Saw Blade Damage

[Losos]

Hi Scrit - Well yes, there are some people sharpening mild steel ones & even HSS, but TCT blades are not in common use. I'm told that Czech woodworkers, if they can afford the likes of Rojek, WMasted etc. will usually order the saw without a blade & then fit one they've been using for ages, probably mild steel and with teeth the likes of which you can not imagine. Dangerous, you bet, but Czech people seem to be completely impervious to health & safety. You should see the way they drive, makes the Parisiene drivers look like retired Monks. :wink:

 

[DaveL]

Losos,

I remember being shown how to sharpen mild steel blades by my boss when I made fence panels on saturdays back in the 60's.
The saw was started and an oil stone was gently touched on the running blade. The saw was stopped and the teeth checked to make sure each one now had a flat on it. Then with a single cut file each tooth was filed to just remove the flat. We used to support the blade by jamming a block of wood between it and the fence while filing. If the set needed doing the blade was removed and we had a large steel block with notch filed on it, each tooth was placed over the notch and struck a blow with a large hammer.
The hard bit was deepen the gullets every so often as you were removing 1/8"~1/4" instead of 1/32"~1/16", a new depth line was marked with a felt tip pen with the blade running.
Not very refined but it did work and as they say, please do not try this at home kids!

 

[Anonymous]

Tony said:

Advice given to keep and resharpen/re-tip it is rdiculous and potentially dangerous

Absolute drivel!. If it's just a few tips damaged, any compentent saw doctor can repair and regrind a TCT blade to normal condition without compromising safety. Replacing a tip is not expensive. Of course the economics depends on the cost of the original blade and the number of teeth involved.

Absolute drivel yourself

Most, if not all saw doctors do not have the knowledge nor facilities to identify non-visible damage to teeth. Adam does not even know what caused the visible damage never mind if any other teeth are damaged.

Your profile states that you are a design engineer, as am I, and so I would have expected better advice from you

Don't offer dangerous advice

 

[Losos]

Dave - Wow, what a way to sharpen :wink: But if it works, why not. BTW when we met I was sure you had all fingers in the right places

 

[Ring]

Dont want to rub anyone up the wrong way but i beg to differ about advice on re-tipping or sharpening of saw blades,my profile says ambulance driver but i am a time served joiner with 17 years in the trade, and the firms that i have worked with All have their saw blades re-tipped and sharpened even my local saw mill uses the saw doctor as he is called to re-tipp their saw blades, as far as i know they braise the new tips on and are perfectly safe to use,after all look at the size of the circular saws that they use in the saw mills if a tooth was to fly out of one of them safety glasses wouldn't help you would be be-headed .


http://www.gomex.co.uk/service.shtml
http://www.carbideservices.co.uk/home.htm

 

[devonwoody]

ADAM,

Dont throw your blade away.

I read an article yesterday that recommended blade tips be bent over!!!!
and then the blade used to give a distressed look to the finished work :roll:

Wouldn't try it myself though.

 

[RogerS]

As ever, IMHO there's value in every response so far.

The conclusion I've come to is that certainly saw blades can be re-tipped safely and cost-effectively especially (ONLY?) if you go somewhere reputable. And there's the rub. If you are in the woodworking business fulltime then you know where the 'good guys' are. If not and you can't get any satisfactory recommendation that you'd stake your life on (and it is your life we're talking about here) then the cost of a new quality blade is insignificant IMHO.

It's the same in other areas. My wife nearly lost her life when she had a tyre blow out at speed down the motorway. She'd just collected the car from the garage after its' service where the tyres were supposed to have been checked. When we picked up the tyre pieces, the inside of the tyre was actually worn down to the canvas. It was all I could do not to take it back to the mechanic and give it to him as a 'Soweto necklace'. It was that close. 'Good guys' are hard to come by.

And remember even manufacturers get things wrong and Einhell recalled some of their diamond grinders as, allegedly, someone lost an eye when a lump flew off.

 

[ike]

Tony wrote:

Your profile states that you are a design engineer, as am I, and so I would have expected better advice from you

Don't offer dangerous advice

Oh, I'm so sorry Tony! - that I should dare to question your point of view on this forum. What will you do next - continue to selectively edit information from others posts when you don't agree?

Yes, I am a design engineer - with a fair inkling of risk assessment and solving real-world stuff, so why don't you come down from your ivory tower?

Ike

 

[Adam]

Tony wrote:

Your profile states that you are a design engineer, as am I, and so I would have expected better advice from you

Don't offer dangerous advice

Oh, I'm so sorry Tony! - that I should dare to question your point of view on this forum. What will you do next - continue to selectively edit information from others posts when you don't agree?

Yes, I am a design engineer - with a fair inkling of risk assessment and solving real-world stuff, so why don't you come down from your ivory tower?

Ike

Careful Ike, as fas as I can see, Tony edited in his own reply to a post to leave only the bit he wished to reply to using the "quote" feature. The original post is still there in its original form for everybody to read. Thats common on this forum, everyone does it. He hasn't been in "modifying" other posts as you imply.

Anyway, as you taken this to a rather personal level rather than previously which was commenting on opioins about the thread, and the topic seems to have fairly much worked its way through to a natural end I think its time to leave it now.

Adam