabinetmaker so in addition to being an expert drinker we can confidently assume he had first-hand experience to convey about saw filing.
But no such luck. Pete does share some tantalizing descriptions of saw teeth as a consolation, but he seems to have prioritized a description of using basil when sharpening your plane iron (an odd lubricant if you ask me) over even the slightest mention of what kind of herb (or other medium) he recommends if your saw becomes dull. This is an odd oversight to say the least.
The chapter on Carpentry actually opens with a description of saws and he writes, “Some saws are used for dividing the wood in the direction of the fibre,…others are only employed in cutting in a direction perpendicular to the fibres…the former case requires the front edges of their teeth to stand almost perpendicular to the line passing through their angles…for otherwise the points of the teeth would run so deep into the wood, as to prevent the workmen from pushing the saw forward without breaking it.”
Nicholson is describing tooth rake, and in doing so provides the first written assertion I’ve found that saws need to be filed in different ways to accommodate either ripping or crosscutting operations. He continues in the Joinery chapter with specifics on types of saws used in furniture making and what kind of tooth spacing each saw should have. This is where things get really exciting, and by exciting I mean: Remind you of why you love your table saw.
Pete shares that, “The Ripping Saw Is used in dividing or splitting wood in the direction of the fibres; the teeth are very large, there being eight in three inches and the front of the teeth stand perpendicular to the line which ranges with the points.”
If you can do the math, that means this is a 2-1/3 tooth per inch (TPI) handsaw with zero tooth rake. Converted to points per inch (PPI) this is 3-1/3, which is fair to round up to 3-1/2 points. That’s one hell of a rip saw. If you’ve ever tried ripping with such a saw in something like oak or any other hardwood, you likely have a truer appreciation for the aforementioned drinking. I first acquired this book from Toolemera Press years ago in paperback. It may still be available there, but it has now also been reprinted by LAP with a proper Smyth-sewn binding and hardcover.
Next, in Part II of this three part series we’ll take a look at information from the golden age of western saw making, including trade propaganda and crazy people throwing saws off of roof tops. Stay tuned.
In this book, Cianci (aka The Saw Wright) teaches you the fundamentals of maintaining backsaws and handsaws: how to file and joint your saws with the correct rake, fleam and pitch to keep them cutting sharp. You’ll also learn how to deal with saw teeth that are in good shape but dull, plus how to successfully doctor teeth that have been abused.
Plus, Matt shows you how to identify and restore vintage saws (i.e. is that yard sale box lot a good buy?) – and basic sawsmithing – how to hammer out a bent blade, and how to re-set the spine on a backsaw.
Do you remember sitting in junior high geometry class and trying your best to stay awake? Me too.
While we don’t have to talk about the Pythagorean theorem in this chapter, it is important to understand the basic shapes and angles related to saw teeth. We’ll also cover basic terminology. Grab your highlighter.
Hand Saw Anatomy Western-style hand saws come in many forms, but the two most common to woodworking are the handsaw and the backsaw. A hand saw (two separate words) refers to any saw worked by hand power. This includes large two-person timber saws for felling and bucking trees to pit saws for sawing boards from a log, and even tiny keyhole saws and dovetail saws for fine joinery with all types in between. Hand saws can have a thin, narrow blade tensioned in a wood or metal frame, or the blade can be unrestrained and of sufficient gauge to remain stiff and resist buckling in use. A handsaw (one word) is a particular form of hand saw that includes a wooden handle with closed grip on one end of an unrestrained blade, which is used for making straight, dimensioning cuts in boards of all kinds. Handsaws are identified in size by the length of the toothed edge of their blade, which can range from 12″ to 30″. The most common size is 26″, which is the prototypical carpenter’s saw.
A backsaw is a hand saw with a thinner blade and an applied metal rib along its top edge to provide stiffness in use. It has an open- or closed-grip handle ,and is used for making precise joinery or fine dimensioning cuts in wooden components of all kinds. Backsaws are also identified by the length of the toothed edge of their blade and typically range in size from 6″ to 20″ , with 12″ being the most common. A special variety of backsaws, called miter box saws, are designed to be used in manufactured miter boxes, and can be up to 30″ in length.
Backsaws: from top to bottom, a 10″ Disston No. 68 gent’s saw, my reproduction of an unmarked 18th-century dovetail saw, a 12″ backsaw of my own design, and a 14″ Disston No. 4.
There is common language used to identify the parts of both handsaws and backsaws that you should understand before you learn about saw teeth. The thin steel body of the saw that contains the teeth is referred to as the blade. The toothed edge of the blade is called the toothline, and the opposite edge is called the back. The other major component of a handsaw or backsaw is the handle, which is self explanatory and usually made of wood. The two ends of the toothed blade are distinct. The end with the handle is called the heel; the opposite end is called the toe. Unique to backsaws is the metal reinforcing rib, called the back, along the top edge of the blade. These can be made of iron, steel or brass.
Rip teeth (left) and crosscut teeth (right).
Parts of Teeth The teeth of Western saws are shaped like triangles, and each part of these teeth have a specific name and function. Understanding these elements is the first step in learning to sharpen your saws. The point is the acute apex of the tooth where the wood fibers are first cut. Depending on how you file a particular saw, these points can have different geometric distinctions and cut wood in different ways. The face of the tooth is the side of the triangle that first contacts the work when the saw is in use. Because Western-style saws cut on the push stroke, these faces are always on the toe side of the toothline. Logically, then, the opposing side of the tooth is called the back. The site where the back and face meet is called the gullet.
Backsaw anatomy.
Handsaw anatomy.
In use, all four parts of the tooth work together to cut a kerf into a piece of wood. The kerf is the empty space created by the saw as it cuts. Here’s how it happens:
The acute point of each tooth is pushed down into the wood as the saw is thrust forward. As the point penetrates the surface of the wood it cuts and lifts up a tiny chip of wood.
This chip then slides up the face of the tooth as the saw moves forward.
As the chip reaches the gullet it breaks apart and collects with other chips in the gullet.
As the tooth exits the work on the backside of the kerf, the chips of wood fall out of the gullets. The saw is drawn back and the process repeats.
For conceptual purposes, it has long been suggested that the cutting action of saw teeth is similar to the cutting action of many other edge tools, like chisels and knives. And while this is true for an individual saw tooth, it does not give the full picture. Planes, chisels, knives, axes and all other edge tools possess a single cutting edge, whereas a typical handsaw can have more than 200. For a saw to cut well, each of these teeth must not only be sharp, but also must be uniform and harmonized with all neighboring teeth. Uniformity in partnership with sharpness is the goal for saw teeth. This is why saw sharpening can be so challenging for even the most experienced woodworkers. The efficient and accurate function of the saw is not solely dependent on the quality and geometry of a single edge, but on the quality and uniformity of many edges in relation to each other.
Now that we have defined the parts of a saw’s teeth and how they cut in general, let’s look more closely at how changing the size, shape and geometry of the teeth can make them better suited to different kinds of work.
Saw tooth anatomy.
Tooth Spacing Tooth spacing determines the size of a saw’s teeth and is measured by the number of teeth a saw has within one linear inch. There are actually two different but often confused units of measurement common to hand saws for tooth spacing, and they are points per inch (ppi) and teeth per inch (tpi). They are, in fact, not the same unit. On handsaws, tooth spacing was traditionally stamped onto the heel of the saw on the medallion side of the blade right below the handle. Backsaws had no such marking.
Points per inch (ppi) vs. teeth per inch (tpi). You wouldn’t say yards when you meant meters, would you?
To identify the ppi tooth spacing of any saw, take a rule and place it on the toothline of the saw. Line up the 1″ mark on the rule with one of the tooth points at the heel of the saw. Begin to count the number of tooth points starting with the point aligned with the 1″ mark and progressing up to and including the point under the 2″ mark. This count is the ppi tooth spacing of the saw.
To measure the tpi tooth spacing of a saw use the same rule, but this time line up the 1″ mark with the gullet of a tooth at the heel. Now count the number of full saw teeth (gullet, back, point and face) from one gullet to the next until you reach the gullet under the 2″ mark. This count is the tpi spacing of the saw. If you completed this task correctly, you should arrive at a tpi spacing that is one less than your ppi measurement. This means that a points-per-inch measurement of a saw will always be one greater than the teeth-per-inch unit. Represented in an equation: ppi = tpi +1. So, a 6 ppi saw is not the same as a 6 tpi saw. A 6 ppi saw is equal to a 5 tpi saw, and a 6 tpi saw is in fact equal to a 7 ppi saw. Got it? Good. Of note, I only use ppi when describing tooth spacing.
This will be on the test: Tooth size is determined by the distance between the points.
If you followed the steps above to identify a particular saw’s tooth spacing, and you are finding that the points (if you are using ppi) or the gullets (if you are using tpi) are not lining up with the exact inch marks on your rule there could be a couple of reasons why. Historically, full-size handsaws were commonly available in half-point increments in coarser sizes. So that means that 6-1/2, 5-1/2, 4-1/2 and 3-1/2 ppi saws are commonly found. In fact, 5-1/2-point ripsaws are about as common as any other ripsaw spacing in the wild. A discrepancy in measurement could also mean that your saw has morphed over years of careless filing into an odd spacing. This is especially common on backsaws with very small teeth that are easy to misfile. For handsaws, look for the heel stamp (noted above) to confirm the original spacing. Also, always measure teeth at the heel of a handsaw because ripsaws were commonly toothed one point finer at their toe to allow for easier starting of the cut. This means that a 6-point ripsaw has 6 ppi spacing at its heel and 7 ppi at its toe.
So why are these distinctions about tooth spacing so important? Because more than any other element, tooth spacing affects how a saw will cut, and unlike the other geometric features of saw teeth we will discuss later in this chapter, tooth spacing is not typically changed once it is established. Tooth spacing determines how large or small the teeth are on a saw, which in turn determines how large or small a bite of wood each tooth will take. This is due to the distance from one tooth to the next and the resultant gullet volume the teeth create. In use, a saw tooth will continue cutting chips of wood as long as its point is able to reach the bottom of the kerf. Once the gullet in front of a point fills with chips, it is overcome and can no longer effectively bite into the wood. So a saw with a greater amount of space between each tooth point, and hence a greater chip capacity in its gullet, can go on cutting and creating chips longer than a relatively smaller tooth. But this speed comes at a cost. Larger teeth may cut faster, but they leave a rougher surface on the wood and are not as inclined to the precise work of joinery. Conversely, fine-toothed saws for joinery sacrifice speed, but they allow a smooth, even stroke, whose tiny teeth gently nibble away at the wood to cut a finer line.
“Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening” by Matt Cianci is back in stock after we absolutely burned through the first printing. We now have enough copies to begin filling wholesale orders for our international retailers. So stay tuned.
Now the not-so-good news: Two titles have been delayed because of manufacturing glitches. The Stick Chair Journal No. 2 and “Principles of Design” are stuck in the cover department of the plant. They are having trouble getting a clean diestamp on both covers. Here are some photos for those of you who are curious about what gets rejected.
We are trying to find a foil and cover material that will give a crisp impression. I hope it won’t take long.
Matt Cianci’s mom was reading a book in her living room, having just put Matt down for a nap upstairs, when she saw his 4-year-old body fly past the living room window and crash into the ground. She screamed, jumped up and threw open the door. Matt was in the bushes, a blanket tied around his neck, smiling.
“Mom, I can fly!” he said.
Matt laughs.
“That about describes me,” he says. “Always testing the limits of things. I guess you could say I’m a curious person with a vibrant imagination. I’m not a follower of the crowd.”
“My mom holding me when I was a wee babe … a well-placed hammer and peg toy in my lap!” — Matt
Matt was born in Evanston, Illinois, north of Chicago. His parents met in college in the 1970s, married, had a daughter in 1976, Matt in 1977, then moved to a suburb northwest of Chicago.
“I have the two greatest parents in the world because they are the two people I look up to more than anyone,” Matt says. “I had an exceptionally privileged upbringing, for a very simple reason. Anytime anything ever goes wrong in my life, I just have to take a moment and ask myself, ‘What would my parents do?’ And it’s never steered me wrong.”
Both of Matt’s parents have master’s degrees. Matt’s father is a biomedical engineer and his mother is a clinical social worker. When Matt was a kid, his mom stayed home, raised the kids and was (and is) a social justice warrior, says Matt, working with the greater Chicago chapter of the National Organization of Women, promoting the Equal Rights Amendment.
Matt, 6 or 7 years old. “In the woods (always!) and with the required makeshift tool belt and plastic screwdriver/stabbing implement.”
Always creative, Matt enjoyed drawing and playing with Lego bricks as a kid. At 6 years old he started making things out of scrap wood in his dad’s workshop. His grandfathers had workshops, too. One was an engineer; the other, a welder who worked for the United Automobile Workers at a General Motors factory until he was 75 years old. Matt’s ancestors were old-world Italian stone masons.
Matt loved to make guns out of wood (ironic, he says, giving his views on guns today) because his mother refused to buy him toy guns. But she couldn’t stop him from making them. Over the years, the guns became pretty elaborate.
Woodworking, Matt says, has always been a solitary activity.
“My dad preached nothing. He just showed everything. I don’t remember doing anything with my father, but he still taught me so many things because he did them and I just watched. Many of my values I’ve gotten from him that way. Just seeing what he did, whether it was getting up and going to work every day or how to deal with people or be a parent. He was more passive that way – classical modeling.”
When Matt was 10 years old, his dad was transferred and the family moved to Massachusetts.
“I had some social upheaval and I kind of struggled for the new few years.”
Academically, he did well – never a straight-A student but Bs without having to work too hard for them. He enjoyed writing and in high school, he wrote a lot of poetry.
“I’m a rather pensive, melancholy kind of person. So as soon as I started having any interaction with girls, it turned into romance drama. So that was good fodder. It brought out the tortured poet in me,” he says, laughing.
When he was around 12 years old, he started playing guitar.
“The band ‘in vivo’ likely playing for an empty hall with just the other bands and girlfriends watching (I’m far left).”
“From that point forward, my life focused on my band, playing the guitar and my girlfriend,” he says. “Then I got into metal and I started wearing all black. I was kind of a metalhead – you know, the tortured angry suburban white kid. But I really didn’t have anything to be angry about. I looked for targets of opportunity to put my angst out on.”
In high school, Matt started tinkering with guitars in his dad’s workshop, Eddie Van Halen-style. And then he was accepted to Providence College in Rhode Island.
“Nobody even suggested that not going to college was an option,” he says. “It was just what you did.”
“My college thrash metal band, ‘Sorrows Path’. I’m with glasses in the middle row, right (note the bleached hair … no wonder I’m bald).”
The college education was great, Matt says, but there were a lot of things he didn’t like about it. And by his sophomore year, things came to a head. He failed just about every class he took. He felt as if he was just going through the motions. He lacked purpose.
“I wasn’t happy,” he says. “I’ve always struggled with ups and downs. And I was like, ‘Something doesn’t feel right. What do I really want to do with my life?’”
In a magazine, he saw an ad for a guitar-building school on the West coast. He tacked the ad above his desk – a dream. But not all dreams come true, or at least not as envisioned.
“I stayed in school. I stumbled my way through college. I graduated with a degree in social work and I kept tinkering with guitars.”
Building Guitars & Furniture
After graduating in 1999, Matt and his then-girlfriend moved into an apartment in Providence. He had a job (in social work – vocational rehab), paid rent, was doing all the things adults do, but he still longed for something more. With time, he recognized the itch, the need to work with his hands. So he taught himself how to build guitars from scratch. And he fell in love with it.
Matt’s girlfriend at the time worked at Brown University as a research assistant. Matt says they were dirt poor. But they needed furniture. So Matt taught himself how to make furniture, too. Within a couple years, Matt, 25, and his girlfriend saved up enough money to buy an old house, and started rehabbing it.
“That was, essentially, how I learned woodworking,” he says. “Just trial and error. I didn’t really have any instruction and I didn’t read woodworking books.”
Every once in a while, Matt would get his hands on a copy of Fine Woodworking, and use it as a guide. But money was tight and more often than not, holding it while standing in line at the grocery store, he couldn’t justify the price. Around 2003, Matt remembers seeing an ad for a Lie-Nielsen dovetail saw in the back of Fine Woodworking. He wanted it.
“One of my early guitars. I made this one in 2002. It now hangs in my shop and I play it regularly.”
By now, Matt was well-versed in power tools, building furniture and beautiful guitars out of mahogany and curly maple. Next up were side tables for his bedroom. With the Lie-Nielsen dovetail saw heavy on his mind, he decided he was going to build two Shaker-style end tables in curly maple using only hand-cut joinery.
But at the time, the dovetail saw was $120. There was no way he could afford it. So he went to a big box store and bought a $10 saw. Now he had a blade. He scrounged together some scrap wood (curly maple), scrap metal and toilet bolts. And he made his own backsaw.
“And that’s when I learned to file saws,” he says.
In an old tool catalog, Matt found a one-page article titled “How to File Your Saws.” By now he had discovered eBay and he used it to buy a setting device. Following the tool catalog instruction step by step, he sharpened his handmade saw and used it to cut the dovetails in the two Shaker tables.
Around this time, both of his grandfathers were clearing out their workshops and Matt inherited a bunch of their hand tools. He continued building furniture for his house – a corner hutch, a table, an ottoman, a desk. Struggling to drill a deep hole through an exterior wall, he used a brace and bit for the first time, and was amazed by its torque and speed. He bought saws on eBay for a few dollars each, and practiced filing them. He quickly fell down the rabbit hole, he says, and he was happy. Until 2006. That was the year he and his girlfriend of eight years ended their relationship.
“My world got turned upside down,” he says. “I had to put all my tools into storage.”
An Intermission, a Tiny House & the Return of Woodworking
Matt’s ex-girlfriend bought him out of his half of the house.
“I walked away with this big wad of cash, which I had never had before,” he says. “And I’m not going to lie, I frivolously spent a good chunk of it.”
Always the guy with a girlfriend, Matt, now 29, had never been single before.
“I got back into playing guitar in seedy bars. I was not doing constructive things with my time or money. But it was just an absolutely wonderful experience I treasure because I needed to be on my own and just be young.”
Having realized how dysfunctional his relationship was, and the number it did on his self-esteem, Matt embraced his freedom.
“I just kind of went nuts and indulged myself,” he says.
About a year later, in 2007, he decided he needed to stop blowing his money on guitars and rounds of shots for the entire bar. He was living in an apartment, but wanted to put money back into a house. He found one pretty quickly, a 600-square-foot ranch in Warwick, Rhode Island.
“I fell in love with it because it had the most perfect, dry, sound basement I have ever been in,” he says. “And at that time in my life, basements were where all the good stuff happens. I remember going into this basement and thinking, This is the perfect blank space for my existence. And the upstairs was nice too – it had all the stuff you needed – but I was subterranean at that point.”
Matt bought the house, built out a nice basement workshop and started a part-time business making furniture on commission.
“Well, I say business, but I’m probably flattering myself because in business, you’re supposed to make money,” he says, laughing. “I remember building these pieces of furniture and essentially charging people for the lumber and, like, a little bit of money for me. I remember building this one lady this all-solid cherry desk. And I still love that desk. If I ever found that lady I’d offer to buy it back from her. I remember charging her $400 for it and the lumber cost me $300. I am such a horrible business person. I really am.”
Matt still worked full-time in the mental health field and most of his early customers were colleagues.
“You feel bad saying ‘This is going to be $2,000.’ Because these people, who are essentially your acquaintances or friends, they’re not going to pay that. Because, who the hell are you? You’re not Sam Maloof, right? You’re just the guy who has decided you’re going to be a furniture maker. I did that for a little while and literally lost money. Because I also justified all these purchase for tools and such. Well I have to buy this mortiser because I’m a professional furniture maker now so you’re taking in maybe $1,000 and spending $2,000. So that was silliness.”
But Matt was happy. He had his woodworking, his day job, another part-time job, and he was single – for a while. Around 2008, Matt had a whirlwind six-month romance. And for the second time in his life (the first was with his ex-girlfriend who he shared a house with) he bought a ring. It didn’t work out. But then, in 2009, Matt met Angie, now his wife, at work.
(An aside: Matt liked the idea of dating people at work, thinking it would be less work. “I would not – would not – recommend that to anyone,” he says. “Especially having an affair with your boss.” Matt laughs and says he hopes that if there’s anything folks take away from this article, it’s that he’s not your go-to guy for romance advice. “I did everything wrong. But the one thing I got right was that I met my wife at work and it just worked out.”)
Matt says he didn’t know Angie was going to be his wife at first.
“But she says she knew instantly,” he says. “We dated three months and she was like, ‘Hey, do you want to get married?’”
She even bought a ring. Matt said yes, and asked if she and her daughter wanted to come live with him in his “teeny-tiny little house” in Rhode Island. She did. They got married in 2010.
“I’m madly in love with my wife,” he says. “We’ve been married 14 years.”
Matt and Angie, 2010
Marriage gave Matt’s life a purpose and focus he hadn’t had before.
“It calmed me down and just made me grow up,” he says.”
And with that newfound focus, the saw bug came back.
The SawWright
Matt started writing a blog called The Saw Blog. People took to it and began asking him questions about saws. And then they started asking him to sharpen their saws.
“I was like, ‘You’ll give me money?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah!’ And I was like, ‘OK!’ Again, not a good businessman.”
One day, in 2011, Mark Harrell, founder of Bad Axe Tool Works, called. Mark wanted to focus entirely, at least for a little while, on making saws. But at the time, he also had a sizeable sharpening repair business.
“He tested me,” Matt says.
Mark asked to buy a tuned-up saw. He wanted Matt to show him what he could do. And if was good, Mark said he’d send Matt all his sharpening work. So Matt took an old saw and fully restored it – polished it up and sharpened it.
“Now I had never seen anyone sharpen a saw,” Matt says. “I had never owned another saw sharpened by somebody else. But I thought I’d do my best and send it to him. And he loved it.”
And that was the start of Matt’s saw-sharpening business.
“I became a professional saw doctor and it really blew up,” Matt says. “And I figured out how to pay myself a good wage for what I was doing.”
Matt also began getting invitations to teach saw sharpening at woodworking schools around the country, which was welcome additional income. Coming full circle, Lie-Nielsen also invited Matt to teach.
Matt came up with a name – The SawWright. He was sharpening saws and still working full-time, but now he wanted to try his hand at saw making.
“My prototype for the carcase saw I made for sale based on Smith’s Key. The backdrop is an article I wrote describing the history of Smith’s, as well as my design and building process.” — Matt
In 2012, Matt and Angie had a son, Francis. Matt remembers sitting in the hospital room and creating the layout for a website to sell custom-made saws while Angie and Francis slept. He started making backsaws based on an early 19th-century pattern he found in Smith’s Key. He contracted with a machinist to mill the backs. He wrote about his process in the Society of American Period Furniture Makers annual American Period Furniture Journal. And he sold them through his site.
In 2013, two big things happened. Angie and Matt had a daughter, Phoebe, and Matt decided he wanted to make saws full-time. So he took a leave of absence from his full-time job.
“And absolutely hate it,” he says. “I was in my shop fricking 12 hours a day in the basement making saws, and I was fricking miserable. I was just longing for human interaction.”
The full-time saw-making gig lasted a few months, and Matt went back to his old full-time job. It was an itch, he says, that he simply had to scratch to get it out of his system.
“Similar to when I was doing furniture, I didn’t know how to price things,” he says. “Sharpening and repair? I can do that. There’s something about the psychology of it. I know what it’s worth and I know what people will pay and it works. When it comes to making things, apparently I just will work for nothing.”
Today, sharpening and repair remain his niche.
“I like doing it part-time and I like having my day job where I can work with people because even though I hate people, I need them. I am a social animal. I’ve found my balance.”
In 2013, Kevin Ireland, then publisher of Popular Woodworking, called Matt while he was driving home from work. (Matt has always worked in Massachusetts and lived in Rhode Island. It’s a long commute – an hour and a half each way – but he loves the distinct separation of the two.) Kevin wanted to know if Matt wanted to make a DVD. Matt could hardly believe it.
“Here this magazine flies me out, treats me kind of like I’m a celebrity, we’re filming – it was surreal,” he says. “It was great.”
They made two DVDs – Build a Custom Backsaw and Super Tune Your Backsaw – in just a couple of days. It took a while for Matt to come to terms with the idea that he knew how to do something so well, other people would be willing to buy a DVD to learn from him.
“To me, the whole thing is like people want you to come teach them how to tie their shoes,” he says. “I don’t mean to sound like a pompous sort of expert but saw sharpening to me is kind of a mundane thing. It’s very challenging for people, I get it, but to me it’s not this complicated thing like, ‘Hey, I’m going to impart this wisdom to you that no one else can.’ I figured it out in my basement and if I figured it out, anybody can do it. I’m not that smart or talented, God knows. So it was just surreal.”
To this day, Matt is still surprised by recognition and publicity.
“Me and my love today (my wife’s in it too) lol!” — Matt
“I get to wake up every day and have this reasonably comfortable life because people have this faith in me to sharpen their saws and pay me really well for it,” Matt says. “I just feel so incredibly lucky to be able to do that. I’m grateful I get to live this way. I’m not saying I’m famous or a big deal, but it’s kind of like a dream come true. And I love it. And it’s really afforded me the ability to raise my family. If it weren’t for this, I would be doing something else that is not as fun, not as rewarding and certainly doesn’t pay nearly as well, which would put a lot of demand on my time and sanity. So it’s been cool.”
A Book, 9 Years in the Making
Matt has known Christopher Schwarz for more than a decade, via the occasional email, meet up at a woodworking show, or saw sharpening job. Around 2014, Chris needed a technical editor for a new Lost Art Press book by Andrew Lunn about making saws. He called Matt.
“I was like, ‘How much do you want me to pay you to let me do that?’” Matt says. Chris hired Matt (and paid him).
“I got to read and edit this whole thing. It was such a cool experience and a privilege and amazing. There’s so much wisdom in it. As a saw maker, I really loved a lot of it – he got so much of it right.”
But the book was never published. Andrew quit making saws and exited the woodworking world entirely.
Matt thought a lot about that unpublished book, including the last short chapter at the end that provided a brief overview of how to file a saw. One day, Matt asked Chris if he’d ever like to publish a book just on saw sharpening. Chris was interested. He asked Matt to write up a detailed outline and a sample chapter.
“I had this running theory: If I can teach, I can write a book,” Matt says. “I have this idea, I think, of what people need to know. And I have a lot of experience with what people struggle with when they start sharpening saws. I wanted to put that in a book to get more people to be able to do it. Because if they want to try, there’s nowhere else to learn it.”
In the 1980s, Harold “Dynamite” Payson wrote a short book called “Keeping the Cutting Edge: Setting and Sharpening Hand and Power Saws.” But Matt wanted to do something different – lots of macro photography, close-ups of important steps. A book that would have saved him from ruining 20 to 30 saws when he was starting out.
Matt wrote an outline and sample chapter, and sent it to Chris.
“He’s like, ‘Great. Let’s do it. I’ll send over a contract,’” Matt says. “And I was like, ‘What? I didn’t figure you’d say yes. Shit, now I’ve got to write a book.’”
Matt signed the contract in 2015. Then spent nine years writing the book.
“I think I know how to write,” says Matt, who does a lot of technical writing on policy and regulation in his day job. But he struggled with taking something that is such a huge part of his everyday life and putting it into words. At first, he was writing a chapter a year.
“I edit myself to death,” he says. “I will go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I have written this book 10 times over. There are entire versions of this book that no one has ever seen.”
In college, Matt took a writing class that he loved and there he learned the importance of efficient writing. His professor would say, “Don’t say in 10 words what you can say in six.” So Matt knew his first attempts, meandering and laden with fancy language, needed work. He’d edit, turning 1,000 words into 150, saying the same thing but clearer.
“But that process for me is not fast,” he says. “It takes forever to do and that’s the loop I was stuck in.”
A few years in, the bones of the book were there, but Matt considered it only half done. He also had another obstacle: photography.
“Chris, he’s a freaking genius, right?” Matt says. “He’s just this incredibly smart, talented person. And I was like, ‘So Chris, what about the photography?’ And he’s like, ‘You can do it. You can do it with a digital camera.’ And I’m like, ‘Chris, I don’t even have a smartphone. I don’t know what a digital camera is.’ But he convinced me I could do the photography.”
Chris sent him a list of things to buy along with a how-to photography guide he gives to writers. But the whole process felt daunting to Matt. Every once in a while Matt would check in with Chris, worried about how long the book was taking. And Chris would always give him words of encouragement: “It takes as long as it takes. You’re doing fine.”
One day, Matt was teaching a class at Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking and ran into Mike Pekovich, creative director of Fine Woodworking. Matt and Mike had become friendly over the years and Mike knew Matt was working on a book. At one point, he asked about the photography. Matt told him he was trying to do it himself but so far he hadn’t figured out which end of the camera faces the work. Mike laughed and offered to teach Matt photography.
“Talk about privilege,” Matt says.
Mike underlined the importance of the book Matt was writing. And the only payment he wanted for the lesson was making a good book with pictures. So Matt went to Mike’s house and spent an entire day in Mike’s shop learning not only the technical aspects but also composition and lighting.
However, Matt found it difficult to find the time to replicate the process in his own shop. Another year went by and Chris, while talking with Matt about some saw sharpening, asked about the book.
“And I was like, ‘Chris, I’ve got to be honest with you. I have gotten one-on-one, day-long, private instruction from Mike Pekovich on how to do photography and I still can’t do it. I can’t make time for it. This book is going to take me another 10 years to do the photography.’ And then Chris, just casually in his Chris way, goes, ‘Well you know, I could just come up there and shoot all the pictures for you in a day or two.’ And I was like, ‘What?’”
In summer 2023, Chris drove up to Rhode Island. Matt created a shot list for every photo he needed and spent a few days on prep work and staging. They shot the whole book in two days.
“It was awesome,” Matt says.
Matt also got to spend time with Chris in a way he never had before.
“I got a better sense of his vision and what the business is like. And he’s just an amazing person. He told me his business model is to essentially take care of as many people as he can in his life. Now I understand so much more about why he does what he does. And it’s not charity with him. He just means it in this really profound way. He’s like, ‘I’m going to find all the talented people that I can and if they have things they want to do that I can help facilitate I’m going to use whatever resources and privilege I have to help remove the bullshit so that they can be creative and prosperous in a way that he has been able to.’ I was just like, ‘Wow. That’s really fucking cool.’”
Wrapping up the photography lit a fire under Matt. And although Chris never put Matt under a deadline, he said it would be great to publish the book within a year.
“I just buckled down and every free moment I had, nights, weekends, I just sat on my porch and wrote,” Matt says.
“It’s been totally surreal,” Matt says. “I just have to kind of pinch myself. I started sharpening saws on a lark 20 years ago because I was literally too poor to buy a tool I wanted and here I am, 20 years later. I wrote a book and people pay me to do this for them. I’ve gotten to meet all these amazing people and just spend time with people who are so talented and smart and just can’t help become more talented and smart on your own just because you’re with them. And that’s pretty cool.”
After a long dry spell (five months), we finally have two new products in our store that we have been working on for a long time (nine years on the saw sharpening book!).
“Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening” by Matt Cianci is in our warehouse and shipping. It is $32. If you buy it before July 1, you will receive a free pdf download of the book at checkout. This book shows you saw teeth like you’ve never seen them before: up close. Matt Cianci, a long-time saw doctor, has a practical way to teach saw sharpening that anyone can do (I watched teach this last weekend).
If you’ve ever been frustrated by old texts about saw sharpening, this book will set you straight (pun intended).
“Video: Build a Roman Workbench.” This video shows you how to build the most portable, compact, inexpensive and easy-to-use workbenches available. Made from about $45 in dimensional lumber and scraps, these benches allow you to make cabinets, chairs and tables while sitting down.
These benches are ideal for apartment woodworkers – or anyone who has limited shop space (the bench can double as a coffee table). It’s also ideal for woodworkers who travel, who like to work outside or have mobility issues.
The video is now $35 – a special introductory offer. After July 1, it will be $60. The video includes downloadable construction drawings and a packet of additional information on workholding.
