Keeping Alive Crosscut Saws

Most old-time logging photos show two loggers standing on either end of some massive redwood, ponderosa pine, or Douglas-fir with a huge notch they’ve sawn into the base of the tree, before continuing the job of felling the old-growth monster. What they rarely show, is the guy back in the shop with a 12- or 18-foot crosscut saw mounted on a workbench for the saw filer to sharpen.

Bend resident Doug Williams retired from the Forest Service after 34 years where he worked on timber sales and contract administration. “Scaling logs was my first permanent job, how I got my foot in the door,” Williams said. “It was good for me because if you want to be a good timber cruiser or value timber, you have to spend time at the mill, scale a log, then watch them cut it up to get a sense of how you did.”

Doug Williams sharpening a crosscut saw in his shop. Credit: Damian Fagan

After a lifetime of working in the woods, Williams took the crosscut saw plunge. “I bought a couple of garage sale saws and took them over to Arden Corey, saw filer from Mill City, who was in his 80s back then,” Williams said. Corey sharpened the saws for Williams; eventually Williams took some saw filing workshops with Corey to learn the trade.

“One thing about running a crosscut saw, if it’s tuned well and not just sharp, it’s really fun to cut with,” Williams said. “But there’s a lot more to the saw than just being sharp; there’ s proper set and proper raker depth, too. If the saw isn’t set right, it’s really no fun to work with.”

Like everything in this world, crosscut saws come with their own language. On a crosscut saw there are cutters and rakers; the cutter teeth penetrate and slice the wood while the shorter raker teeth plow up a ribbon of wood called “the noodle.” The U-shaped sections between the cutters and rakers are called “gullets” and need to be deep enough to hold the shaving. And there are different patterns to these teeth from the plain tooth or peg tooth pattern (what you find on a bow saw) to M tooth pattern (includes a gullet between pairs of teeth) to the Perforated Lance Tooth Pattern (which includes bridges between the cutters), to name but a few.

“Axes and saws are a lot like pickups; there’s a lot of variety between them,” Williams said.

Setting a saw means more than sharpening the teeth, it has to do with bending or angling each tooth slightly outward from the plane of the saw in an alternating fashion to cut through the wood and rake out the noodles. To set the angles, Williams uses various metal gauges to make precise angles, often to within 1/1200^th of an inch.

“I try to get out one day a week and it’s an excuse to go to the woods,” Williams said. “Like for a Friday night football game, you prepare all week for that game and be well rested and have everything together.” Williams helps clear logs, under coordination with Jenny and Jim Elliott, along a section of the PCT near Santiam Pass under an “adopt a mile” type of effort for the Pacific Crest Trail Association. Williams enjoys meeting day or thru hikers on the trail, and has met people from all over the world. Though everyone is very appreciative of his work, Williams likes to share the fun. “I’ll tell them they can run the saw (one-person crosscut) and I’ll take their picture for them, which they love,” Williams said as he showed off several thank you notes pinned above his workbench.

Lately, Williams has expanded his workshop to including axes and doing leatherwork to make sheaths for the heads. “Axes can be used for all sorts of things from cutting limbs to pounding in a wedge.”

Williams sharpens saws and assists with several nonprofit organizations including the Central Oregon Nordic Club, Siskiyou Mountain Club, and the Future Natural Resource Leaders Club at LaPine High School. which competes in a timber sports program. Williams figures he’s sharpened somewhere between 800-900 saws and says he’s still learning a lot about working with metal, wood, and people, and says he’ll never know it all.

This article appears in the Source October 2, 2025.