On Dec 13, 11:29*am, "
wrote:
On Dec 13, 8:59*am, mac davis wrote:

I used to take 5 or 6 at a time to the local saw shop and exchange them for
one's he's sharpened and coated...
Then, it was a lot cheaper than buying blades, but with the off shore stuff now,
I think I'd just recycle the old blades..

I don't even think anyone here has the capability to sharpen a 7 1/4
blade.

3,000 years ago when I was a professhunal carpintar, we used to have
saw blade cards where we kept our blades. *It was a piece of plywood
with a large sheetrock toggle through a hole on which we piled up the
blades and tightened down the toggle to secure them.

We all had about 20 blades or so, and kept the plywood and the planer
blades separated as they could only be sharpened by a file.

When we were busted, we used to file out blades by hand, which wasn't
hard to do if you didn't wait so long that the blade was really dull.

Talk about burning memories....

When I started framing houses, there was an old crippled up alcoholic
that used to come out to the subdivisions in a small mail truck. *In
the truck he kept his tiny generator, and a Foley Belsaw blade
sharpening machine.

He kept no schedule, and actually didn't do a very good job on the
blades. *But he was there and so were we. *So he would pull up every
two weeks or so, if business was bad, once a week. *He would gather up
all our cards, pull off the blades and set one up in the machine.
After it was running, he would pour himself some of his own
lubricating fluid and sit there and watch the machine, sharpening
blade after blade.

If there were several crews around there, or if we hadn't seen him for
a while he would sit there all day. *By the end of the day, he could
barely tell you what you owed him, and the little truck smelled like a
smokey old honky tonk.

With the advent of *affordable* carbide blades for circular saws, it
was the end of sharpening. *The carbides cut better, last longer, and
even cut nails better. *Besides, you can get such good deals when they
are on sale it is silly.

I went in the box about a month ago and they had the Freud 24 tooth
blades on sale for $10. *On closer inspection, there were several two-
for-one packages in there, so that made them $5 for a really nice
blade. *in the 70's, I was paying $2 to have those old steel blades
sharpened.

Robert

When I rip long strips of solid surface material, I use a 12' fence
and a Milwaukee Circular Saw. The blades, I buy by the pack. Bosch. 40
teeth. Thin kerf. They don't last long, especially when cutting Staron
(a few % more minerals, which also makes it harder and wear better).

Then they get relegated to skid-cutting duty, where the staples and
nails usually finish them off enough to discard. I pay around $ 10.00
per blade. Canadian...whic is, again, about 2 buck US.. wry
grin..well, ****, we were at par only a few months ago.