When to sharpen joint and/planer blades

[Michael Costa]

When do you guys typically sharpen your jointer and planer blades? I'm sure there must be a rule of thumb as to how many linear feet you pass before doing so.

I have only run pine or fir through my machines.

With that said, will bloodwood destroy the blades on these machines. It has a Janka of 2900.

[Tom M King]

No lineal feet rule, just go by noise, or of course, if one gets a nick, or several.

Sorry, no experience with Bloodwood, but have run plenty of stuff harder than that. Just feed slower.

[Andrew Hughes]

I like to change my jointer knives before they get too run down. I have two sets m2 and t1. I can hone them with a rig I made . If they get a deep nick or the honing bevel gets too large I send them to a saw service.
I remember blood wood to be pretty nasty to hss. Try to get your boards mostly flat on one or two good passes. To save the knifes.
Good luck

[Kevin Jenness]

When they are dull, which is to say when they are no longer giving good results, and that depends on the material being milled. A moulder operator could tell you pretty exactly how many lineal feet of a certain species he can run before the quality is unacceptable, but it's hard to say with variable inputs. 100 linear feet of teak can trash a HSS knife. Bloodwood, not so much but it would be a good idea to have a spare set on hand.

My rule of thumb(nail) is if I run my nail across the blade and it slides off, it's time to change the knives. If it digs in it's sharp enough.

[Tom Bender]

You can mill miles of Pine, Fir Aspen and other soft woods and quite a lot of hardwood if it is all clear and straight grained. Tearout and knots are much harder on blades.