I recently bought a second sets of knifes for my planer (Jet 13"
planer/molder) and Jointer (Powermatic 54A) and sent the originals out for
sharpening. I was really unimpressed with both the new knives and the
"sharpened" knives. Both new knife sets were labeled as being from
Jet/Powermatic and were purchased at the same local distributor. The
jointer knives had really large nicks in them. The planer knifes looked
better (I had to get a light out to see faults) but neither were very
sharp. For what I do they are pretty much useless and perhaps worse than
what I sent back to be sharpened. What I got back as sharpened was pretty
much the same quality as what I sent out.

My question is am I expecting too much. I sharpen my own bench plane blades
and chisels and am used to really sharp tools that work wood easily and
cleanly. Is the current blade market so bad that people are using kinda
sharp, but not really sharp blades or did I get taken by my local tool
store and sharpener?

The results I get with either the new blades or the sharpened ones are bad:
lots of tearout, lots and lots of noise and surfaces that look like junk by
my standards (but I'm pretty good with the #4).

Dave R.