New and need all the help I can get

[Auminer]

Hi Guys,

Bought an older WM with lots of old blades.  I'm in Alaska and shipping will eat me up on resharpening.  Been looking around and spotted the www.precisionsharpeners.com any feedback on this one?  Trying to keep costs at a minimum.

Dave

[joasis]

I can't help you on the sharpener, but welcome to the club! I bet one of the guys will have some feedback for you.

[Kirk Allen]

Dave,
Welcome to the site.  Now before I get into the sharpener stuff I have to tell you, and I bet you already know, your living in Heavan.  My wife and I vacationed in Haines several years ago (lived in Anchorage for 12 years) and have looked at property there to build a summer/retirement home.  We are planning on coming back up next year for our vacation/property search.  Alaska is Truly Gods Country.............and the have a pretty neet Governer as well!

I am not familiar with precision sharpeners but they appear to be on low cost end of things and do not offer a "profile" sharpening whitout changing stones.  That will become a pain very fast, but they are low cost.  It apeares they are dry grinders which I have found to not work near as well and just lead to frustration down the road.  They are boarderline with conventional stones for Chain Saws as they tend to overheat the tooth so I can imagine what they would be like on a band saw.   

I would suggest spending the funds for an automatic sharpener, which advances the blade automatically.  I have a WM sharpener and after purchasing the CBN wheels for it I would NEVER go back to a conventional stone for sharpening my band blades. 

Cooks, (banner above) has an automatic sharpener.  http://www.cookssaw.com/bandsaw/bandsaw-sharpeners.php

A few questions that will help make the right choice is how much are you going to be cutting?  Hobby use, part time, full time?  Any thing past the Hobby use and I doubt you will be happey with a manual single tooth sharpener. 

I would venture to say 75% of the problems I hear about from sawyers in relation to cutting are band sharpening problems, and in most cases they failed to get the right profile in the tooth.  I was guilty of this with the old sharpener I had.  Every few blades you have to profile the grinding wheel and before you know it, your frustrated becuase you wore out another stone trying to get it just right so the blades get sharp.  The CBN stone WM sells is the exact profile of the blade and gets a perfect sharpening every time. 

Does AK still offer the 10,000 Board Feet of timber for persnol use per year?  I know they did in the South East 6 years ago but not sure if thats still part of the Forestry Program. 

[Kirk Allen]

Now the paranoid comes out in me.  One line I kept seeing on the precision site lead me to reading everything again. 

WILL COME WITH FULL INSTRUCTIONS, AND ALSO A VIDEO ON HOW TO USE THEM.

This is a common selling point used from people importing crap from China. Now I have no way of knowing if this is the case but if you carefully read the descriptions on each page you will find what I call "broken" english.  Very common of the Chineese. 

I hope I am totally wrong but those are the flags raised when I read the site. 

[Auminer]

...I bet you already know, your living in Heavan.  My wife and I vacationed in Haines several years ago (lived in Anchorage for 12 years) and have looked at property there to build a summer/retirement home.  We are planning on coming back up next year for our vacation/property search.  Alaska is Truly Gods Country.............and the have a pretty neet Governer as well!

Well Kirk, it sounds like you will fit right in, here in Haines!  But don't let on how it compares to Heaven...we're trying to keep it a secret.  It's enough that the lower 48 now wants our Governor!    Not sure I can wait until next year for you to bring your WM sharpener though. 

Gee, I feel like I belong already, want to thank Joasis for the welcome too!

I don't intend to do a whole lot of cutting and mostly for myself.  I also realize how that goes...  I plan on building a woodshed, covered work shed for my truck/plow a covering for the spring, and the house.  Not necessarily in that order, heck I might get to the real Heaven way before I get all this done anyway.

I do realize the importance of a good sharp blade and want to do it right, but darn another $2K really puts the bite on.  Then there is the set...  Right now I haven't cut much of anything and won't be doing much before the snow flies.  Although today I rode past a place that was cutting several Spruce and even had one on the fire.  Need to pay him a visit tomorrow.

Yup the 10,000 bdf is still available for each person in the family, each year, but as you stated it is for personal use only.  Could cut a pretty fancy home with that kind of lumber.

Back to the sharpener, wonder if that CBN stone would fit this cheaper sharpener I noted?  Probably a complete different setup.

This is a common selling point used from people importing crap from China. Now I have no way of knowing if this is the case but if you carefully read the descriptions on each page you will find what I call "broken" english.

Have to laugh at the "broken" english.  You are closer than you know to the truth, but it's from Texas.  Nothing against Texans, heck they can drag their entire state with them...we'll put it out in the Bush some place.    This guy has parts 1 through 7 on youtube, here's the first of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV724_pkwcY ...and yup he is long winded, or at least it takes him a long time telling the story.

Better get along or I might get in trouble with Texas (...just funnin', heck I used to live there too...once)

Dave