The Bench Blog

Earlier this year, I purchased a bunch of tools on eBay.co.uk. I blogged about it here.

Two of the auctions that I won were for Eclipse No. 77 saw sets. The pictures that were in the listings weren’t very good but the prices were great, so I bought both of them and paid about $4 each. I planned to keep the better of the two and either resell the other, or give it away.

Here are the sets when I bought them:

Since purchasing them, I did a little research on the Eclipse No. 77 and found that there were two versions made, one for fine teeth and one for course. Wouldn’t you know it, as luck would have it I got one of each. I guess I’ll be keeping both.

I wont post the complete clean-up (I’ll use that word as it is rather a small, simple tool to call this a restoration) of both saw sets. Here is what I did to the fine tooth set:

This is the Eclipse 77 saw set that I bought on eBay.

The set was a dirty, oily, and generally gunked up. It was not much to look at. The plunger was a little stiff as the grease that was around the internal springs had gone solid.

This is the condition that the set was in before I started any clean up.

You can see that this set has red paint on the inside surfaces near the plunger and anvil. What I have read elsewhere online leads me to understand that the red-painted ones indicate that they are for fine teeth.

The red paint on the inside surface helps to quickly designate this set for fine teeth.

Of note is the fact that the anvils are not very different on the fine and coarse versions. Both sets can be adjusted to bend the teeth by the same amount and to the same angle. The difference is in the size of the hammer. On the coarse version, the hammer is wider and flatter. This is great for setting the teeth on handsaws especially larger rip teeth. On the fine version, the hammer comes to a narrow point, allowing you to more easily bend small teeth without affecting their neighbors. This is great for most of your backsaws and essential for something really fine like a dovetail saw.

In this image I am partially squeezing the handle so that you can better see the hammer. That’s the little point that pushes the teeth against the anvil. Notice that this one is quite fine and pointy.

By comparison, this is my other No. 77 with the course hammer. It works better on larger teeth.

Here is the hammer on my other No. 77. Much wider.

I took everything apart and cleaned all the pieces with an old tooth brush and some break-parts cleaner. Some of the old grease had hardened and it took a little while to remove it all with a dental pick.

Here is the saw set once disassembled.

Here’s a closer view of some of the parts.

Here a some of the dirty parts before I cleaned them.

Once all of the parts were cleaned, I headed over to my bench grinder. I use this tool more than any other when it comes to cleaning up and restoring old tools. It was a $20 garage sale find. I love it!

My bench grinder with a Grizzly 6″ 60 ply spiral sewn buffing wheel and their green (fine) compound.

I took my time and carefully polished all of the parts. The buffing compound can leave a black waxy buildup on some of the parts, so when I was done polishing, I wiped everything down with a cloth and mineral spirits. I then used a cloth with denatured alcohol to get rid of any mineral spirit residue.

Once all of the parts were polished and cleaned, I lubed the necessary parts and re-assembled the saw set.