Shapening Horse Clippers

[Tom Bender]

This is a little off topic but the expertise is here.

My wife brings these to me about twice a year for sharpening. Mostly they need cleaning (dripping with oil and packed with hair). I give them a quick rub on the 3000 stone to remove any varnish or burrs that might be there. They seem sharp but I have no way to test them, unless one of the cats strays near and I'm not sure that would be the right type of fur to test them on. Don't want to go deep on something that is already sharp.

Horse Clippers.jpg

[John K Jordan]

This is a little off topic but the expertise is here.

My wife brings these to me about twice a year for sharpening. Mostly they need cleaning (dripping with oil and packed with hair). I give them a quick rub on the 3000 stone to remove any varnish or burrs that might be there. They seem sharp but I have no way to test them, unless one of the cats strays near and I'm not sure that would be the right type of fur to test them on. Don't want to go deep on something that is already sharp.

Horse Clippers.jpg

I have clippers that might be similar to the larger one (https://www.premier1supplies.com/p/p...ipping-machine) for shearing llamas and alpacas. There is a comb and a cutter. I also have shears, similar to what is used for sheep shearing (same motor and body but different head). Both are sharpened differently - one has a very slight hollow grind (sharpened on a large nearly flat conical wheel) while the other is ground flat. But unless I go look I can't remember which is which. I touched up one dull cutter on a flat hone and it worked well (it was ceramic so I used a diamond hone).

The proof is in the cutting. When you touched them up before did she say they cut well? If not maybe it's time to send them off. Perhaps you could buy an extra set of blades and swap them out while sending one off. (I keep about 10 sets of cutters for each of mine.) Fortunately, I've found trimming horse hair is far more forgiving than shearing an alpaca - if they are not very sharp you simply can't shear an alpaca.

The biggest thing that dulls the blades is dirt in the coat since all of these animals like to roll on the ground. I blow out the coat before shearing with a powerful livestock blower. Also, I clean dirt out of the blades often while working by running them a few seconds immersed in low-viscosity clipping oil: https://www.premier1supplies.com/p/clipping-oil After shearing, I disassemble and clean the set and if it felt like it was getting dull I set it in the "needs sharpening" pile.

Both are best sharpened professionally and the cost is not high. You might ask the mfgr if they provide sharpening service. Premier charges about $7 for a set.

JKJ

[Tom M King]

Both of those are normally sharpened on a dome. You can get several more uses out of them by just sharpening the teeth on your stones. I turn the stones on edge, and just rub the teeth back, and forth. The trick is not to let them get too dull before honing.