For getting it securely into some of those awkward angles, try clamping a wooden hand screw clamp in your vise and then clamping the work into the wooden clamp. Or you can simply clamp the work onto the bench
Great tip on using the wooden clamp. That should leave enough clearance to get the file where it needs to go. I have a 2nd try video for my other saw handle coming up. In that one I do clamp the work down to the edge of the bench which worked great. Thank you.
Turned out fine. To get surface flat i clamp a bock of wood that is squared up to handle and use that as guide to flatten with chisel. Much easier than using plane. Once horn area is sawed to general size I use a Sloyd knife to carve to close to shaped wanted and finish with file and sand paper. Sometimes you get a far better ndeal on saws with broken horns but they are not hard to fix.
james wright, Wood By Wright has a couple of good video about WHY a good saw handle matters. So ya the horns and shaping the handle completely changes the saw. Personally I grew up on way to many hours of western saws. More into Japanese models these days
Nice job. In my opinion this is a very appropriate repair for this saw. It is not a collector saw ( where maybe color match is more critical)but is a very good vintage user that has been greatly improved by your repair.👍 Can a backsaw be used with a broken horn ? It can. But it is very difficult to saw accurately like that.The problem with taking the weight off of the toe,without using the horn,is it forces you to hold the saw far too tightly.And that makes it much more difficult to saw accurately. A loose grip allows the saw to follow the kerf,so if you establish the kerf straight,it will saw straight. I think Christopher Schwarz described how tightly to hold a saw the best. Hold it like you would hold a bird. Tight enough to keep it from getting away, but not tight enough to harm it. I have also heard Rob Cosman refer to this analogy. Both of them have been successfully teaching people to hand cut joinery for decades.
