Purchased HF Circular saw sharpener with 25% off, wish me luck.

[leehljp]

I did some building over the weekend, - took some 50-60 year old yellow pine and made me a 2' x 4' x 36" tall work table. That thing is heavy, it probably weighs about 200 lbs. Heavy, (for me)!
I gave my BT3100 a work out and my 12" Makita compound sliding miter saw a work out. The 2x4's were not all the same thickness but not that much difference. My old delta thickness planner needs new blades in a bad way, so I was left with running the 2x4s through the BT3100 to size them, width wise and thickness. It worked just fine but I had to take my time and not push it hard.

In the end, after it was over and the table was built, I changed the SCMS blade and TS blade out on each to new ones. Yeah, I know, kinda dumb to change blades AFTER instead of before!

The 12 inch blade was still fairly sharp on the tip but it sure had resin all over it. Same for the 10" on the BT3100. Then I realized that I had two 12" SCMS blades 80 tooth that were in need of cleaning and touch up sharpening. And two 10" blades. Plus several 7 1/4 inch blades - all waiting for me to either take to, or send off to a sharpener. AND I knew that I would be spending close to $100 at least, and more if I paid for shipping.

At that point, I wondered if the HF Circular Saw Blade Sharpener would be worth It. $54.99, but 25% off today (Monday). Last night I read reviews, and watched the video and downloaded a copy of the manual. I bought a circular saw sharpener today and will give it a try later this week. I still have to clean out some junk in my shop to put the new work table. Then I will be ready to give the sharpener a try.

I am skeptic of one item - the diamond blade. While it should work well, I thought about picking up another diamond blade from HD or Lowes. I will give the sharpener a try and then look on Amazon if I think I can get a better quality blade somewhere else.

ONE Reason I am giving the Circular Saw Sharpener a try (besides just wanting to sharpen my own blades) is because of a HF tool that early on got some negative reviews - but worked perfect for me - the Chain saw sharpener. Early on (years ago) numerous reviews wrote "cheap", "breaks after the first two or three chains" etc. I have had my HF chain saw sharpener for at least 12 years and it has done and excellent job and still works. I don't push it or force it and it works well for me.

Anyone else have and use the circular saw sharpener from HF?

[LCHIEN]

Good luck!

When Can we start sending blades to you for sharpening?

[leehljp]

As soon as I find out If it works!

[dbhost]

I've heard great things about that sharpener, but never wanted to jump on it. It is one of those maye someday things. I guess I am just too lazy to sharpen my own saw blades...

[cwsmith]

I purchased one several years ago. At the time, I needed to sharpen a 7" blade I had damaged when hitting a nail. I was cutting through some original flooring in this old 1887 house of mine and hit a nail, Not sure which was harder the nail or the wood . I didn't want to buy a new blade for that project and risk damaging it, hence the sharpener purchase so I could finish the job with the old blade.

As I recall, I made some very minor adjustments to the sharpener, but it worked well. I thought it was money well spent.

CWS

[capncarl]

I’ve had mine for a number of yrs, before a HF came into our neck of the woods. I was not smitten with the blade holder and it’s fickle set up. I think it has poor calibration dials, or whatever you want to call them. I slap a blade in it, wiggle it around and touch off a tooth and try to match the existing angle. Before I used it I watched a professional blade sharpened machine operate in one of our few blade sharpening shops and was shocked to see how much carbide tip they cut off! It looked like they cut off about one third of the tip. That accounts for why they say you only get several re-sharpening! The HF sharpener is intended to set a stop and then plunge the Diamond wheel into the carbide like the pro machine. I don’t to this, I slide the Diamond blade in between the teeth and then rotate the blade lightly against the Diamond blade until I get a complete grind, taking off a couple of thousands vrs 1/16”. This only sharpens the face of the carbide and not the tip. I have satisfied with the sharpening enough that I haven’t bothered trying to sharpen the top of the carbide. It only takes a few minutes to complete both sides of a 10” blade, and if I wanted to touch up the tops that would be another set up.
I have a stack of 10” blades so I wait till the stack gets low and do them all in one setting.

I have replaced the Diamond wheel once, and don’t see a need for a better wheel.

With this sharpener I didn’t get my feeling hurt if I hit a nail and damaged an expensive blade, although now that I’m running a SawStop I have to be more careful of nails.

There are no saw sharpening services that I know of in my area so it’s not a bad investment.

[LCHIEN]

Did you see this article here?

https://www.sawdustzone.org/articles/tool-reviews-aa/825060-harbor-freight-circular-saw-blade-sharpener

[leehljp]

Yes, I read that article before seeing mine up, and I watched a couple of youTube videos. Still I only did the face sharpening, and as noted it was quite meticulous going back and forth in setting and locking in place. One item I noted quickly was the course blade for sharpening. I hunted and hunted and finally found a place online to order a fine sharpening diamond blade. I could see the striations caused from the course OEM HF diamond blade.

I considered my first run to be a practice run and allowed for the blade to be a throw-away. Through the years, I had purchased two 12" blades over the years for my 12" Makita SCMS but never used them and had in fact forgotten that I had one of them. After buying the sharpener, I replaced the blade for the first time in the Makita. The original blade was 22 years old, and I had those 2 new ones anyway, So I practiced on that 22 year old 12" blade. The hard part to me was getting consistent stop on the grind, and it was easy to grind away more than just the face. It was difficult to get consistent grind thicknesses across the different faces as the blade stop had a minuscule amount of "give" to it, allowing too much to be round off. Practice and experience is needed. IF this part is not done correctly across each face, the resulting other grinds are not going to matter.

So, something I did not do was use the black marker on a face. That is used to see if the saw blade carbide tip is flat against the diamond blade sharpener. To me, that alignment wasn't quite so difficult, but did take some finagling to get the 12 inch blade square. The "Stop" being consistent and solid was what gave me trouble.

I did not try the blade after sharpening as the blade housing on the Makita is a PIA to get back together correctly. It did NOT feel as sharp when touching the tips of the just sharpened blade as a new blade's tips feels. I did not have a fine diamond blade at the time but I do now and will practice on a 10" blade the next time I try it. I have 3 used 10" blades to experiment with.

[twistsol]

It's too bad it won't work with most of my blades because my track saw blades have 35mm ~1 3/8" arbor holes and Shopsmith uses 1 1/4" arbor holes. Sending them out to Quinn Saw Sharpening costs me as much or more than the sharpener but they do a stellar job.

[leehljp]

I am not home to check the exact sizing at this moment, but the arbor is cone shaped on the blade sharpener and it can accommodate different size saw blade arbor holes and it does a good job of centering them and leveling the blade out.