Dear Dave:

I have always had great luck with knives ordered from Freud. You will
find them better quality from the replacement blades most companies
sell and they are priced very competive. I would also suggest that
you talk with the sharpening service and explain to them that you are
not satified and perhaps they could do a better job for you. If they
are unwilling to co-operate....find a new service.

Good luck,
Mike From American Sycamore

I use Freud for the occasional bit and saw blade, but I never thought to
check there for knives. Thanks a lot for the pointer. One set of the
"new" knives came so badly dinged that it maybe be cost affective to
toss them and buy a set of freuds.

As far as going back to the same sharpening service, I don't think that
will be a win. The service was through the store that sold me the "new"
blades that I'm now convinced were someones returns. It took weeks to
get a set sharpened and I'm stuck with two sets of basically unusable
blades and I don't want to eat anymore downtime (before was okish
because of the holidays and the kid's vacation schedule). I may try to
get them to take back their POS blades they sold as new, but it's a
tough fight since they could always claim I dinged them. (I used to have
a regular tool salesguy that always handled my business and I really
miss that now.)

I'm probably going to send the planer knives out to a sharpen by mail
service. Where I live nothing is cheap (~30 bucks for sharpening 3 13"
planer blades) and it's really hard to find competent services in
anything (Don't even start me on the painters who just secured their
tarp by nailing through my roof). If they come back reasonable I send
the other sets to the same place.

Dave R.