How do we SHARPEN our Blades for our NORWOOD SAWMILL

hello everybody welcome to red tool-house on today's video we're gonna demonstrate how we take our blades off our sawmill get them sharp so they'll be ready to go for the next log that we have so comes back so it's been a week or longer since I've last run the mill and the blade that I have on here probably could go another log without being sharpened but it's it's getting close to being due anyway so we're going to take it off and get it on the sharpener now you can see here there's quite a bit of rust buildup so that that could be an issue in our sharpener and I leave the blades on it's not a huge issue there's just surface rust but I'll show you a quick trick on how I get it cleaned off so the combination of running on the steel guide wheels and of course the wire brush here allow most of that rust to be taken off they're still a little bit but that takes the majority of it off takes off any high points any SAP buildup now I know you may think Troy that's not the smartest thing in the world to do to stick your hand near that blade keep in mind I'm on the back side of the blade behind the frame and I'm reaching through with a wooden wire brush so the cutting surfaces on the front this way in my hand is a good 10 to 12 inches further back if the blade would even jump it's not coming back it's going forward so it's it's fairly safe now obviously the whole issue is if I go forward if I had trip and fall in stumble over whatever that's that's a big issue but sawmill is inherently dangerous to begin with so those type of issues can always be something to deal with so let's take the blade off there's always it looks like the mice build a nest go away for a week happen in place to hang out I'm taking tension off the blade here of course so I can get it off the wheel easy taking this guide wheel and just pushing it in by taking the tension off answer building a nest in the mice nest correct myself in the big nose with it alright so we got our blade off let's go in the shop and show you how we put an edge back on this so Norwood sent me this sharpener it's one of two that they offer this would be what I'd call the base model and said hey yeah Troy obviously try this out let us know what you think and in full disclosure about 20 years ago I bought one of these things when I had my lumber mate mm and I loved it it worked out great so they didn't really have to twist my arm on say and whether or not it was going to work well but I want to show you just how simple this is now I'm setting this up on my table saw simply because that's the clearest cleanest workbench that I have which is an indictment against me more than it is anything else but just the way this thing's made it can it has different mounting brackets on it you can add so if you're we're going to put it in a work bench vise you could clamp it down obviously I'm just using the flat bottom so I can clamp it using F clamps just to the rail of my table so I'm not clamping it to the tabletop itself just to the fence rail here so it makes it nice and secure and it gives me a clear area to work with here so in a video we did quite a few months back actually I believe it was these this still cold weather winter months talking about when and how we determine when a blade is dull of course what we do and one of the options that you can do with your blades when they're dull whether it's send them out to be sharpened sharpen them yourselves or obviously throw them away and get new ones we kind of talked about with that and even what I use to identify a dull blade and the protocols I go through and swapping them out so if if you want to check that out I'll link to it here but obviously you can building up after that video we want to show that what we do here at red tulle house is we put our dull blades on our norwood sharpener to get them back ready to go back on the mill so you can see pretty simply just talking here a little bit of a salt us build up they're said to apply it lose that this blade simply just rests on top of this mechanism put it inside this channel I'll get you some close-ups here in a second put it inside this channel and then of course these guides that are said and these guides the instructions come with details of how far you want to set the guides depending on the size of your blade so forth and so on so what is the basic makeup of this sharpener well it's it's kind of simple but there's definitely some engineering involved in it there are there are the arms of course that keep the blade on a singular plane so it's a flat surface tabletop but it allows it to rotate there's this crank mechanism that's as you crank it is advancing the blade around so it's like a little tiny train track kind of thing where we're just one tooth at a time we're advancing this blade around so each tooth can be introduced to the business end the sharpening in here there is a cam mechanism inside this a cam wheel that's based upon the blades pitch and set and all those type of things a number of teeth per inch if you look at a saw blade it'll have a TPI number that's teeth per inch it'll also have a a pitch or a set that determines kind of the hook the rake all those type of things associated with the actual cutting surface of the teeth so knowing that these are Norwood blades they're kind of their default is what's what I ordered then the cam mechanism on this is the default cam so we're going to stick with that I didn't have to change that out but they offer other cams for other of their blades or even blades that aren't there's other other manufactured blades that that you can use so this isn't just singular function for just Norwood blades that they sell well the component that I that I have elevated here that really gets everything done of course is this drum so they've got a dremel tool with an engineered mount and a swing arm here that's rests on this cam wheel so as I turn this handle it not only advances the blade per tooth but it raises and lowers the dremel tool so the idea is to get contact with the face of the tooth and then with the gullet or the back of the tooth so you're actually sharpening both sides so other key elements of this sharpening device of course are these adjustment knobs so there's a knob here and there's a knob here and what that does is is that kind of sets the distance the amount of drop that the dremel tool is going to come down and also the point in which it starts to drop so as it rides up the cam you imagine this things kind of going up a ski slope and coming down the face going up the ski slope coming down the face going up the ski slope coming down the face each time it's trying to sharpen but what we want to do per Norwood's recommendations don't try to do both at the same time we're going to do two passes two rotations on the blade here and we're gonna start with sharpening the face get all the faces sharpened and then we're going to come back and we're going to sharpen the back or the gullet so I know most of you that watch probably know this already but just for those that maybe don't you know how does the saw blade even work how do these band saw blades work well each tooth of the Imagine is a tiny little chisel so as its passing through the log at a high rate of speed and of course lots of teeth then it's slowly chiseling away a portion of material so the face of this tooth where it comes to a point is the chisel end and of course the back is what we call the back of the tooth or the gullet so the face would be the business end that's doing all the work so this this vertical coming down from the point and then the back or the gullet would be the the valley coming up the back of the face to the tip of the tooth so as this tooth travels this way and travels through the wood and then this surfaces is chiseling off those portions of material so why bother why not just sharpen the face and why bother with the gullet well according to Norwood another thing I've read it's important to remove any stress fractures that may start in these areas so cleaning up the gullet cleaning up the back just makes a good true surface it takes out these any type of small fractures and hairline cracks that could then lead to the tooth breaking off and of course just like with when you sharpen a chisel you sharpen the the front of the chisel but you also come back to hone it you kind of turn what's called turning the burr so you know naturally there'll be a bird that builds up so as we come back off of that little ski slope there as we climb this little mountain and then clear off the back of that then we're going to turn that burr and make this point even sharper so I want to give you a close-up of how this works and again since I'm not engaging yet I'm not actually on or sharpening I don't have my adjustments down you can see as I'm turning that handle that dremel tool is up the tooth is advanced and now the journal tool rides down so you can see here how that dremel tool is going up and down if it was making contact with the face so it's up not touching anything the mechanism advances the blade and now is this advancing mechanism gets out of the way that Dremel tools starting to come down and surface that face and then once we've done all of that as we come back around then this next step as its advancing the tooth then we actually want the the dremel tool to be you're riding up the back side of that apologize for all the distraction of stuff behind it's kind of tough to focus on an area so when I put the blade on this mechanism and I have it out like this it gives me a really good opportunity to look down and do a quick inspection for any damage if I see any tooth broken off because some dummy ran it into the guides on the sawmill or if I've you know hit some metal or just you know overall wear and tear the blade after using it so many times maybe the the teeth have become weak and some have broken off so I can do a quick inspection like that then I can also look at both sides the inside and outside of the blade and address any build up so as we mentioned leaving this on the on the mill it developed a little bit of surface rust and the only reason why I'm taking this off or in just giving it a light I like standing here with with an old used disc is that it's passing through this plate mechanism I don't want anything to gum up and foul this advancement if if this doesn't advance exactly the way we want then obviously that dremel tool can come down and end up taking the head right off of a tooth which is what we don't want to happen so having a nice clean blade to advance through the system is going to make the system work properly and of course keep from damaging your blade so you're not only rust but any SAP any pitch like that could build up now you may say well Troy why don't you just take it right off the sawmill when you're done with your last slog and bring it in here and sharpen it well yeah I could do that I normally don't sharpen one blade at a time I normally wait till I'll have four or five that need to be done and then do that so there's times that the the blades will kind of hang out or if I bring them in here they're they're up against the wall and so they can get some surface rust just because you know they're not a finished surface so they can get some rust buildup on them so it's good to just inspect each one each time one other thing I'd like to do just for reference is I'll take my sharpie and I'll just make a mark kind of a starting point you can also look for the wale weld line on the blade but for me that's not as easy to spot as my Sharpie mark and then I also like to make a mark on the inside at the same starting point simply because as it goes around I can see the mark from the inside and the outside is it's coming around shows me both sides so that just gives me a reference sign okay I've I've removed enough material of the face and now it's time to adjust for the back [Music] so as you can see coming around doing the whole loop there there are some minor adjustments have to make on the fly obviously anything that's produced these blades we're talking microns well microns you know smaller than millimeters of a material that we're removing so we we have to have that consistency through so this is the first time this blade has been on the sharpener and so this sharpener with its repetitive motion is obviously kind of truing up these teeth as it goes along so the more I sharpen these blades the more I'll be able to dial it in based upon the cam rotation and that type of stuff now you may be wondering why can't you just sit there with the dremel tool and just sharpen it yourself you actually could the whole point of this is to give a repetitive motion to be consistent if you set here and honest all honestly I've done it by hand in the past if you just sit here by hand and do it you can get a decent edge on it it takes a lot of time and then of course you have the opportunity of removing too much material which will wear down the use of your teeth faster and make your blade useless or you'll just be inconsistent and you can have some areas that are sharp some areas that aren't and and that will show up when you go to cut so we've got the face cut so let's come back and make our adjustments and let's get the back and they call it cleaned up [Music] okay so I've got the face done I've got the backside done went around a little bit more there as I was getting adjustments you can see in some of that close-up footage as the blade starts to match the shape and form of the cam then we'll have better constant contact throughout so we'll even start to clean up the very bottom of the valley or the gullet there but right now we've got the tooth in really good shape those are quite pointy so I'm gonna take this guy off and I'm going to put him in the sharp pile this is why you plug the dremel tool in on the outside of the saw blade going that thing's sharp so I've got to get a better organization system here for my blades that are dull but you can kind of see that's what I have here on my rack I've got one two three four five six seven I believe yeah aunt in I've got three in the sharp pile seven in the doll pile and so we're going to move on to the next now since I've set the system up to work on the gullet in the back then there's no sense in readjusting that and tearing that adjustment down we'll put the blade on and obviously do that part first and then second pass will do the face but I'm going to go outside to release this because I don't like doing it around all my equipment damaged teeth and there we go just a simple process of unfolding that blade now I will will say that a smart guy would be wearing gloves doing this because it's raining right now so that's why my blades now wet would be wearing gloves right now the doe blades still a little sharp my goodness once you get a blade sharp then jerk the hat off that pinky knuckle there so I know the question that everyone's asking right now okay Troy yeah that's fancy-pants what are the call what's the cost associated with it now this is not an inexpensive device this is I believe about 700 bucks seven and a half I'll post the price below in the details but the the real thing is to look at the return on investment of this so we talked in the previous video about how blades are you know 25 28 30 dollars a piece depending on which type you get so having a blade to be able to resharpen and sharpen and sharpen and stay true and stay consistent is going to pay off in the long run if you imagine I've got a box of C 10 blades in another box of five so I think at some point that I've got 1517 blades something like that so those blades should last me a very very long time as long as I'm using this sharpener and getting a good true sharpened again if I was even doing that by hand I could wear these teeth down faster so using this this machine with its consistency will allow me to get the most life out of my blades and you know one thing I've never done it but one thing you could look at if you have Salyers in your area other guys that have bandsaw blades you can either go in and share the expense of this device and share it amongst one another or you could buy it yourself and say hey guys just pay me a small fee for sharpening and it would still be cheaper than them sending it off to get sharpened because they wouldn't have to handle shipping so you could possibly start to recoup some of your investment back there as well so how much time are we talking about to actually sharpen one of these blades well I've never actually really tracked that so we're going to do that on this one since I've kind of got it set up already we'll take that to consider age but blade number two through the system I'm going to start my stopwatch there stop stop my Starwood I'm gonna start my stopwatch and we'll see how this goes [Music] okay so twice around the horn and taking time to do my adjustments who does sharp in between for the the face in the back looking at six minutes and 45 seconds there and you saw the entire time lapse that's it in its entirety and that turkey is sharp so you can see it really doesn't take long to do that I'm excited about that you know the but I got seven blades left I believe so that would be you know 42 minutes so less than an hour I could have my entire complement of blades back up and ready to go so really like how this works you may be wondering okay Troy with a broken tooth does this negate the whole thing well I've run into that before I actually have a blade right behind the camera that's broken it's got a broken tooth on it because somebody hit the guide again that's twice broke a couple teeth off so in this situation where I'm advancing it there's actually enough of the tooth that the little advancing pin will still be able to grab but even in that situation if you had multiple teeth and they were sheared off clean for some reason then you could still just advance it by hand and work away through it because obviously not going to sharpen those it's not like you need to have the dremel tool dropping down exactly since they're gone and of course it gets to a certain point where you're missing so many teeth you want to just get rid of that anyway because that's an extra strain on your mill one or two teeth broken here they're not that big a deal but if you had a section of five maybe ten of them gone because you're really slammed into something hard then it's time to retire that blade and get it out of rotation well one more adjustment that a good Sawyer should do to his blades is readjust or reset the set and we're not going to do that I actually have a two setter from Norwood that they gave me we're gonna document that at some point I haven't knocked any set out of these blades yet the time will come and obviously the one that hit the metal it may be out of out of set so we'll have to check yet but said of course is the angle of the teeth if if all of these teeth were all right behind one another then there's a lot more opportunity for the blade to be pinched in the wood so the set is what defines the thickness or the kerf of the cut so some of these teeth leaned to the left some of these teeth leaned to the right and some of them stay in the center so sometimes when you run into something or you run a blade really dull it can it can get pinched and it can cause the set to come out of a tooth or come out of a blade and sometimes just overuse overtime makes that come out as well so a set device similar to this will allow us to bend to specification those teeth back into the proper shape so that's an upcoming video like I said I want to get a couple blades without any set in them or damage set so we can really show how effective that is so that may be on down the road I'm gonna post below the links to Norwood again I appreciate them partnering with me and sending me this sharpener I appreciate you guys that have commented and sent me messages let me know that you've purchased norwood products again I don't get any kickbacks for that I just obviously get a chance to use their products but I do appreciate you guys letting them know that if you call them contact them do any business with them that you found you found them via read tool-house or you read tool-house motivated you to give them a call that just obviously helps our relationship appreciate it well there's my two-bit corporate marketing plug right all right guys we're going to sharpen up some more blades it's raining cats and dogs right now so there's no sense in going anywhere and doing anything else but as soon as the Sun comes out we'll be making more sawdust all right take care everybody living dangerously

Channel: Red Tool House - Homestead

Views: 22,013

Rating: 4.9376392 out of 5

Keywords: red tool house homestead, red tool house, homesteading, homestead, Appalachian homestead, farmstead, small farming

Id: c7c3FEH23xk

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020