Spear & Jackson 9550B Traditional Brass Back Tenon Saw, 12" x 15", Brown/Silver

Great saw for the price. It needs a little work when you receive it. Lacquer has been applied to the plate. It's easy to strip off. The handle needs to be reshaped or remade. If you don't mind a chunky, uncomfortable, ugly handle, then no worries. There were 3 teeth, at the heel of the plate, which were set incorrectly. All set one way, instead of alternated. It didn't matter to me since its at the end, near the handle. I'll either reset it when I feel like it, or just do it later when I resharpen. Out of the box, the saw plate was straight and decently sharpened. The handle and brass spine were tight. After cleaning off the lacquer, I tested the saw without any other improvements. It started the cut well, and tracked perfectly fine. The weight and length of the saw are perfect for my needs, but I have plenty of saws. I'm giving it 5 stars for the quality of the most important components vs. the cost. If you have a little saw know-how, this saw is pretty nice. This review is for the 12", 13ppi tenon saw.

4 years on since buying this saw, I can say that it's a very nice saw. Especially for the price. The teeth hold an edge while still being easy to sharpen. Backbone is rigid, the blade straight. The handle/grip isn't the most comfortable, but it's easy enough to reshape for a custom fit (very helpful if your hands are obscenely large). I have nothing bad to say about this saw except for the lacquer coating on the blade. Yes, it probably protects it from rust, but it also gets gummy and sticky in the wood after a few long cuts. However, it wipes off in a blink with acetone. Unfortunately, that also removes the maker's name, but I doubt that's going to be a deal breaker for anyone.Bottom line: i see no reason this saw shouldn't last a hobby woodworker for decades.

I love this saw. I was skeptical at first. I had purchased a #4 plane from the same brand and wasn't sure how this would work out. I was impressed right from the start. Saw arrived sharp and has remained sharp even after ~60 hours of use. Granted, this was mostly on soft pine, not hard maple (which is what kept chipping the plane), but considering the fact I use this as my primary partitioning tool for all tasks I am still impressed. I don't currently have a power miter saw (20 year old one burnt out) and I currently don't need one. I use this instead.Two annoyances. First, and I knew this at purchase, is that the saw isn't very tapered from tip to back. It tends to snag on cuts that are not perfectly straight. This is solved by using a little sex wax (not kidding) on the blade or (as needed in my case) to just 'get good'.Second, the saw is pretty short. This is fine for a tenon saw, but I'd like to see an old-school 24 inch model be offered for more general cross-cutting tasks.

I do hand tool woodworking making furniture and other smaller projects. I bought this saw to see what I could make of it - I am tired of buying new saw plates for my Japanese saws. I'd rather have saws I can keep and fix up. I figured the 10ppi skew back saw would make a good all round crosscut saw and let me get started learning how to cut on a push stroke.Out of the box my saw had a lot of friction and made super rough ragged cuts. I stripped a rubbery lacquer off the saw plate and narrowed the set by a lot. I also reshaped the tote.It took me a day of tuning and practicing, but by the time I was done, I was able to cut an eighth-inch slice of mahogany end grain freehand and the saw leaves a really nice finish that needs very little work to clean up. I plan to use it as my all-round crosscut workhorse saw.Regardless of what the company says, I wouldn't want to use this to rip anything more than a board foot at most. It isn't efficient for that.I'm rating 5 stars not for the saw's usability out of the box but because it's a reasonable price and with enough work you can make this a really refined tool. I particularly like being able to shape the tote to my hand.

I needed a hand saw to cut the back off of a solid body electric guitar so I could router out the inside to lighten it. I don't have a large bandsaw, so I chose this saw after some studying. I read that it should be re-sharpened for a dedicated rip cut. I found a YouTube video by Paul Sellers on how to do that with this exact saw! It probably would have cut well even left as stock. Then I made a simple jig to start the cut and was then able to control the saw perfectly all the way to the end. It easily cut off a 1/4" piece and it was a very clean and straight cut. The blade material was excellent thickness and I removed the protective coating with lacquer thinner so it wouldn't bind. The only thing I didn't like was that the handle was a little bit uncomfortable but Paul Sellers explains a fix for that too. I'm totally happy with this saw.

Good quality saw with an awful handle. Good price. Two different YouTube videos show a great modification to the handle to make it look and feel great in the hand. I chose to remove the handle by removing the rivets, shaping the handle and putting new bolts with split nuts. Reset the teeth and sharpened. Sawset changed from 0.054" to about 0.030". Inexpensive turned into great with a little work.

I saw this saw mentioned on a you tu be site that described modifying the saw to bet better performance. I found that completely true. If you squeze the set of the teeth out of the saw it performs much better. I used a C-clamp to flatten the teeth. The handle is also only good for people with small hands and it is too high up above the axis to allow a gentle cut. If you're willing a little work will turn this into a gem of a saw.If S&J reads these reviews, you could sell a lot more saws if you sold it without any set in the teeth. You would rul the market with this saw, and by the way, change the handle. Lots of classic saws on e B ay you could use as a pattern.