Makita or Veritas Power Sharpeners

[Steven J Corpstein]

Does anyone have hands on experience with either of these sharpeners? Pros? Cons?

[Keith Outten]

I have the Makita slow speed sharpener, bought it about ten years ago. Its a great machine for sharpening planer and joiner blades as well as chisels. I have an article that is about 50% complete that I am writing about using the Makita to sharpen planer blades. I found that it can detect cracks in blades if you adjust your technique. If I ever find the time to complete the article I will post it here.

I used to be a nondestructive testing inspector. I keep some dye check chemicals in my shop to test mower blades, planer blades and a host of other metals.

A friend of mine recommended the Makita when I was shopping for a sharpener. I know there is a lot of opinions concerning sharpeners, there are a few experts who could offer more details than I can.

[Steven J Corpstein]

I actually have the Makita grinder sitting in front of me. I just received it via UPS tonight but had some reservations about it. I want to use it to true or square hand plane irons then put the initial bevel back on them. How good of a job does it do with that? Honing jigs (I have the Veritas)just don't seem to hold true enough because of varying hand pressure and I don't like the hollow grind of a bench grinder. Thanks for your reply.

[Jim Fuller]

I have the makita, and bought the coarse stone from Highland Hardware. If you go to their site there is an instruction manuel posted. I use the power sharpener to do planer and jointer knives, but for my chisels and hand planes I perfer to do them by hand. I do use the veritas jig to hold them and to put the secondary bevel on . I set up a peice of quarter inch plate glass with varing grit of emory cloth and sharpen and polish on that.

[John Durscher]

I have the Veritas power sharpener. It is very easy to use and does a good job. It comes with two platters that you stick self adhesive sandpaper disks to. The two platters are different thicknesses. You put the course grade sandpaper on the thick platter and the fine grade on the thin platter. This way you do your bevel with the course and the micro bevel with the fine grade paper.

It took me a while to figure out how to get my chisels in the carrier so that they would always register correctly. It turns out that you need to put the chisel on one end of the carrier or the other against a built in stop that makes it always square.

The sandpaper that they provide is very high quality and lasts a long time. The course grade paper goes on pretty easy. The very fine grade paper is kind of fussy to put on since you must get all the bubbles out. The nice thing about using the sandpaper method is that you don't have to mess with leveling a grinding wheel.

John

[Steve knight]

I own three makita's they are decent machines. but I have worn out enough of the stones and and other replacement stones that I finally dumped the whole stone thing with them. I use mine with three different grits of sandpaper to shape and flatten backs. it is faster and you don't have to try to keep the stone trued up.

[Eddie Darby]

If you want to have your cake and eat it too then ....

Try this machine, you can run stones and sand paper on it, and it has a lot of other nice features.

http://www.lapsharp.com/

Whetstones:

http://www.woodartistry.com/Chartpic...Whetstones.pdf

[Bart Leetch]

If you want to have your cake and eat it too then ....

Try this machine, you can run stones and sand paper on it, and it has a lot of other nice features.

http://www.lapsharp.com/

Whetstones:

http://www.woodartistry.com/Chartpic...Whetstones.pdf

Well at least at the price they are asking for the Lapsharp I should be able to just set a few tools beside it & come back an hour later & they should all be finished nice a sharp? I hope they sell lots of them so I can find a used one for about what I figure they are worth.