Logmaster edger blade source?

[Ljohnsaw]

OGH, another great thread of yours I just found!  How about some pictures of the beast?

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I don't know about 'great'. I was just asking for help and got it! Smartest bunch of people in the world on this Forum.
 I don't have many photos except for hysterical reference, such as above. But here is a short video I shot last Friday when a guy needed a specific size board for a barn repair. Pay attention, it's pretty short:
Log Master LME24D edger running a test board. - YouTube

 When we get it running well and start feeding it boards, I will get something better. Or as soon as I hit another stumble point. ;D

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I heard back from Chris at Sharp: $125./blade for 2 pcs. Not bad at all. But the delivery is 15-16 weeks...UGH.

[YellowHammer]

That edger looks pretty nice. 4 months for a blade? wow, I had mine much quicker.  I guess that's the way things are these days. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Unfortunately yes. I didn't even flinch because I know they are having trouble getting the specialty steels, everybody is. There is no point in whining or beating him up over it. That's why he hadn't given me the quote yesterday and when I called him this morning he said he needed to give his steel supplier a kick to get that info. I talked to my buddy this morning and he will drop off his billing data in the morning for me to get the order placed. We will then see about doing a work around to at least get one of those blades rebuilt to get things moving. Life goes on, we have work to do. I know this machine will do a great job when we get it right, or even nearly so.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well just a quick update on this to let anybody following know how it went. I stated in the last post that I didn't whine at all about the 16 week delivery. That would have had them in our hands the second week of January as the latest. At the end of January I called once a day and left voice mails with Chris, the rep I was doing business with. Then I sent emails every couple of days and the only response I got was "I'll get back to you as soon as I check with the shop", but he never got back to me. Started to routine again in the beginning of February, most songs and dances but he never returned any update or status.
 Yesterday I called again and a different fella picked up the phone. For the first time I let some frustration out and told the guy how many times I had called and written and all I was asking for was the status they had told me would ship6 weeks ago. He put me on hold, then came back and told me they were in grinding now and would ship Monday. Also they had no billing information even though I had already provided that. So I had to walk out to the shop and get that for them, then called him back. He apologized for the delay and I explained that I understood the delay BUT there is nothing that will tick a customer off more than NOT telling him what is going on. Give me the bad news and lets move on, but don't force me to make 8 phone calls and 4 or 5 emails to find out what is going on. Tuesday it was 5 months or 20 weeks since the order. They now tell me any new orders are quoted at 20 weeks. Well duh.
 Everybody can make their own decision for themselves, but for us it really doesn't matter how good these blades cut when we get them. These folks took too much effort to do business with. I know a lot of our members use them and I hope you continue to get good service and products from them. But I just don't think they wanted our business and I will accommodate them in the future in this respect. We tried Sharp and it didn't work out.
 Now lets see if they show up when they said they would. I do expect them too. I think the guy I talked to yesterday is Chris's boss because he said he was going to 'have a discussion with him about this'.

 As an aside to this. Once I had the new blades on order and knowing how long it would be, I found a local blade company (well I did business with them for 20 years off and on when I was working) to re-tip and sharpen the blades we had in the machine. I sent them up and they turned them around in less than a week. We did one at a time to keep running. When I was talking to the rep on the phone he mentioned maybe we should get a second pair of blades so we could just swap them out. I told him we had them on order already but it was a long lead time. He said really? how long? I told him. He laughed and asked where I ordered them. Then he told me they could make those blades in two weeks because they stock all that material.  ;D I also found out these guys service a LOT of cabinet shops and wood products companies in our area. They will pick up and deliver if the business justifies it. Live, learn, and move on.

[Old Greenhorn]

Just for reference, another update: The blades arrived yesterday. 21.5 weeks after order. (9/14/21-2/24/22) I worked in manufacturing and cutter shops for nearly 50 years, and these blades look good, but I can see that the care in workmanship is going out the window in that shop. They never cleaned off all the grinder's reference marks or the inspector's marks, and for me that is a tell tale sign of hustling and shoving things down the line. If you do good work, you want the customer to see it when they open the box, not see your notes written in sharpie on the various points on the blades. Probably just a sign of the times, sadly.

 It will be a while before we load these up and give them a run off. The edger is blocked in by snow right now. I expect these to cut very well, the grinding work looks quite good on a quick pass without my inspection tools.