charlies said:
we have sharpened them using the trusty ole bench grinder for 15 years. i looked at a lesco blade sharpener last year. for about 300$ you got a piece of crap. no thanks.
I have the Lesco grinder (actually it is built by Neary), and it works great for what I use it for. I used a bench grinder for nearly 20 years, and when I got this grinder, I was happy. Granted, I only paid $30 for it from a friend, but it has been a great grinder. I screwed a longer piece of flat stock to the rest, because that rest is just too small - you get wobble off of it toward the end of the run. With the longer piece of steel, and it nice, smooth, and straight right out to the end. Now granted, I stay right on top of all my blades, so I only have to push and pull the blade through maybe 3 or 4 times. I run the blade at a rate that it takes about 3 or 4 seconds to go in and come out. Now I CAN tell you this, it doesn't have the power of a ful 1 hp grinder like the RBG 1012-C, but it still works well for keeping all mine sharp and cleaned at a fixed angle. I couldn't even imaging the 1 1/2 hp machines. You could run these backwards and have them just suck the blades in, taking off a large amount at once and not even hardly drag the motor. This would be great for when you are changing the angles on the blades (like when someone else brings you their blunt angled blades) or when you lengthen a cutting edge further toward the center of the blade.