Making a Bo Saw from A Kit

I like building my own woodworking tools.  I try and build a few each year and have a good line up for this year and next.  For Christmas, I received the Grammercy bowsaw kit from the Tools for Working Wood (one of my favorite tools stores).  The kit included the 12" bows, string, brass bits to hold the blades and since I don't own a lathe, the handles.  There are great instructions and plans available on the Tools for Working Wood website.

It doesn't take much wood to build a bowsaw.  I like cherry, have plenty of straight grain cherry off cuts, and so that it what I went with.  Does it make a good wood for a bow so?  I don't know.  If it doesn't work or last, I can always make it again.

In the past 12 months (I think as it all blurs) I have made a a spoke shave and a big Roubo frame saw.  I was starting to feel a bit more comfortable shaping wood with these projects in shapes other than rectangles.  I was curious how I would feel making the shapes for this wood.  Turns out, I was comfortable.  Sure, there are imperfections.  

After cutting the wood to rectangular shapes, I did the mortises on the two side pieces.  One of the things I had struggled with in the past was making mortises by hand; so much so that I bought a table top mortiser.  For this build, I did the mortises free hand.  They came out nice.  I was happy with this and in the future I will be doing more mortises by hand.  If I have a lot to do on a particular project I might bring out the machine; otherwise, I will likely just do them by hand.     

                                       

What was interesting about these mortise and tenons was the the sides weren't straight.  Rather, they had a curve to them (supposedly to allow flex when the bowsaw is tightened).  Spent some time thinking on how was I going to get the curve consistent across the various places I need to make it.  The big insight was to use the one large gouge I had.  It worked out really well and was easy to do.  When I was cutting the curve shape on the mortise part, I put in a piece of sacrificial wood so that I wouldn't get blow out.  That worked well.  Just some minor pairing and it worked well.  The alignment wasn't as tight as I would like on a mortise and tenons but for a shop tool and my first curved ones, it will be ok.

The post is getting long so I will finish up the construction in part 2.