Anyone sharpen their own TS blades?

[Jon Grider]

I was just perusing the latest flyer from HF and noticed their Chicago Tools blade sharpener. I'm aware of the dubious quality of much HF merchandise, but this tool piques my interest. I've never considered sharpening my own Tenryu or Systematic sawblades, but am curious if anyone else has tried one of these machines?

[Dave Sweeney]

I'm pretty sure that Scott Whiting sharpens his own blades. :D;) I doubt if he uses the HF equipment though.

[Phil Thien]

I have one. And while the basic mechanics are good, the "wheel" it comes w/ is nothing but a diamond tile blade. It is much, much too coarse to handle carbide blades.

And I've been finding lots of high-quality blades on sale for $10-$20. For that price I'll keep buying new and saving the old ones to be resharpened some day when I can no longer find deals on new blades.

[Peter Quinn]

I was at a trade show two springs ago, and they had a vendor that sells the machines necessary for sharpening modern carbide TS blades. Cool to look at. A very basic set up cost around $50,000. I asked the vendor and my local tool grinder separately if there was a possibility of sharpening in a small shop or even in house in a medium sized professional shop, and NOT REALLY was pretty much the answer. Something like "If you want to take a piece of steel moving at 3500RPM, attempt to sharpen each face and facet of all the teeth included and some how come out balanced with an accurate kerf using some cheap chain saw sharpener, go ahead, its your fingers, but I don't recommend that."

Anyway, the unit my local grinder uses is a CNC fluid cooled diamond grit thing in the $250,000 range for the pair of machines that work together (one does the faces, one does the edges. Imagine setting up for a high ATB with some TCG teeth, say 80 of them, using a HF chinese grinder? So in short, I have some serious doubts any rig from HF is going to sharpen your TS blades in any meaningful way.

[Don Selke]

Ditto on Scott's sharpening service.:)

[Myk Rian]

Jon;

I take my blades to Marsh power tools here in Brighton. A fellow from Grand Rapids picks them up, and returns them the next week. I can try to find out who it is if you like.

[Scott Whiting]

This grinder has been covered in the forum several times since it became available. Basically you cannot get there from here. Interestingly though it will indeed sharpen to some extent the Carb-Tip blades that HF sells that I will not run on my grinders because they load up normal resin bond wheels.

As to new equipment, after a bit of practice, there are manual flood cooled machines available for under $10k that will do quite acceptable work. My CNCs cost a bit more than that.:D

[Jon Grider]

Jon;

I take my blades to Marsh power tools here in Brighton. A fellow from Grand Rapids picks them up, and returns them the next week. I can try to find out who it is if you like.

Myk,
I would like to know the name of the sharpening service you use. I was disappointed in the work of the service that I used last [also in GR]. My Systi combo came back nearly as dull as I sent it. I paid nearly 20 bucks for the "sharpening" .

[scott spencer]

I dull mine myself but let the pros sharpen them for me! :D

[Myk Rian]

Here's the company Jon.
http://www.leitztooling.com/about-us.htm
They service many shops, so you could call them and find a place nearby to drop them off at.
I have all Freud blades, and they have come back cutting better than new.

[Jon Grider]

Here's the company Jon.
http://www.leitztooling.com/about-us.htm
They service many shops, so you could call them and find a place nearby to drop them off at.
I have all Freud blades, and they have come back cutting better than new.

Thanks Myk for the link.I'll give them a try. I wonder if they're affiliated with the German Leitz [Leica] camera manufacturer. If so, they ought to be good.