Have about half a dozen 10″ saw blades, all good carbide blades (Bosch, Freud) that have been set aside for cleaning and sharpening. The cleaning is the easy part, soak in Simple Green for a while, brush clean and dry off. Problem is, I cannot tell if the blades need sharpening as well. I would suspect that most are just dirty. How can I tell if a carbide blade needs to be sharpened? None are missing any teeth or parts of teeth.
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If the points 'look' sharp, and aren't rounded over, I'd put each one in the saw and see how they cut. If they cut well, then they are fine. I can usually just clean my blade 3 or 4 times before needing to send it out for sharpening.
Jeff
If the blades are clean, the saw well tuned, the right blade is selected and you're still getting excessive burning and slow feedrates, that's usually an indicator that a blade is dull.
Clean them often and you won't need to sharpen as frequently. The heat generated by the friction from excess pitch will make it necessary a lot sooner than if they're clean. Heat kills just about everything.
I have a book entitled Table Saw Techniques which suggests that a sharp carbide tooth will slice into your fingernail, and your fingernail will slide across a dull tooth. *I WOULD SUGGEST TURNING OFF AND UNPLUGGING THE THE TS BEFORE DOING THIS*
I expect that even a dull blade would "slice into your fingernail" if it was running.
I had the same problem... How do you know when your blade needs sharpening. All my blades are premium brands and hold their edge a long time. This makes it difficult for me to notice the slow degrade in cutting.
I've heard several anecdotal pieces of advice but they neve seemed to work for me. For me It took a couple times of waiting long enough to know for certain (waiting too long). Now I can tell when the performance is suffering.
One somewhat accurate way for me to inspect visually is by compairing the difference between the point and the lower end of the bevel of the tooth. On my ATB blades only the upper 1/2 or 2/3 seems to get used the lower side of the beveled teeth are below the point of the preceeding tooth. I usually send the blades off when I can feel the difference.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
Well, I did find out one thing today. Been using a Freud Glue Line rip blade (30 teeth) in my Unisaw, and I have ripped several thousand feet of pine with it. Today we were ripping the tongues off some soft maple flooring and the blade was leaving burn marks. I looked at the teeth and they have some small chips and are noticeably dull. That one goes out for sharpening. The rest of my blades seem to be just cruddy and dirty and will get soaked in Simple Green and cleaned.
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