Today while sawing some seasoned red oak plank scraps, Lynn showed me how to get the handsaw biting better. She brought out a squirt bottle with some vegetable oil in it and oiled the sawblade. I knew about using cutting oil with steel and chain oil with a chainsaw, but it never occurred to me to use veg oil with a handsaw on timber for a table. She said her reasoning on veg oil is that she uses that and olive oil to condition our furniture. Makes sense to me and I didn't bend a handsaw blade today.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), October 12, 2000

Answers

people used to use a piece of fat back to keep the saws moving

-- STAN (sopal@net-port.com), October 13, 2000.