Review Stewmac Gauged Pull Saws (3606)

Rating: ** (out of five stars possible)

Evidently, if a Stewmac employee detects a tool or item review with less than four stars, the review is either deleted or ignored. Occasionally they will contact the customer to fix the problem, sometimes not. In the case of their pull-stroke gauged saws, not.

So this review of the Stewmac Gauged pull saws is a two or three-star review which you will never see on the Stewmac sales site.

No doubt about it, these saws are useful. I use these gauged pull saws very heavily. I am on my third set.

My complaint is that they don’t last very long. When new the saws work exception/ally well for improving fret board slots. The set is critical to my work on vintage fret boards. The problem is these saws are not made from good quality steel. The cut width is entirely dependent on the kerf width, which depends entirely on the set of the teeth. Tooth set is the distance of the teeth protruding from one side of the blade. Therefore kerf is twice that measurement. For example, a .030 inch pull saw may have a .025 blade and a .005 kerf. When the saw wears out it will have a .025 inch blade. A blade with no kerf is very hard to use in hard vintage rosewood.

The Stewmac site shows these in use for nut slotting. I cannot imagine using these saws on a bone nut. That is what slotting files are for. Note that a file is made of appropriately hardened steel. A saw is not, especially these saws. Also, an accidental touch on the fret board or peg head face would cause serious damage. These saws are much less useful for nut slotting because the blade causes the handle to be too high and therefore somewhat awkward to use. Furthermore, the blades are not sized to cut correct slot widths, whereas most nut slotting files are.

The following table shows saw cut widths versus desired nut slot widths for a light gauge string set:

Pull Saw Cut Width	Light Gauge String Size	Ideal Nut Slot Width
.010"	n/a	n/a
.015"	.012"	.016"
.020"	.016"	.020"
.025"	n/a	n/a
.030"	.25"	030"
none	.032"	.036"
none	.042"	.046-.050"
none	.054"	.058-.060"