peg or raker toothing?

[Peter_t]

i found a 30'' bow saw for £2 at a boot sale this morning way too big for bushcraft but the next best thing for small treework jobs untill i can afford a chainsaw. it needs a new blade, as i understand peg toothing is for seasoned wood and raker toothing is for green wood. which is best for all round use or are they totaly Specific to one type of wood?

thanks
pete

 

[warthog1981]

I generally tend to stick to a peg blade as a good all rounder
I do cut a lot of wood with a bow saw as some folks might say
Try and get a BAHCO bow saw blade as there the best ive found as all blades are not created equal

cheers Russ

 

[avgfan]

Saws are mostly used for bucking wood into foot-long lengths for splitting into kindling. Thus, you'd want a peg toothed saw as you'd be cutting downed, dead wood for a fire. Peg toothed blades are also far more efficient than raker toothed types. If a raker tooth is every fifth tooth on the blade, you're loosing 20% of your cutting teeth as rakers don't cut - they only rake the sap/sawdust gunk out of the kerf.

Last year we had an ice storm that took out a lot of trees. I helped a neighbor remove a downed pine tree that was blocking his driveway by sawing it up with two bucksaws. I wanted to compare the performance between two saws of identical length but with a raker toothed blade versus a peg toothed blade - when cutting green wood. Both blades were Bahco. I gave the raker toothed blade to my neighbor for a while and then we switched off. There was no comparison in speed and efficiency. The peg toothed blade not only cut as well, it flew through the wood. My skeptical neighbor couldn't believe that we could cut up the tree so quickly with handsaws. I decided then and there I'd only oufit my wilderness bucksaws with peg toothed blades.

Hope this helps,

Brent

 

[Peter_t]

cheers guyes, looks like peg is the way forward

pete