Report on the Makita knife sharpener

[Paul Simmel]

Hi guys,

I’d like to resurrect the thread.

Anything else to report? I haven’t used mine yet.

Just ordered the green wheel.

Questions:

Does anyone have a concern for keeping the knives “balanced”? I do not have a scale.

Any issues with keeping the stone dressed? (flat) I own a truing-stone for use on my other water stones… will work? I’m thinking hand-planer irons and chisels would reek havoc on the wheel and will likely remain honing them by hand.

Any other setup info?

Thanks.

[Keith Outten]

Paul,

Balance is based on the knives being sharpened the same from end to end and knife to knife. As I mentioned before I use a dial caliper to measure the width of each knife at the ends and middle of each knife. As all three knives are sharpened with the same setting in the holder they will generally remain identical.

The stones will not remain flat, they will wear at an angle and you should not dress it to keep it perpendicular to the bottom of the stone. In fact it will produce a better edge faster when the stone wears in and gets thinner toward the outside edge. Your chisels and plane irons will be a snap to get razor sharp. Provided you have your technique down pat they will not damage the stones at all as very little pressure needs to be applied.

There is a bit of a technique you develop over time that will improve the speed and quality of your sharpening and as the stone wears in there is more contact which makes it easier to keep the cutting edge perfectly straight. Once you learn to adjust the knife holder the job of sharpening gets to be second nature and only takes a very few minutes to produce an edge you have to see to believe.

Make sure you soak your sharpening stones in a bucket of water before using them, they should be totally saturated.

.

[John Miliunas]

I'm glad to see this thread come back to life! I've got a chance to buy one from a friend I work with for pretty cheap. My dream is to get a Shelix for my planer but, until such point where I have enough available funds, the Makita looks like a good alternative. I do quite a bit with figured woods and was told that a back-bevel on the planer knives can go a long way in helping prevent some of the tear-out. Any of you guys know if the Makita can handle that task and, if so, how much of a hassle is it???

[Paul Simmel]

Thanks, Keith,

As John asked… do you do the back-bevel? The manual says to do grind the heel out a bit first, and re-set to 40-degrees for the final edge. This makes sense, but I was going to start out just getting the blades evenly ground straight across first with the brown stone. I think my knives currently have a 45-degree, straight grind on them now. After my green stone arrives, then maybe.

Great advice on whether or not to dress the stone!!! Thank you… I was worried about that!

Can you just hold the chisel/planer irons on the stone by hand? I’d think so.

BTW, Keith… as Moderator… can you tell me why posts on some threads are buried under what is normally viewable in my browser (Firefox)? I have to click on the top window to expand to full contents. Easy to miss posts altogether.

PS - My Posy Quick Reply has never worked… it’s just dead.

Thanks!

[Keith Outten]

I have never used a back bevel on planer blades, when the blades are sharp tear out is just about non-existant. I use Grizzly HSS knives and they will stay sharp for a long time.

You could hand hold chisels and plane irons but I doubt you would get the same quality job that the jig can provide. I never knew how perfectly flat and how sharp my chisels could be until I used the Makita. Once sharp pore the water to the brown stone full speed to get a mirror finish. I hang a five gallon bucket above the Makita with a valve and piece of tubing to supply water to the stone.

Paul, I have no idea what your problem is with Firefox, I use it as well without any problems. Possibly John or Aaron Koehl may know.

.

[Highland Woodworking]

The Makita 9820-2 has been one of our favorite tools for almost as long as we've been in business (30+ years). Until the days of Amazon (circa 1996), we used to buy them from Makita by the hundred and shipped thousands of them all around the country. Early on we persuaded Makita to modify the tool rest casting to allow narrow planer knives (such as Delta's 1/2" wide knives) to be sharpened on the machine. We also adapted a jig for chisels and plane irons to work on the machine, and for many years my Dad manufactured the jigs for us in his shop in Toccoa, GA. (We called it the Highland Jig. After my Dad died in 1992, we started sourcing the chisel jig from Taiwan.)

The 120-grit silicon carbide Green Wheel was another brainstorm that our former product manager had decades ago, and a Japanese manufacturer made them for us for many years, but stopped a few years ago. In mid 2010 we found another Japanese company to make them for us, and they are once again a stock item: http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/m...reenwheel.aspx . We find they work great grinding out nicks on jointer and planer knives, as well as reshaping bevels on chisels and plane irons. They cut much faster, and don't tend to load up and glaze over like Makita's 60-grit coarse wheel does.

Because the instructions that came with the Makita 9820-2 were indeed sketchy, we wrote our own owner's manual, which you can still download as a PDF for free from our website at http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/library/9820-2.pdf . There are some quirks to using the machine to get really fine results, and that's mainly what our owner's manual is about.

And yes, we do still sell the Makita 9820-2 sharpener: http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/m...arpener-1.aspx

Chris Bagby, owner
Highland Hardware
dba Highland Woodworking

[Mike Wilkins]

Another happy and satisfied owner of this machine since the early 90's. Got mine from Highland Hardware also with the chisel jig. No need to worry about burning the steel with the lubricating and cooling water feature, and the results of this machine was enough to send me to the emergency room in Sept. '09 with a really clean chisel cut to my left middle finger. I use mine for both jointer knives, chisels, and if you are creative, knife blades.

[Reuben Deumling]

The Makita 9820-2 has been one of our favorite tools for almost as long as we've been in business (30+ years).

...then you might be the right person to ask whether by chance these were ever made in the USA, in Buford, GA?

thanks.

[Frederick Skelly]

...then you might be the right person to ask whether by chance these were ever made in the USA, in Buford, GA?

thanks.

Hey Reuben, these folks havent been on SMC for several years. So you might not get an answer, unless someone else happens to know.

[Reuben Deumling]

Thanks for pointing that out. Oh well. Maybe someone else reading this thread will know. Or knows how one might find this out.

[David Bassett]

Saw this post last night and it was a little... surreal.

OP's second post in almost 10 years is in a dead thread exactly 9 years after the last post asking if a Japanese company made an obscure product in Georgia years ago. It trips my scam/SPAM alarms, but I just don't see what the hook could be!?!!

ETA: Reuben's still around. Maybe you could provide the curious some background? Thanks!

[Reuben Deumling]

Saw this post last night and it was a little... surreal.

OP's second post in almost 10 years is in a dead thread exactly 9 years after the last post asking if a Japanese company made an obscure product in Georgia years ago. It trips my scam/SPAM alarms, but I just don't see what the hook could be!?!!

ETA: Reuben's still around. Maybe you could provide the curious some background? Thanks!

not spam; no hook; not sure what ETA means.

my interest in what you consider obscure is related to the fact that I just acquired one of these on the used market, and like it, and hoped to discuss it with my friends on OWWM.org who are unfailingly knowledgeable about all things mechanical, technical, material, historical. To do that it is necessary for the machine-in-question not to be made in Asia.
If it were in fact made in the US it would also make me happy as I prefer to support domestic industry, quite apart from forum rules at OWWM.org.


what I don’t know is how to change the settings so I am notified of a response to this thread in my inbox. Anyone?

thanks.

[Thomas McCurnin]

I’ve had one for going on 20 years and hate it. It’s hard to control the depth of cut or stock removal, the little metal stand for the blades is flimsy, the stones become embedded with metal shavings, it’s hard to prep (soaking the stones) and is really messy, spreading dirty water all over the bench and me.

That said, it does have uses for rough shaping. It still occupies a corner of a bench top, and I have yet to sell it, but I might move it to the attic. I find diamond stones to do a better job. I’d like to buy a Tormek some day.

All that said, sharpening techniques are very subjective. If it works for you, then stick with it.