WOODWORKING (Woodworking, Turning, Carving Etc.)

[wilum47]

Taking Dave's suggestion as could be seen it was gietting a little ectic there on the original thread.

[dgriffin]

Wilum, I wanted to ask you, "why sharpen carbide blades." I have one 10 inch for my small table saw and since I don't do much woodworking anymore, it has lasted seemingly forever. Well, I guess they wear out.

[Ralph]

Clean it off with thinner and call it good.
Unless you are cutting hundreds of board feet of hardwood, it will last a damn long time.

I was a journeyman cabinetmaker for years. Still have a bunch of my stuff in stores and other places around here.

The altar at Historic Old St. Johns passed across my workbench years ago Dave.

[dgriffin]

That must have been SOME project! What was the job? Even if minor, to me it would have been special just working on something that old.

[wilum47]

Dave, Ralph,

Well the cleaning and scrubbing has been done quite often but the 40-tooth 10 in. ripping blade is starting to slow down a little. I cherish this stupid blade because it does so nice for a cheap blade and has an 1/8th in kurf that works well with whirly gig stuff. I bought it new at Sears when I got my new contractors saw back in 2002. It is now out of production and full kurfs are getting harder to find. I'm sure it just needs a little tuning and scared sh.....less to do it myself.

The blade's ripped allot of oak, cherry,maple, and cedar besides the usual framing stuff.

The real issue is my dado set and if I can get them sharpened I'll be happy.

I have an 80-tooth Freud that sits on the saw normally and that's turned out to be a fantastic general purpose blade except, of course, for ripping solid wood.

Ralph,

Must feel pretty good to see that around town,eh?

[Ralph]

Carbide blades are not something that can be done at home, nor can the average sharpening service.

I can't recall who did ours, they were out on Rt. 49 and then moved to Mohawk St. in Whitesboro.

I worked for one of the Falvo bothers at Commercial Wood Service/Contract Furniture & Design. You might want to give a call down to Falvo Manufacturing and ask where they get their carbide blades done. The company we used did our dado sets as well and was great!!


The altar our company did for St. Johns was a new one, even had wheels under it so they could move it around easier. They may not be using it anymore, I have no clue.
Shortly after we did that, they called us to do the processional cross.

My boss did the turnings for it, but I did the cross itself....hand carved and then I actually burned it and brushed it before finishing and attaching the old original corpus to it.

At least something I did fell into the right hands! Lots of stuff I did around here I am sure no one even knows about.

[dgriffin]

OK, the freestanding altar. I hear the church may go back to the priest facing the altar.
That's pretty neat, Ralph, for you to have worked on that stuff.

Next time I'm at a processional in St. John's, which could be a while, when the crucifix comes down the aisle I'll turn to the person next to me and say, "I know the guy who made the cross and nailed Christ to it. I met him on the Internet."

[Clipper]

The place you refer to Ralph was probably Alt saw works. It was on the right hand side of the road, just past the route 12, and before you got to Flanigan Road, right? If that was the place, the guy that ran it when I was there last, was about my dad's age, and is probably gone by now. He is the one that taught me to use the "set pliers" to put set in the hand saws my grandpa had. My dad gave those saws to me, and I cherish them, and still use a couple of them regularly.

He DID sharpen carbide. I think he simply used a foley belsaw with a special sharpening wheel though. Probably had a diamond wheel or something really hard.

I only have one 80 tooth finish blade, or I would lend you one. Mine is 10 inch. I might also still have an 80 tooth 12 inch blade for my one of my mitre saws. I took a fine tooth blade off of one of my mitre saws and put a combination blade on. If I use that saw, I simply cut fat, and touch up the cut edges on the bench top belt sander.

Let me know what size your blade is, and I will look around and see if I still have the 12 inch blade. It is probably in one of my cabinets, covered with dust, haha. If I still have it around, or can still lay my hands on it anyhow, I would be glad to send it to ya UPS and loan it to you while you send out your carbide to be sharpened. I will have to look for it. I don't recall having seen it lately, and could not just run out and grab it. Actually I still have boxes of stuff up in a storage building in back, that I have not unpacked in the 6 years we have been here.(Hope it ain't up there).

[Ralph]

No, I'm pretty sure this was the place (below) though they have appeared to have moved around a bit.
It was almost 20 years ago I was out there to have my blades done, so who knows if it is the same folks or not.

Advanced Tool & Cutter Grinding- 9169 State Route 49; Marcy, NY [phone]

[Clipper]

I never knew of that particular place, but then I was not in the woodworking business or didn't have the hobby back twenty years ago. I simply "tinkered" back then, and had only occasional need for sharpening services.

The name sounds familiar, but I can't place where they were located. My knowledge of the subject, and any attempt to be of assistance at this point, having been detached from Utica of so long, is futile, haha. I simply provided the places that I knew about, but they are probably all extinct and out of business by now LOL.

[wilum47]

Jul 27, 2008 0:19:34 GMT -5 Ralph said:

No, I'm pretty sure this was the place (below) though they have appeared to have moved around a bit.
It was almost 20 years ago I was out there to have my blades done, so who knows if it is the same folks or not.

Advanced Tool & Cutter Grinding- 9169 State Route 49; Marcy, NY [phone]

You're right about Advanced Tool but they grew so fast making tooling for the aircraft industry they don't have time to do the saws anymore. That's why I went back to Puleo until he retired a year ago.

About 10 years ago I dropped my good carbide blade and broke off four teeth for my 8-inch saw I had then. Took it to Advanced and the saw cut better than new and the repair charge was still a good amount below replacement cost.

Still waiting from that place in Buffalo. Might give them a call this week just to check their status.

[dgriffin]

The guys who did my cutter knife:

Valley Machine Knife
Precision Sharpening Service
"Where There's Never a Dull Moment"
33 Wayside Avenue
West Springfield, MA 01089

[phone]
[phone] (from outside Mass.)
[phone] (FAX)

[wilum47]

Thanks, Dave,

I'll give them a try.

[Ralph]

WOW! Shows how long I have been out of the loop.

They did some incredible work for us when we had some special stuff that needed to be done. Learned a lot about how to balance a blade from one of the guys there as well.

There is a way to fine tune or sharpen a carbide blade that is true and isn't too "dull", but it involves a diamond file and a bit of explanation.


Dave, I'm not sure if they even use the cross I worked on anymore. Been over twenty years, and I know that the corpus that I installed on it was even older than that.
I was told it had been handed down from the very first cross they had. It was in pretty delicate shape when I last touched it.

[wilum47]

Well, in an effort to keep this thread alive, Ralph brought up the importance of cleaning carbide blades not just circular blades but router bits planer and joiner blades etc.

Now, there are lots of great products out there specifically for this application and, of course, some kind of expensive.

Unless you just finished ripping half the pine in South woods and the dried sap looks like a spar varnish spill, the need for any tough solvent is not needed.

For many years I used the thinner method mentioned earlier and Lestoil which will remove just about anything from a blade. Unfortunately many blades are coated with a Teflon like material and the the saw's labeling will be entirely removed with these type of solutions. Blades now days are sophisticated enough where you may need the information to see if the blade is compatible to the material and operation rather than your smoke alarm doing it for you.

I read a suggestion in one of the wood magazines a couple of years ago to use "Oven Cleaner" but the cleaning had to be in an area with good air flow due to the fumes. My 6-foot high cellar shop is not.

One day I was looking through one of the local dollar general stores and investigated what kind of cleaning solutions it had. I checked out the oven cleaner and there was one that didn't have the fumes but promised to clean as well. Seeing the price was right I figured I didn't have much to loose.

I sprayed the oven cleaner around the teeth and let it sit for about 15 minutes and scrubbed with a plastic brush. Little effort was required. Flipped the blade over and did the same. Once finished I rinsed the blade with water and dried with a paper towel. Finishing of the job, I sprayed a little WD-40 on a cloth and wipe the blade to guarantee all the water was gone and since I wasn't using it right away, to keep it from rusting. Use very little if you intend to use the blade right away because you could contaminate your wood and could affect the Finnish.