Alan DuBoff
>ThomD wrote:
"The one way in which saws are a whole other thing is that all the teeth work together in concert. I have used some rather poorly sharpened chisels with bevels nowhere near a spec and the edge at an angle yet they work. String 50 of those together on a saw and the result may not be as pleasing."

My real world experience shows otherwise. It shows that in most cases even if the teeth are not perfect, they will most likely cut better. The fact that you have 50-200 of them on a saw helps compensate if there is a bad one.

I look at sharpening all edge tools as being a lifetime skill, one that you continue doing since edge tools need to be sharpened on a regular basis. For people who don't sharpen their own saws, there could be a huge reward by starting to learn the skill, you can still send the saw out to be sharpened if one does mess it up...so no real loss in that sense for those that would send their saws out.

It is entirely possible to have a bad section on a chisel blade after one is done sharpening it, or to have a nick from hitting a nail, same with a plane iron. I have had it happen to me where I need to take a chisel back to the stone and redo it as it doesn't cut for me as I had anticipated. One can also have the corner cambered when you they didn't mean to as well, but the chisel will still work. This is similar to a saw. The half full view of the glass would be to say, "hey, you have 50 teeth on that saw, your chances are pretty good of getting one of them sharpened correctly!". :-)