diamond grit for sharpening chrome saw teeth

[Randy88]

Bought an edger with inserted teeth, have a couple boxes of chrome teeth that came with the edger, along with two spare blades.    

I'm building a sharpener and was wondering what grit diamond wheel you'd recommend for sharpening with.

[Ron Wenrich]

What kind of sharpener are you designing?   For chrome, most any type of grinding wheel will knock off the chrome.  Its only a coating.  After that, you can use a regular bastard file.  I used a ruby stone wheel on my Jockey grinder to knock off chrome.  Its a bit aggressive, but gets the job done.  I also had an Andrus style grinder with a Milwaukee drill that had a grinding wheel on it for my edgers.   

[moodnacreek]

Although chrome doesn't require diamond it works very nice. Edgers are not fun to sharpen. I have quite the collection of grinders and filing jigs from the sawmill auction days of past. On the edger the jockey [edger style] with diamond is the fastest.

[Randy88]

A friend of mine had a homemade sharpener setup using an old electric motor, belt and a shaft with two bearings, and a very simple setup to hold the blade and sharpen the teeth right on the blade, his wasn't large enough to do my 16 inch blades so I'm building my own.   

I had an old electric motor off one of my old choppers used to sharpen the knives, its direct drive 110 volt, think 1 hp with a stub threaded shaft, thought about just using the old sharpening stone off that, but thinking about going to diamond instead.   I just need to make an adapter to go from the 1.25 hole down to my .75 motor shaft is all.    

I've got the parts all rounded up, just working now to build it.   I know its not ideal, but I've talked to a few guys that told me to just swap out teeth and sharpen them somewhere else besides on the edger, so since I have two spare blades, the plan is to swap out teeth and then sharpen two blades worth, then swap them back and do it that way instead of hand filing or buying a sharpener, my only out of pocket cost is the wheel, just wondering what grit you guys would recommend.      The buddy who's unit I borrowed to copy uses pink stones, but he told me to buy a diamond wheel from the start and avoid the grief of dealing with the stone's, but he didn't know enough about the diamond wheels to tell me what grit to buy.   

Its a pretty simple design, and will keep the blade perfectly level when sharpening so everything is square, something I had trouble doing as a kid helping my grandpa sharpen the old circle mill by hand without a guide.   

I've looked at the different sharpeners on the market and can remember enough about sharpening a circle blade to think, these smaller edger blades in the machine would be a bugger to sharpen, thinking I'll give this a try first sharpening off the edger and see how it goes.    

[Ron Wenrich]

I used a ruby stone on my grinders.  

I would think it would be more of a pain to swap teeth than to sharpen on the edge.  I always found it faster to just sharpen the teeth.  Its a pain, but so is swapping teeth.  

[Bradm]

Get a CBN wheel rather than diamond.  Diamond and steel don't mix well and your wheel will glaze over resulting in minimal cutting action and overheating the tip.

If you're designing things, look into changing the edger so you can quick change the blades.  I've been in a few mills where they can change out blades (solid body rather than split body) in under 5 minutes.

[moodnacreek]

If you ever had bearing spin out; ruining the shaft and bearing, you would be reluctant to pull the bearing off a good running edger to sharpen on a machine. This is the idea of insert tooth blades on the edger [you sharpen on the mandrel or change teeth]  Much as I dislike stand-all bits, the only style made in carbide, they go a long time in the edger.