Any advice at changing machines over for a different use

D

doriandk

Joined
Jul 18, 2011
Messages
23
This question may appear odd. But I am looking to set up a shop for sharpening and restoring blades and eventually knife making as my experience progresses. I was speaking of this to a friend, while not realizing he used to be in the sharpening business. However, he sharpened tools, like planer blades, circular saw blades, saws, drill bits, shears and loppers and such.

Anyway, he offered to give me his equipment. I don't want to get into saw blades and drill bits and stuff like that, but there may be some possibilities in tweaking a lot of the machinery involved.

There is a 'long blade table' which I believe is used primarily for planer blades. Just get the blade locked in and you can adjust the grinder wheel to the correct height, set the angle and just go up and down the blade a few swipes. Pretty nifty, but not much use for anything with a curve.

There are saw sharpeners for hand saw blades (just get it set up and it automatically moves the saw down and sharpens tooth by tooth with a file)
-a carbide circular saw blade table along with a regular circular saw blade sharpener)

There are motor setups with wheels for drill bits and for scissors (with arms or clamps to keep the scissor blade or drill bit in place)

There is a rotating plate with abrasive, kind of like a record player with sandpaper on top. This he used for sharpening shears and loppers and such.

A setup for sharpening everything but knives. My question is...does anybody have any stories, tips, advice for altering machinery like this to for use on knife blades? He really wants me to have them, and I appreciate the generosity, but I'm not sure how much I would use them unless I figured out alternate uses.
 
Wow, dang! I wish *I* had that long-blade setup right there, that's crazy handy, along with the scissors sharpening system! I definitely wouldn't fiddle with those too much, they're extremely useful as-is. It sounds like you're darn well set up for sharpening just about anything you want, the lapping table can easily be used as-is like a powered bench stone.

That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to snag the ability to sharpen just about anything you could want! Grab it!

EDIT: As an afterthought, once you've had a chance to inspect and work with the equipment, and decide on exactly what you do want to sharpen and what won't help you, you could always sell the pieces of equipment that don't suit your needs, and use the revenue there to purchase equipment that does.
 
i have seen and used some of the equipment your buddy has. a buddy of mine had a saw sharpening shop and he had some equipment that was around $100.000 when he was in business. the planer blade sharpener would only do straight edge blades and i doubt you would be able to convert any of the eqipment to make knives. you should learn how to use the equipment to sharpen saw blades. there are not too many places that do stuff like that anymore.
 
richard, off topic, but whats with the straightrazorplace links that are in your signatures website?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top