I just got the last couple of invoices back on the sharp shops. With shipping both ways and $7.50 per sharping, thats about $10 a blade. With Red STreaks new at $13.50, i've got to come up with a better system. If i paid $1,000 for a sharpener, thats only 100 sharpenings and its paid for. I guess you need one that sharpens the front, back and gullets of the teeth, so i guess that would mean it would need to be automatic? Whats the best brand, for the least money? Setters? Would a manual sharpener be that bad? I mean if i sharpened just the fronts of the teeth, wouldn't i get quite a few sharpenings before the gullet cracked? HEck with all the steel in the logs i've got, they never live that long! what do you guys think? I've got about 60 blades now from every manufacturer with every type of tooth, hook, and set. Seems like i should sell them all on ebay and get just one type so i can sharpen them easily?
Oh, and woodmizer was chucking the bad ones for me, and selling me new ones on their "program" i asked finally to see the ones they chuck sent back to me. They marked it "hit steel" The teeth had a little bit of the tip gone, maybe 1/32 or 1/64" I wonder if this blade could really be sharpened. I don't think i want the guys who are selling me new blades, at their leisure, deciding which of my blades they care to sharpen. Think its the fox watching the hen house.
Yes i know i use resharp, send all my blades to them if thay do not sharpin one i fix it then send it back . thay sharpin it and send it back. By the way thay will not sharpin blades that have missing teeth or are to narow, a good thing.
I have 2 Dino sharpeners from Western Woodlot. They will sharpen any blade configuration just by adjusting the settings on the cams. I just got a new dial indicater setter from a local machine shop for less than $100. It seems to work very well so far. As far as just sharpening the tooth face, I did that for a while. The blades didn't last long at all. Never got more than three sharpenings out of them. I get as many as 10+ now. I have reset and sharpened blades missing up to 5 teeth and haven't noticed a loss in performance. It is easier to stick with one blade manufacturer so you don't have to change the sharpener to sharpen them.
I've got a Cooks sharpener and setter then bought a dino setter too. My cooks sharpener has worked well (as advertised) the only thing going wrong with it is they used a bushing on the cam that advances the blade and it's worn out. Their new machines have a bearing. The setter is ok but a little slow. The Dino setter works great and is very fast for .042 blades but I don't like to use it for the thicker blades as it uses a different cam system to bend the tooth tips and mechanical advantage is not in its favor.
Kelvin, I have written befor and it's in at least one knowlege base that it is in the sawyers favor to sharpen their own blades...
Using your numbers of $10 per sharpeninng...You can easily sharpen 4 blades an hour and many times 5 or 6, but using 4/hr thats $40/hr you are effectively paying yourself to sharpen blades. If you have an employee that can do it for $10/hr then your making $30/hr back (in cost savings) from sending them out. IMO anyone who is making a NET profit of $40/hr or less is losing money sending blades out to sharpen.
In the past some of the forum members have commented that sharpening takes valueable time from sawmilling. I see their point but disagree. Sawmill maintenance including sharpening is a requirement to continue safe and effecient operations. Keeping sharp blades on the mill keeps you sawing at optimal speeds. There is a tendency to not change blades as often when you are spending $10 every time you pull a blade off the saw.
Sharpening your own blades you will find that you may get many more than the 4-5 sharpenings that you get sending them out beause when sharpening your own you tend to under sharpen taking off as little as possible to get a sharp blade, this however dosn't help much because if you didn't get it right it will come right back off the mill and into the to-be-sharpened box.
Additionally if you cut timber sourced from residential areas, tree services and w/i the city limits. Expect alot of tramp metal (iron wood) :) which makes it even more effecient to have your own. It's not that uncommon for me to have the sawmill running and in the barn the sharpener running at the same time, I can adjust my sharpener to take off just a little and leave it run for a little bit with out eating the blade up if left too long.
As you can see I'm a proponent of sharpen your own!
Eric
Kelvin,
You might want to look for a used sharpener. I bought a Woodmizer setup from a posting on FF. It cost me less than half of new. The only problem is that it was older and needed updating. WM said they had the parts for updating the setter and grinder, but fortunately I have a machine shop and modified the existing parts. A local machine shop could have done it for me for probably about $200.00. Still much cheaper than a new grinder/setter.
I am now a definite proponent for sharpening your own blades if you have the time. I visited the WM branch near Portland, OR and they showed me what they considered to be a reject. It is nowhere near a reject for me. I just salvaged a blade that lost 10 teeth. I'll probably only get two more sharpenings out of it, but I only used up about 15 minutes of my time salvaging it. (I run the grinder while working on other projects)
spend the money pull the blades early and just kiss them
they last lots longer and you learn to appreciate them more stead of hammering them till its time to send them off you can also change angles set etc for your needs take a whole day to play about you can get real good real fast
I pulled my last bill from WM Re-sharp and the total was $202.81 for 20 blades. 3 were bad and 17 got ground and set. My inventory is around 100 total blades and I go through 15 to 20 blades a week. At 4/hr to sharpen it would take me another 5 hours of work. I can earn as much or more in that time and would rather saw then grind blades. They will grind blades missing teeth as I have "stump" blades that are missing many teeth. Most of mine make 5 trips before they get to narrow. My inventory stays about the same since I only buy a few blades at a time and it is just a cost of doing business. You can figure that I get 600 to 1,000 bdft per blade use so my cost is less then $0.02 bdft for blades. Knowing this I can adjust my charge rate if needed to stay in the black. Having just 2 kinds of blades makes my life easy. Knowing that WM and FED-EX have 40 to 60 of my blades moving around all the time getting sharp keeps me on the road sawing my little heart out. After being on the road all week sawing out 15 mbdft the last thing I would want to do is come home and sharpen blades for 5 hours so I can go next week. I just put 20 or 30 in boxes and call FED-EX and go fishing.