A ripsaw (or rip saw) is a wood

saw A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, Wire saw, wire, or Chainsaw, chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws. Saws began as serrated materials, and when man ...

that is specially designed for making a rip cut, a cut made parallel to the direction of the

wood grain Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. It has various derived terms refer to different aspects of the fibers or patterns. Wood grain is important in woodworking and it impacts ...

Design

The cutting edge of each tooth has a flat front edge and it is angled backward by about 8°, in contrast to a crosscut saw, which has teeth angled backward by about 15°. With the "rip" tooth pattern, the edges are sharpened at right angles to the cutting plane, forming

chisel A chisel is a hand tool with a characteristic Wedge, wedge-shaped cutting edge on the end of its blade. A chisel is useful for carving or cutting a hard material such as woodworking, wood, lapidary, stone, or metalworking, metal. Using a chi ...

-like cutting surfaces, whereas crosscut teeth are sharpened at an angle, so that each tooth has a

knife A knife (: knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least Stone Age, 2.5 million years ago, as e ...

-like cutting point in contact with the wood. This design keeps the saw from following grain lines, which could curve the path of the saw: by acting like a chisel, the saw can more easily cut across deviating grain lines, which is necessary if a straight cut is to be achieved. This feature enables the

orthogonal In mathematics, orthogonality (mathematics), orthogonality is the generalization of the geometric notion of ''perpendicularity''. Although many authors use the two terms ''perpendicular'' and ''orthogonal'' interchangeably, the term ''perpendic ...

cutting edge to efficiently transport wood-chips from the

kerf A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws. Saws began as serrated materials, and when mankind learned how t ...

, allowing subsequent teeth to perform a more effective cut. It is possible to see this material removal mechanism in action by analyzing frame by frame footage of the cutting process. Ripsaws typically have 4–10 teeth per inch, making them relatively coarse.

Use

All

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

s use ripsaws of various types including the

circular saw A circular saw or a buzz saw, is a power-saw using a toothed or Abrasive saw, abrasive disk (mathematics), disc or blade to cut different materials using a rotary motion spinning around an Arbor (tool), arbor. A hole saw and ring saw also use ...

and

band saw A bandsaw (also written band saw) is a power saw with a long, sharp blade consisting of a continuous band of toothed metal stretched between two or more wheels to cut material. They are used principally in woodworking, metalworking, and lumb ...

. Historically sawmills used one or more reciprocating saws more specifically known as an "up-and-down" or "upright saw" which are of two basic types, the frame saw or a muley (mulay) saw''New international encyclopedia'', 2nd ed. Volume 20. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co. 1916. 601. which is similar to the hand powered pit saw. Some sawmills also use crosscut saws to cut boards and planks to length.

Cutting styles

On the vast majority of saws throughout the world, the teeth are designed to cut when the saw is being pushed through the wood (on the push stroke or down stroke). However, some saws (such as Japanese saws and the saws used by

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ians) are designed to cut on the pull stroke.

References

{{Woodworking Saws Woodworking hand tools