I dropped my Disston D-23 10 tpi crosscut saw at Circle Saw in Houston to be sharpened. Can you believe their charge is $5.00 for the service? I asked them how they still did it for that price. Their reply was they don't do many handsaws any more and the guy can put it on a machine and do other things while it is working. From past experience, I know I will have to stone the sides of the teeth, the saw will stay in it's kerf and will be aggressive in it's cut.
Does any one get their circular saw blades sharpened any more? My Dad used to take his carbide-toothed blades in regularly to get them "touched up", especially when he needed a really clean cut. My neighbor says it costs more in time and gas, a new blade is cheaper.
In response to Barry, this is the sixth handsaw they have sharpened, the other 5 had to be stoned, but after that, they were better than new.
I send my Forrest WWII and my Tenryu to Forrest for sharpening. I used to get my blades sharpened locally, but I had some blades ruined one time. Circle saw has sharpened the Tenryu for me and did a good job. They are 20 miles from my house, so it is cheaper to mail the blades to Forrest.
I used to take 5 or 6 at a time to the local saw shop and exchange them for one's he's sharpened and coated... Then, it was a lot cheaper than buying blades, but with the off shore stuff now, I think I'd just recycle the old blades..
I don't even think anyone here has the capability to sharpen a 7 1/4 blade.
3,000 years ago when I was a professhunal carpintar, we used to have saw blade cards where we kept our blades. It was a piece of plywood with a large sheetrock toggle through a hole on which we piled up the blades and tightened down the toggle to secure them.
We all had about 20 blades or so, and kept the plywood and the planer blades separated as they could only be sharpened by a file.
When we were busted, we used to file out blades by hand, which wasn't hard to do if you didn't wait so long that the blade was really dull.
Talk about burning memories....
When I started framing houses, there was an old crippled up alcoholic that used to come out to the subdivisions in a small mail truck. In the truck he kept his tiny generator, and a Foley Belsaw blade sharpening machine.
He kept no schedule, and actually didn't do a very good job on the blades. But he was there and so were we. So he would pull up every two weeks or so, if business was bad, once a week. He would gather up all our cards, pull off the blades and set one up in the machine. After it was running, he would pour himself some of his own lubricating fluid and sit there and watch the machine, sharpening blade after blade.
If there were several crews around there, or if we hadn't seen him for a while he would sit there all day. By the end of the day, he could barely tell you what you owed him, and the little truck smelled like a smokey old honky tonk.
With the advent of *affordable* carbide blades for circular saws, it was the end of sharpening. The carbides cut better, last longer, and even cut nails better. Besides, you can get such good deals when they are on sale it is silly.
I went in the box about a month ago and they had the Freud 24 tooth blades on sale for $10. On closer inspection, there were several two- for-one packages in there, so that made them $5 for a really nice blade. in the 70's, I was paying $2 to have those old steel blades sharpened.
When I rip long strips of solid surface material, I use a 12' fence and a Milwaukee Circular Saw. The blades, I buy by the pack. Bosch. 40 teeth. Thin kerf. They don't last long, especially when cutting Staron (a few % more minerals, which also makes it harder and wear better).
Then they get relegated to skid-cutting duty, where the staples and nails usually finish them off enough to discard. I pay around $ 10.00 per blade. Canadian...whic is, again, about 2 buck US.. ..well, shit, we were at par only a few months ago.
Mine go down the food chain as well. They start out doing good work, then go to the saw that does demo, then the same saw cuts up junk and crap to fit in the job dumpster or large cleanup bags.
The bottom of the line?
Blades reserved for ridge vent retro fit installation and roof repair. Nothing like taking a dull blade to old yellow pine trusses,
18 - 20 ga gang nails, deck staples and roofing nails. Some of those blades are literally missing half their teeth at the end of a retro installation.
Safe to say I get my $ out of them.
Canadian...whic is, again, about 2 buck US.. grin>..well, shit, we were at par only a few months ago.
Yes! Like those really cool Toyotas and Hondas we make up here. Especially those Lexus RX's Keep them cards and letters coming folks...and those dollars.
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