A dull carbide saw is easy to spot. Look at the tooth with your naked eye, if you see shiny corners, it is dull. The process discribed earlier is jointing and will not make any saw sharp. It sole purpose is to make sure that every tooth is the same length thus all cutting the same amount of wood. If only 10 teeth in your saw are actually doing the cutting why buy a
60 teeth saw, buy a 10 teeth saw and save yourself some money. Carbide saws can be sharpen with non computerized saw grinders. Very few small shops would have such expensive machine and yet many of them do an excellent job. Just because the shop has a fancy expensive ginder does not mean that they are doing a good job. The machine is only as good as the operator and sharpening a saw is only a fraction of the work that goes in making a saw a real saw. Tensioning and leveling are two very important steps missed by many shops. Years ago popular mechanic had an article on making a saw sharpener using your radial arm saw and I know a guy that was cutting lobster laths that used a radial arm saw with very good results but he was using plain rip saws. Those were the days that popular mechanic magazine actually showed you how to make something, once a good magazine gone down the drain.- posted
18 years ago