Re: New Wenzloff Saw Gloat
mikew
>Hi Vlad,
I'm here--wherever that is ;>
"Taper ground!?
Where's that Mr. Wenzloff! :o) Now I have more questions! Although I don't believe in taper grinding, we tapered one or two on a grinder at my brothers shop and the heat generated was simply too much for the blade to retain it's hardness even when grinding 0.001 off at a pass. Was it done by a sanding belt? Did you test hardness after tapering? Sorry for all the Q. Nice job."
Got me at lunch--a bit late, but gotta eat sometime.
I also do not necessarily believe tapering a blade is necessary, especially in a panel saw-length. Which is reflected in an extra cost for so doing. Philly's tapering was the first we did on a saw that left the shop and he was a guinea pig [sorry for the phrase, Phil].
But following my exchanges with Bob Smalser, I wanted to investigate doing it. I built a machine which follows using a sen of my own making, grinding removes the scraping marks and begins to polish the blade. The grinding is done using a slow grinder [20"] that is water bathed. No heat at all. To get the steel back to what it looks like new--from scraping, to ground, to semi-polished--takes a little over 2 hours.
The give-a-heck about scraping is it must be done evenly. And evenly doesn't necessarily mean an equal amount from both sides. There are stresses in the steel that affect the blades.
With modifications, I'll cut that down to about 1/2 the time by being able to bypass some of the scraping. With money thrown at the machine, I expect to do a blade in 15 minutes or less for the machine aspect. Although I kinda like using the sen and so I will not stop doing that, I don't think.
Take care, Mike
