Blade Sharpening Opinion

Is it dull?

-j

Getting there. Been using it for two years.

Depends. If it is the $10 blade, it is probably not worth spending $15 to have it sharpened. If it is a $50 blade, by all means, get it done and keep it for when your neighbor asks you to rip a couple of 4 x 4s. Always handy to have a spare blade.

Would you please tell me where you are talking about sending it to be sharpened. Does Craftsman have a sharpen service? I wouldn't think Forrest would fool with a Craftsman blade? I have a Craftsman blade I would like to have sharpened soon. No good sharpen service here.

Walt Conner

Walt:

Check out Forrest Manufactur>>>Now the question is do I send in the old Craftsman blade in for sharpening >

I was thinking about sending it to Forrest. It is the blade that came on my saw when I bought it. Just don't know if the blade is worth the expense. You can buy a new Woodworker II for forest for $89

Craftsman does not have a service that I know of, but there are many other places. Forrest is one, I've use Ridge Carbide

Forrest and Ridge are in business to make money. They make and sell new blades, they sharpen old blades. Yes, they will do your Craftsman as well as any other brand. Router bits too. As long as the blade was decent to begin with, have it sharpened. There will always be rough work to be done and you'd rather use a low cost blade for that.

While Forrest does an excellent job and that is where I send my blades, they are in business to make money and not discriminate against brands of blades. I send mine in with instructions to do such and such repairs and to call me if the repairs will be more than x amount of dollars.

Probably less expensive to just replace the Crapsman blade than to resharpen.

Blades that cost (and are worth) more than around $50 are probably worth resharpening. Blades that cost less than around $25-30 are probably a waste of money to resharpen. Save for doing the rough cuts or cutting in wood that might have buried metal/nails/etc and save the Forrest for the finish cuts and use in good wood

John

Forrest will sharpen ANY Brand blade if it is sharpenable at all

John

In my area their are about eight local saw sharpening services. They are listed in the yellow pages under "Saw - Sharpening & Repair" and also "Sharpening Services". I asked a few contractors who they would recommend before selecting one. I get my saw, planer and jointer blades sharpened at the same place. I recently found out that, unfortunately, they don't straighten bent blades.

Leon, I was wondering what Forrest charged to straighten your blade when you tilted the blade with a zero clearance insert in the saw. About two weeks ago I did the same thing to my WWII.

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

Nearly all my blades are Craftsman. I have them sharpened regularly by a local guy (former co-worker).

doc44 wrote:

LOL.. You know Jack it has been about 2 years since I had done that and was well on my way to forgetting that brilliant move.

They charge by the hour and minimum is $6.75. To sharpen, straighten, test cut and return shipping, $42. Not cheap but the blade cut like new again.

Take a look here.

I'm curious about how you package the blade for shipping. Do you just use cardboard or would it make sense to build a custom blade case for shipping them?

Tim Douglass

Cardboard works. That is how mine came back also. Wrap it in a couple thicknesses of newspaper, sandwich between two heavy sheets of cardboard and off it goes.

UPS? Post Office? FedEx?

I should have asked that the first time. I'm not sure I'd trust UPS with a $100 saw blade unless it was wrapped in armor plate.

Tim Douglass

Any of the above. I used UPS because they pickup at work every day. I've shipped and received very expensive items via UPS with no problems. With the millions of packages they handle, they have a very low claim rate. Saw blades are rather rugged anyway. I've shipped $5,000 electronic controllers with them.

I used the same HD card board container that the blade originally comes in.

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in news:PEMPd.6953$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com:

We regularly sent millions of dollars worth of electronic equipment with UPS every month. As others have mentioned, national borders can raise the need for preplanning.

More losses seem to have occured from mishandling in the warehouses than we experienced with UPS or FedEx.

And you can insure...

Patriarch