Thread: Blade sharpening for Lucas Mill

G'day mate,

geese I hate it when people talk crap about lucas mills - please find a new sawdoctor for your blades, given what you've said he has no friggin idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The lucas sharpener does only grind the face of the tooth, from new to old blades this is ALL the grinding they need, you NEVER grind any other face, be it sides or top of the tooth once the saw has come from the saw doctor. The saw doctor SHOULD have slight top angle on the tooth, along with both sides having a slight angle - once this is done (correctly) the tooth only requires face sharpening, using the Lucas grinder I get around 30 sharpens before the blade goes back to the saw doc.

As you can imagine the overall diameter of the blade slowly reduces as you keep sharpening the face of the tooth, once the blade looses about 2mm in overall diameter it is getting to the point where the two cuts won't intersect and then needs to be re-tipped...if its lasted that long without getting stuffed by hitting metal.

Typically it takes me between 4-8 swipes across the face of the tooth to 're-sharpen' and that is after cutting about 2 cubic metres of log, if its been left a long while as yours may have been, then it might take much more. Having said this one thing I've come across quite often is many owners don't know what the 'white stick' in the Lucas kitbox is for and as such their grinding wheel gets clogged up with crud and the grinder hardly cuts the tooth at all -thus needing a lot more grinding to try and get sharp.

Please, please, please don't use this saw doctor, my blades go to the doc when they are worn down (30+ sharpens) or teeth smashed off by metal, or need to be re-tensioned.......never, ever, ever for a resharpen!!!

Thanks for the detailed reply...much appreciated. I am new to this and keen to learn as much as I can from those who are willing to share their experiences. As I said, the blade I brought back to life was in pretty bad shape...very worn tips but it cut perfect through some semi dried sydney blue gum (up there with some of the hardest timbers on east coast NSW). I will keep just using the supplied grinder then . I think it does need a bit of a clean...the manual suggest a few drops of water when grinding a tooth to clean it and says only use the white dressing stick when absolutely necessary as thick will eventually wear the diamond wheel out (obviously). What is the best way to support the white dressing stick when bringing it down onto the wheel?

Oh, can anyone recommend a saw service in NSW for Lucas Mill blades (is that allowed on here?). Henry Bros? Has anyone had blades sharpened by Saw City (formerly Newcastle saw works & Newcaslte Industrial saw sharpening)? I have dealt with these guys for the past 10 years and they have state of the art equipment and blades have always come back in top shape, just never have Lucas Mill blades done there. The guy was getting pretty technical, maybe I misinterpreted what he was saying to me.

KWW

Sigidi has pretty much nailed it with his post. The fact is that swingblade sawmills are designed for ripping and consequently have a flat faced tooth. There is no bevel from left to right and no angle at the top of the tooth.

You only have to "freshen" the face of the tooth up to the top of the tooth. If you can carefully drag your thumbnail across the tip of the tooth and see a small nail shaving come off, it is sharp. By only taking the barest minimum off the face of the tooth you will get many sharpenings. I never counted on my machine but I wouldn't disbelieve Sigidi's comments.

I would not be too concerned about using the dressing stick. The diamond grinding wheel is also a consumable, but in any event you will get a better result by using the stick than not using it. As you apply the stick you will quickly see the wheel change colour back to it's normal grey. That is all you need to do. Conversely if you don't use the stick, the tooth will not sharpen and you will impart excessive, and unnecessary heat which can lead to the premature failure of the tooth.

It is also worth while finding a saw doctor who is familiar with your type of blade as a blade incorrectly re-tipped will not cut! I can vouch for that.

Regards
Paul

Thanks Paul for your valuable input. I think the guy I was speaking to on the phone today about the blades was referring to the hook angle (10 degrees from memory - diagram in the manual) and the taper angle on each tooth.

So you just touch the dressing stick onto the diamond wheel holding it free hand?

KWW, with the dressing stick if you can imagine it will 'eat' out your grinding disc if you leave it in one spot, I gently slide it across the face of the disc (while it's running) and not grinding the teeth. As Paul said it will take back the colour of the disc to its original colour. Another thing to remember is to clean the crud off the face of the tooth before resharpening.

Possibly your saw doctor was talking about the 'initial' angles of the saw teeth, but there is absolutely no reason for it to go back to them to be resharpened, and no reason to touch any of the other faces while sharpening, this will only screw things up and as they mentioned 3 sharpens may be all it takes to change the overall diameter by 2mm.

I once tried a sawdoctor who didn't grind the face of the tooth and 'sharpened' the blade by grinding back the top of the tooth - suffice it to say the blade didn't intersect after letting him lay his ham fisted mitts on my blade!!! which then meant I had to send it to get re-tipped anyway!!!! totally wasted my time and money - lesson learnt by this little black duck

i sharpen as you are supposed to do with the grinder supplied with the mill.

Grinding the face is how you sharpen any tool. do you sharpen the top of a handsaw tooth, the top of a chissel, the top of a chainsaw chain the short answer is no.

i do from time to time grind the top of teh tooth if it is badly chipped and i have no other blades or i am cutting a shittly log and just need to get threw it, at the same time you have to crib the blade adjustments so teh cuts meet, this is far from ideal and the boards are nolonger square but if it can get you threw the day if you have to.

it is verry hard to find a decent sawdoctor and it really is worth looking around, me and allan send our blades from brisbane up to gympie.

well too bad ya going too...lol. like sigidi says with your lucas mill blades the general rule of thumb is to face them only. the only time the tops or sides should be ground is when the plate is retipped, or like weissy says if you chip the teeth badly it may be necessary to regrind the tops. but if you do this you need to make sure that you keep the tops of all teeth at exactly the same angle and the cutting edge the same peripheral distance from the centre of the blade to ensure a concentric cut I.E. all teeth taking the same bite. This also applies when you are face grinding the tips you need to take the same amount off of each tooth otherwise you may have tips of differing kerf and also cut depth which will give noticeable lines in your finished board where the teeth are not cutting equally. this said however there is also another factor that can influence this and that is plate tension and this leads us to a whole series of things like black eyes on blades and is too in depth for this hour of the night.

As for the gum on the blade you should keep a container of kero or diesel and a soft scrubbing brush (like a fingernail brush) handy when cutting sappy timber and scrub the tips and any other particularly sapped up bits of the blade clean before sharpening. as for wheel dressing you want a dressing stick that disintegrates not one that wears the wheel. we used to use a stick that was about an inch square and about 6 inches long and when you touched it to the wheel it was like you were grinding a piece of chalk.

NOW TO THE WARNINGS! Tungsten carbide dust like asbestos is carcinogenic so when you grind it you should avoid breathing the dust, even in small amounts!
When setting up your grinding wheel on the mandrel you should true it before you grind anything with it, and last but not least do not try to grind too much off a tip at one time as it will get hot enough to melt the solder holding the tip and the tip may move or be ejected from the blade either while grinding or if the solder has cooked off the tips may let go when you start the saw, your solder behind each tip should be a nice silver-gold colour and look like a bead of water or oil sitting in the corner between the tip and the plate.

Hope that has confused ya enough Travis

Thanks for all the valuable advice guys. It is great to know like minded people, and people who have 'been there, done that' are willing to share information and their experiences.

I did contact a different saw service, Henry Bros. in Sydney and they said pretty much exactly what everyone has posted here. Use the 12V grinder for sharpening, when the teeth wear down, they re-tip and retension (he called it 'hammering them out'). He said they only ever see worn out Lucas Mill blades, ready for a 'rebuild'.

I picked up a new instructional DVD Lucas mill has just released at the Sydney Wood Show. It goes into every detail about everything you need to know about setup, operation, maintenance (including blade sharpening). Worth a look if you can get your hands on one and have a couple of hours to spare to watch it. None of the footage is on their website as yet, not even in the members section.

Yeah, they have put a lot of work into this latest DVD, I've got one I don't need if anyone is interested in one, let me know

ive got a stack of those dvds if anyone areound brissy needs one just let me know