Thread: electric clippers

Winbreaker, human hair blades must be hollow ground, if you flat grind them you will ruin them, the machines to do this are expensive unlees you are going to use them for a commercial purpose approx. $3,00.00. Having you blades sharpned will cost about $15.00.00. However if you clippers are the less expensive type it may prove more ecconomical to just replace them

I've just lapped the b;ades on a piece of fine wet & dry on glass to resharpen with no problems at all. The clippers are about 6 years old and have been touched up twice so far. However I do put a few drops of fine grade oil on the blades before each time I use them. That probably makes the difference.

I can't really advise, but rather just offer an opinion.
I would probably skip the stone and go straight to wet and dry- but that is just me.

It is nice to rehab things, especially things of quality, but um.. well you can probably buy a whole new one for around $20.

EDIT- crossed posts...

Those things are great value. I've had a $30 pair for about seven years now and I use it for shaving (a couple of times a week) as well as cutting my own hair. A bit of WD40 on the blades every now and then and they're still working fine, although I suppose a sharpen wouldn't hurt.

I've had some old Wahl's for the past 15 or so years and they're still going strong (lovely wife cuts my hair every 4-6 weeks) they have been touched up a few times ...just run them back and forth on the old oil stone. They looked like they were flat ground ... they still are and the touch up does them wonders.

Originally Posted by Ramps

have been touched up a few times ...

Half your luck
We have bloody big Oster horse clippers and blades are upwards of $50 a set, we got a bit of a sharpening demo with one of our crew on the way to Als craporium, it is a frightening machine and I wouldn't like to be anywhere near it if something came loose, big horizontal wheel spinning at close to the speed of light and a rare earth magnet to hold everything together.
I am sorry but I have forgotten the members name but Scooter Sturdee and some others may recall who it is.
I opt to get them resharpened professionally.

I've had a couple of oster dog clippers for a few years, I touch up the blades on a fine diamond stone, which I keep only for the clipper blades.
My technique is to give the the blades a light rub on the stone when they start to lose efficency. The areas of the two halves of the blades that touch that is the sliding surfaces must be kept absulutely flat otherwise they won't cut. Place the blade on the stone and gently give 5 to 10 strokes back and forth on the stone, not circular or figure eights.
Clean well and reassemble with plenty of oil, every few years I send the blades to a sharpening sevice just to keep everything square and flat.

"I intend just to flatten the underneath of the top blade and the upper face of the bottom blade. Just a little on a stone. Just the first 3 or 4 mm where the cutting is done."

windbreaker, don't do this because you will totally destroy the blades and you will have to replace them, you must do the whole contact surface, the differance between sharpening and ruining is less then a thousandths of and inch

I had a go at this not so long ago on some Oster dog clippers using an indian stone. I didn't realise at the time that the stone wasn't flat so I actually made them worse. Blessing is disguise really because I sent them off to a pro to be sharpened and they came back considerably sharper and more efficient than ever.

For $8 + postage ($6.50) I couldn't have done a better job myself.

Thinking back to the demo, pretty sure there is a slight offset, about 1/4 degree curve on the mating parts of the blades which makes sharpening by conventional means somewhat rather difficult.

Again to sharpen small clipper blades properly, they must be hollow ground

The sheep shears comb and cutters are sharpened on a flat disk.

Can not see what the difference would be if the hair clippers were sharpened on a FLAT surface.
If you use wet and dry it must be glued down and FLAT.
The cutter and comb must be kept flat. No rolling or increasing pressure to front or rear.

IMHO send them away or replace them.

Well you may improve the performance of your blunt blades by sharpening them flat, but I think China's got it right:

We at Coastal Sharpening, use a top of the range Automatic Sharpening Machine, with a large alloy honing disk.

The snap on blades used by Wahl, Oster, Laube, Andis, etc. are all hollow ground at the factory, and require a machine that will 'hollow grind' to be re-sharpened satisfactorily. To allow hollow grind clipper blades requires a specialised, single use machine. In other words, this machine will only do one job, and that is to sharpen clipper blades.
The machine used in our shop is the same type of machine as used in the factory,[ it has a 18 inch diameter honing disc ] and will produce a precision hollow grind each sharpen. Also, our machine sharpens both cutter and blade at the same time, which matches them together.

After sharpening the blades, we polish them by using a very fine polishing powder. When blades have been sharpened, we retension the springs if needed, check blade guides, and set blades to the clipper. We then 'run in' the blades, and test them before they are returned.

We sharpen only Oster - Wahl - Laube- Andis- Thrive - Lister - Heiniger Blades :
We also sharpen ceramic blades:

Blade Sharpening Prices:
Regular blades:
All snap on - off blades: Oster A-5--Wahl KM: Andis: etc.
Trimmer blades:
Human blades:
1-4 Sets -----------------$10 per set:
5 or more sets----------$9.35 per set:
If more than 8 sets are sent in the same parcel the 9th set will be sharpened free of charge:
Ceramic Blades------$12.50 per set:

Large Animal:
Horse blades----------$13.75 per set:
5 or more sets --------$11 per set:
http://www.coastalsharpening.com.au/services.aspx

I'd say that the experts would know best. Here's the machine to do it. Looks expensive to me. And from their FAQ:

What blades are hollow ground?
All human hair and small animal blades

Dunno why people debate these things when Google's just a click away.

Keith (K_S) is the member who Iain referred to above.

Update; I managed to sharpen my Oster clippers quite successfully over the weekend using a nice flat 4000 grit water stone.

I'm a bit lazy about clipping the dogs so they tend to get too shaggy which makes washing and brushing them impossible, so I use the clippers dirty and they go blunt fairly quickly. For those familiar with what the clipper blades look like, I ignored the heel surface of both the upper and lower peices and concentrated on the tooth surface while applying higher pressure on the centre rather than the points. The idea of this of course is to simulate a very slight hollow grind so that the teeth meet properly**. A spritz of new thin machine oil and they were as good as ever!

I first tried polishing them up nicely with honing compound like I would a blane iron, but soon realised that the perfectly mated surfaces made it impossible to the motor to move them. Effectively the oil acted like an adhesive making them stick together. I went to the 1200 water stone to resolve this and it worked, but they weren't very sharp as a result. So I moved to the 4000 and found the right compromise.

I have a feeling it would work a little better with a slightly coarser grit, but this was all I had at the time. I reckon some 2,000 grit W/D would be perfect, and the ability to oppose the scrath marks on the mating faces might help maintain an oil film. If anyone's interested in the method let me know and I'll take some pics.

Dave.

** The picture illustrates the friction surfaces in green; teeth on the left, heel on the right. The area highlighted in red is where I've concentrated honing pressure.