my dad has a foley belsaw charpener, but it looks nothing like that at all. how does it work?
OK 046 this is what I know. The retoother is part of the whole set up for sharpening carpenters hand saws. After a number of sharpenings the saw teeth lose their shape and vary in height. If the teeth are not all the same height you can joint the saw with a file and recut the teeth with a taper file or you can use the Foley retoother which uses the cutting dies to cut new teeth in the edge of the saw blade. In order to make this machine run properly you need retoothing bars - nothing more than a steel bar with evenly spaced notches - that allow the retoother to advance the blade as each tooth is cut. Bars were available for tooth spacing of 4 tpi (ripsaws) to about 15 tpi (finer cut crosscut saws).
Next step would be to mount the saw blade in the setter to have the correct set put into the teeth.
Final step is to put the saw into a filer. This machine holds a taper file and runs it through each tooth on the blade and can be adjusted for each type of saw and tpi. The saw is clamped to a carrier bar which runs through the filer and keeps the saw in the proper position for the file to run through.
You don't show a picture of the filer. I have three filers and no retoother or setter. You never seem to find all of the stuff you need for these machines in one place. The hardest parts to find are the retoothing bars - without these the machine won't work. If you have these all you need to do is find a filer and you have a complete set up for doing hand and circular saws. Foley also made some wheel attachments which could be used for sharpening band saw blades on the filers.
Keep poking around the internet. I can't remember where but someone posted a video or the manual for setting up the retoother.
Sorry for the stuff I left out but this was meant to be an overview. Hope this helps some. We're all sort of refiguring out how these things worked since there are really no sharpening shops left.
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