chipper knife sharpening

[palmer4670]

Does anyone try to polish up the edges on their chipper knives while they are still on the machine between knife change intervals. Seems like I saw a tool in the sherrill or KK book that was to be used to do light duty sharpening. Anybody have any input?

How many hours do you get out of a set of knives that have just been sharpend, on average?

Thanks,

Palmer

 

[treeclimber165]

The hand held sharpeners are great for touchups if used religously (every 10 hrs or so). Just like a chainsaw, touching up a slightly dull edge is much easier than fixing a rocked-out edge.

Accepted standard interval for removing/sharpening knives is about 100 hours, although you can go longer if you touch them up 1-2 times a week with the hand held thing.

 

[rborist1]

:Eye:

 

[treeclimber165]

2-3 months is about right for average use. Actual chipping time is typically about 2 hours per day. Less on trim days, more on removal days. That's 10 hours a week times 10 weeks. The chipper may RUN longer than that, but usually with crews who leave the chipper running for long periods without actually feeding it. I guess some people like to hear the engine run.

These are average times in my experience. Some crews chip a heck of a lot more and will use up 100 hours quicker than 10 weeks. If you constantly chip big wood, you usually end up needing to sharpen more often.

 

[DDM]

A Honing Stone will work to Touch up a set of knives. If ive let them go too long i'll use a Sanding disk on an air grinder to spruce them up.

 

[Lawrence Martin]

Like some one said it all depends what you are putting in to the chipper and allso the size of that chipper .
I pick up a morbark 13 last year wow can that thing eat wood, from a vermeer 935 changed the blades once a season, now with the 13 , i can put in evey pice of wood from the trees, if the cookie is wider than 20" then we slice it in 1/2 or 1/4 if need be, since i pick this up we have no wood left to haul back to the yard.
not one single piece, any way when you put all that wood in there you are allso putting in steel, cement,nails etc... so therfore the knives get filpped and sharped once every 2 mounths.


all you pay fore is cost of man hrs. to change the knife an cost to sharped .

My back is saved and thatof my flunikes.

lawrence

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

It also depends on how careful the help is on checkeing for gravel when during cleanup.

I used to backfile mine when I had those responcebilities.

I know guys that change them every week as part of there weekly PM cycle. Flip on even weeks gange on odd sort of thing. Claim the cost fo sharpening is marginal compared to the efficiency.