Cooks Catclaw Sharpener Tips with Mr.Robert

hey everybody thomas here and we're out here with mr robert again and if you look at the table here you'll see two cat claw sharpeners this is mr robert's original one when did you buy this one 96 was it you knew or used it was used it was used i bought it used well let me let me rephrase that i bought my sawmill in 96 and i did send some blades back to indiana to all wood wood mines right yeah i set my blades back to wood nizer to have them sharpened well the shipping cost more than the sharpening did so i acquired a center and a sharpener a local pallet mill over here i cut some cans for them and when i keep delivered to cants i saw this sharpener and a center a single two center set over there on the floor and i asked them about it and they said yeah we got that we just don't have time to use it and if you want it you can have it reasonable so i bought it from them so i bought this probably in 97 okay and uh and it was used now how old it was before that i don't really know i haven't in the years past and you know since i i did the motor burn up i did put another motor on it it's the same rpm same horsepower and all as the motor that was on it so that works it works out okay how what happened to this a few years ago when i sold my sawmill the gentleman that bought it he wanted my sharpener and my center so i sold it to it well i bought this new sharpener and that dual tooth setter and went into the blade sharpening business well not long after he had purchased my sawmill and my sharpener and center he started bringing me his blades to set and sharpen so i did this for a couple of years and then i said and my son started helping me and i said you know it'd be nice if we had another sharpener so i asked the guy one day i said look what what's the uh chances of me getting that sharpener center back from you since i sharpened and set your blades he says yeah you can have it for the same price i paid for it he said i've probably sharpened 25 blades with it i don't think he ever said it and he just sharpened so i bought it back and i've done a little modification to it i had to tighten up the housing up on the motor and of course this right here is a must-have yeah that's a that's that's just a a three-inch uh end cap pvc end cap with a sponge in it and i have i put oil and wd fluorine oil and whenever the blade passes through here it lubricates the blade helps it slide easier through the block and put some preservative on your blade so they don't rust and every time between the times that you're using them really it really helps um another thing that i did on this on this original machine these pins were in here where these roller bearings are and you can see over a period of time with that blade sliding through there that just shows you how many blades he has where it wears into these pins so i called cooks and ordered me a set of roller bearings to go in here one here one here it works out better that's what's on the newer machines so i've i updated this machine to that and uh works out great it this this has a little different bearing setup for my mandrel for my rock but it but it works great no problem there the newer one has there's two pillow block bearings here with grease fittings and that's something we're going to talk about if you have the newer style cat claw sharpener you have to grease those fittings if you don't you will start running to issues on that shaft thomas is right i actually like this better just listen to this listen to this [Music] that's pretty nice all right now listen to this yes is a definite difference in noise and what we're talking about are these two little caps right here you take these here you want to bring it down yeah we'll bring it down you get these two little caps these caps off and they're two grease fittings right in there your zerk fittings and i can't really see it in there but anyways your zerk fittings are way down in there about the down to your second knuckle and then it gets a little grease gun your best friend your best friend always take my finger and clean the end of that zerk fitting off exactly right that's something i always do as well you don't if you're not cleaning that off you're pushing that gunk in there that's exactly and then you're gonna wear out that bearing i just put this down on there put a couple of pumps in it put it over here i do that every week yep every week i do that and we've actually talked to people who have had issues with that and have issues with the pillow block bearings going out or the shaft wearing in or all sorts of stuff there was a gentleman who came down here from georgia i won't call his name but he's become a good good individual even his wife came down it was really cool to meet him stayed all weekend with me and i sure he had he had this machine and that setter and i showed him what i knew about setting sharpening blades however his machine is a lot newer than mine and when we turned it on i said my gosh what is that racket and it was these bearings in here and i and i got the grease done that was going to grease them i said when's the last time you greased them he said i didn't know you're supposed to grease them i've never greased them and if you take this plate off and you couldn't hardly lay your finger in there on them they were so hot grease and oil and air in this business is your best friend because it creates a lot of powdery type metal you want that bloat out of here keep keep your machines clean it looks dirty but actually it's most of it's blown out of here which leads us to our next point about rocks you should and should not use or if you do use let me tell you a little bit more about this okay okay i have sharpened back up thomas we gotta go we're gonna look right here count which is quite high here for this year this is this is how he keeps track of roughly the number of zip ties i went and bought 22 packs of them that's 22 hundreds of these they were harbor freight had them on sale for 89 cents a pack so 20 21 this is 20 21 and again he had he took a a good section off because of his uh shoulder surgery and he got sick yeah but we're going to talk about that here in a second there's 2 100 of those that i did last year and about four months last year i couldn't work this is how many i've done this year that's one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. so there's there's 2 000 right there and that many going out of this package right here it's about half off yeah so he's done over 2 000 just for every year every blade that i sharpen i put a zip tile i keep up with how many blades i do by how many empty bags i have and i want to show you this down here on this machine all right on this on this machine this is a this is a great machine it does a good job it's consistent it will just do the same thing over and over and over and over again and you said when you get your rock ground right you get the right cam on here for you for your tooth profile it will do you a good job however here a while back i was experiencing something i was sitting over there after i got it to go and i was sitting over there and i said wow god that was a heavy grind what happened well i got to looking and it was digging way down in here way down in the gullet so i stopped the machine and i looked and i readjusted this so when i readjusted this i raised it up and i readjusted my height my depth gauge that's what you adjust the height with is this right here i got it up there when i started it dropped down it just dropped down i said wow there's something wrong here well this is a this fine thread i got to look at this and these threads went through this block right here screws in here the screws in here well up here where it rides most of the time it had wore to where when it would pick up and the pressure it would just drop down it would drop down about eighth of an inch so i changed out this rod i called cooks and they sent me a new rod and in the meantime this little uh this little uh push pin in your forks here i changed them out because it was nearly broke and i i have a i have a new they but they sent me a couple so i have a new one here yep so you want to keep a couple of those on hand well i'll fix that again that's the push pin which is right here it's this pin right here and over time it will wear out because it's pushing quite a bit and when you push 2000 plus blades look at that that is like almost cut this was the original you can see how flat it's getting here is war real bad here and it's war bad right here nearly in two yep so ordered a couple of new ones takes you about two minutes to change it no big deal but i changed this threaded rod because it was slippage i put a new pen in there well that worked for about a month then it started doing it again i said that rod cannot be wore out that quick well the threads inside just block which goes right here that's it these threads will wore out exactly so i went out there and found me a grade five bolt and i cut it off and i drilled a hole and tapped it put drilled a hole in here he machined his own little piece yeah he's a machinist mate who actually did something yeah i'm a machinist by trade so i don't don't have any machine i don't i don't have a lathe or a milling machine or anything like that i just gotta i just i just do it he's good folks so anyway if you're experiencing problems slipping or this dropping down you want to check this right here exactly for that i didn't really know what it was until i got deep into it then i said well there's my problem right there and a lot of people probably saying like man his machine looks different mr robert takes off the safety plate here because uh he's a man i'm scared no he he takes it off because he goes to his grinding wheels very often and it's just a pain to have to take off those three bolts and everything as you can see he's got a stack of them up here here yep yeah and you said how many sharpenings per stone it's 60 to 80. but you are you probably you're a little bit on the low end because you're sharpening so many different types of blades and every time you've got to use this right here your shaping stone you shape to the actual blade itself yeah that's that's the finger grabber if you're sharpening if you buy one of these and you're sharpening for yourself you're probably going to sharpen the same tooth profile blade all the time that's a dream i mean that's just easy to do but i get these 747 ripper 37s uh cooks uh cooks blades i get yeah well i got all these cams see i have one two three four five six i gave him a couple of those eight nine yeah he and you can tell just by looking at the blade essentially which cam you have to run and you had one mate was that one up there this one here i ordered it i got off somebody brought me uh some blades that were one inch two spaces so what a pain john i ordered a yeah it's john b i ordered this cam from a company in new york yeah wolf let's see if we can see that on there to see machinery corporation yeah suffolk machinery and i'll put that information down below and with a number as well now i'll tell you about suffolk machinery they sell this cam that will fit that cap claw sharpener but they only sell the cam that fits the profile of the blades that they sell now all these others come from cook you tell them what profile blades you're running and they'll grind you the cam to fit that can you send them a blade sample you can you can send them a blade sample and they will do that but however let me tell you something i have found out that even though you've got a cam that'll fit that blade you've got to grind that rock to fit that profile of that tufa on that blade exactly it don't just happen you got to learn how to grind that rod but anyway i paid 49 for this cam from suffolk machinery and i sharpened the three blades for the guy so i made 27 dollars so but he has it he he's adding more to his capability so if anyone has a goofy one-inch tooth spacing blade mr roberts because he does one inch seven eighths three-quarter half and half inch yeah that that's a one-inch half inch and three quarter the rest of these and on these two machines are seven eighths seven eighths is your most common that that gives you that's the best tooth spacing for cutting rough cut lumber on a bandsaw zombie if you've got a resaw you might want to drop down to three quarter that's gives you a little bit better cut you cut a little slower but it gives you a good cut i wanted to go over that um you want to you want to keep all this lubricated when you screw these out lubricate that good inside here that will egg shape if you don't keep it lubricated i i had to replace that bushing in there and these are those bearings that i told you i replaced over there on that other machine so that's a little bit about the uh about that i've added i added the light where i could see my why's the first thing i do in the morning before i go in there and grab myself is i put i put my glasses on so i can find it but anyway uh the light helps me yep and i have another one of these caps with the with the sponge and the oil in them and that's just another thing he does now also hopefully i'll i'll put in some pictures of this we just well mr robert recently just bought my old 1220 sawmill that we added the diesel to everything and he he's been thinking about getting a sawmill and when people ask him what blades do you run well he used to run you know mizenheimer blades way back when but he sold his sawmill a few years back so now he can say okay he has another sawmill and he can test out blades everything and see what he likes because customers like to hear hey what does my sharpener run this man knows his stuff what does he run so he got the 12 20 mil he's got some tinkering he's gonna do with it and uh where the heck was i going with that oh you're gonna yeah at 1910 i ain't ten i'm gonna buy five blades from joe maine five from kennesaw jerry five from jerry and five from up here at the uh uh sc metals and and wherever i hear of a good blade when i hear of a good blade i will try it out and see how she starts one i'm not one to buy the most expensive blades i know that that wolf blade up there in new york they it's a swedish steel blade they sell they're proud of those blades thomas has acquired and used a couple of carbide templates they were proud of those but they do serve a purpose they are expensive um but again i like i've got two of my keep on hand for special projects only 80 to 150 dollars a piece a piece depending on the length of your blade and it would just bother me really bad to put a 100 blade on a sawmill and go in there and hit a big boat or something and there's a hundred dollars true that's true but it i will say this so the first time we ran it we cut through six nails and had no idea and then ran it for another like 1600 board foot yeah before between sharpenings but again uh mr robert he does he wants to be able to tell his customers hey here's what kind of blade i run and have experience with it uh he really understands his equipment he takes pride and the way he sharpens uh and he always tells customers he's like if you have any feedback please let him know exactly good or bad now we do have to talk about how you got sick last year okay and which blades which stones to get so we need to see the dust the differences in stones on our previous video that we did here on this machine we installed this rock this is the red rock that you can get you get who'd you get this one from i i get it timberwolf it's a timberwolf okay and this is a norton these are these rocks are aluminum oxide these blue rocks are ceramic rocks now let me let me tell you a little bit about these two blue rocks right here that that is a brand new rock that is a brand new rock this is a light blue dark blue same grit this rock is soft i do not recommend you buying that rock if you call cooks you tell them you want that dark blue ceramic gravity rock because this rock will lose its profile go if you have a real long blade it will it will get smaller and not give you the same profile the complete distance of circumference around your blade so go with a harder rock it gives you a better finish and it lasts longer and what do those rocks cost and when i bought this machine that rock was 14 and about 8 months it went to 17 a year later it went to 21. and i just bought these four rocks here well i got two of them on these machines they're 24.70 a piece and they only do 60 to 80 sharpening so that's that's something you got to think into in your overhead costs or everything is the cost of materials but we're going to talk about these aluminum oxide rocks and why it's important that you either wear a mask or blow everything away this aluminum oxide rock i put it on there and it cut really good it cut great in fact we might have had it on in the first video we did we put this rock on there and shaped it and started sharpening blaze with it yep on that first video and i've used it a long time well i built this room i saw a sharpening room and it's tight it's really tight it's foam sealed insulated i have air conditioner in here and it's cool and comfortable well after after running this rock for a while i began to everything i ate was salty salty tasted i said honey you put too much salt on there she said i didn't salt it at all anything i eat or drink was salty and if you've ever worked around metal where you've had to sand metal or grind metal you get that metallic taste in your mouth everything ever all day long all night all day i could brush my teeth use mouthwash mouthwash everything had a 24 hours a day i had this metallic taste in my mouth i began to lose weight i had no appetite i didn't want anything you had no energy really you you were like down for a while so i told my wife i said you know i think that grinding rock out there in that room has affected me so i go to my doctor and i tell him what i'm doing he and i really good friends i talk to him like he's one of my sons i've been going to it for years but anyway he i told him what i was doing and i said it's aluminum oxide rock that i'm using well he they did a bunch of blood tests on me and this and that and the other well the next day he called him he said roberts you ain't out there in that room sharpening are you i said no i don't feel like sharpening today he said well your blood test came back and your body right at this present time you have an excessive amount of arsenic poisoning in your body and he said i have done some research on that rock and grinding those blades and he said that's where it's coming from he said do not go back in that room for a month and quit using that rock well and he said go buy you a mask so i whip off a real nice respirator that has these uh super fine micron filters on them and and i whenever i turn my hair on i wear these masks in here my son and i both wear these masks and he also got this air purifier system up here too this wind system and runs that yeah when it's sharpening because it i paid 400 for that air system i turn it on i run it i had a delta dust collecting system in here i ran it for a while i cleaned this room out i blew this room out all the dust out of here we wiped the walls down my wife and i did i'm telling you that and warning you do not use this red rock you know in close enclosed area if you're outside in your barn and where you get where the wind just blows i think you'll be okay i call the people who made this rock and talked to them about it and they said well we've been selling that for 20 years and he said that's the first time we've ever got any feedback like that i i'm just saying it made me sick yep and it's probably a combination of the rock and the metal and everything else but yeah it may not make anybody else sick but it did me and i just wanted to like it and i can testify he was sick we we didn't know what was wrong with them for a while i won't run one of them i wouldn't even run one of these outside yep but uh i hope this has been a little helpful i'm running these two machines now i set this machine up i get it to go and i run it i go over here and i set this machine up i start running it by the time this one finishes i put the blade up put a new one on there about that time that was finished so it speed my process up so there was a question asked today how many blades can you if either you by yourself or you and your son in here how many blades can you sharp set and sharp in an hour well i did that's ten and those are big blades right over there i did for a friend this morning and i probably did those and how many can i do in an hour it depends probably 20 or 22 okay blades if you're running two sharpeners that one run in both sharpeners yep and if you're only running one you're about 10. yeah about half of that because it this this is awesome because while he's running these sharpeners here his son is setting over there and it's i mean it's turned into quite the operation and i this is also i'm opening the floodgates mr robert yeah so there for a while when he was getting sick and he had his shoulder surgery this and the other he didn't really want to take on a whole lot of new jobs but now we're at the point now where he can take on a few more yeah and mr jack one of our good buddies down here and everything he's i told him we had my little going away party i said jack come on over bring your appetite and bring your blades he probably brought 60 or 70 blades here's 70 blades and those are the same blades as my middle it's the timber king 2000 those are big blades they have big blades and i mean these blades is in good shape yes he does take care of him makes a difference oh all you people out there that are saw it take care of your blades yes it may be it may be a time when you not being able to go down and buy these you know we there for a while we couldn't buy toilet paper and uh who'd ever thought that who to thunk it yeah but uh and some of these manufacturer people who make these blades i would say the people who put the blades together uh there there's just a few companies out there who actually buy the band of steel step the tooth profile in there and make the blades like like joe maine and these other some of these other companies they buy stuff from these people and then they buy like a 500 or a thousand foot roll and they make the blades and they do a good job and by doing that you can buy a blade you can buy a blade from someone who makes the blade not not actually physically makes it but cuts it off and wells it together i would say eight to ten dollars cheaper than you could buy it from a main menu like like a wood miser or timber king or something like that exactly so we'll put some of that information in the comments in the comment or the description below who we can get blades from and we did that in a previous video we're talking about blade shortage and stuff like that and a lot of people said thank you for that so anything we can do to get the information out there and help people network and just growing that network of sawyers and people who sharpen blades because that is a relationship that has to be there if we're going to keep this alive now the other thing we were talking about this is what i think i lost my train of thought on rust when you get nasty rusty blades uh mr robert has a big vat of like five gallons of vinegar and what he does is he'll drop and i'll show some pictures so i'm gonna pause right now i'll put those pictures in there that show what it looks like when the rust comes off it is filthy you took a picture of that i took a picture of that thing growing in there so the other day his son which is absolutely hilarious he opened that thing up and about crapped himself and it looked like a big boat constrictor yeah he thought anaconda was going to bite him he opened that it grew all that rust came to the surface and he lets it sit in there for about a day yeah all that rust comes to the surface and everything and then they pull out the blades and then you gotta neutralize it so they spray it down with water get all that vinegar and stuff off it then they go through and do the cleaning process on the wheel they come in and set it a blade he's had blades coming here rustier than rust i mean it was bad i mean just they're orange they're cake and rust and everything and when they leave here they're maybe not as shiny as some of these blades here but they are they're like a a blackish shine color to it so the uh the process that i do when a blade comes in here if it's really rusty i put it in this solution for minimum of four hours sometimes i leave it in there overnight i may come out here early and put some in there and take them out about two or three o'clock in the afternoon and that's sufficient that that does a good job overnight does a better job but four or five hours is sufficient then it's it's vinegar it's nothing but just white distilled vinegar that i buy at dollar general for a couple of dollars a bottle and it's nothing but a mild acid solution and it it does take away some of the material but there's a lot of material left still on the blade and everything but really you should never get to that point where your blades look like that yeah that's he he'll he can bring a blade back but again you've taken off the life off that blade by treating it that way so so and then what you want to do when you take it out of there is immediately go out there i have a piece of plywood out behind my barn and i lay it there and i'll wash it off and clean it real good and neutralize that acid with water yep and then whenever i run it through here we clean it we'll clean it with my wire brush and then when it comes through here we put oil on the blade putting the oil back on there that's also why if you have a setter and sharpener this is a really good idea to have because again it neutralizes and it stops any kind of flash rust that's going to occur on your blade and it just the customer is getting a better quality blade yeah so again we'll show you uh we'll walk out here and show you that solution and some blades hanging up here that we just cleaned this morning yeah okay so here we go we're gonna head out there okay folks so this right here this is not as rusty as he's seen but this is a rusty blade so to give you an idea the blades that he got for the mill just for me the other day these were blades that just sat out there forever uh we're rustier than this this is pretty rust and everything but not too bad that can be cleaned up so that was then thrown into this solution right here and this i'll show you kind of the foam that comes to the surface there's still a little bit in here this is his vinegar solution it's kind of scary but it will grow all that rust off of there and it looks wild so he lets it soak in there for a while he removes it with a um what do you call it a tool i'm drawing a blank right now a pry bar kind of thing and this is what they look like afterwards these blades right here were rustier than what i just showed you and then then he runs them through his uh cleaner the little the steel wheel there and everything and cleans it up so this was rustier than what we saw before and you can see they're not quite super super shiny but they're not bad i mean that's that's a that he did a good job at cleaning these up and that rust solution just it does a fine job of that that vinegar solution excuse me well i hope you found this video interesting we have uh got a few last bit of things i have to carry up to tennessee right there but we are this is like our last full day here before we go up to tennessee this is the wheel right here where he sharpens but i will say it's been an absolute pleasure working and playing around with mr robert here to shop i'm really gonna miss this place and uh yeah but anyways if you have any questions or comments please let us know in the comments below i'm still gonna keep in contact with mr robert mr robert is a fantastic friend and like a second father figure to me and his wife are just phenomenal could not be happier having met them and just known them but if you have questions we're gonna put some stuff in below we're gonna put about the different blade manufacturers uh we're gonna reference to other videos that we've done our actual sharpening and setting video that we put out there and if you have issues and any kind of concerns about your equipment that you have mr robert does help people out so we'll put his contact information below and if you are looking for someone to sharpen blades he can sharpen blades free as well he's in southern mississippi he does have people ship them here but shipping is quite expensive so you know he can also help maybe get you in contact with another sharpener in your area so stick with a grain of salt hope you enjoyed this video please like subscribe we'll see you around thanks

Channel: TC Sawmills

Views: 8,169

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Id: a997MKzr-Ss

Length: 32min 30sec (1950 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022