Indexed planer knives

[Tony29]

I have a Dewalt 735 planer and it has indexing knives.  Can they be sharpened on the Tormek?  My concern being that you can't adjust the knife position in the cutterhead.

If it is possible to sharpen them on the Tormek, does anyone have experience putting a steeper angle on the knife?  I'm considering running some birdseye maple and trying to stave off tearout. 

[ionut]

Hi Tony,

I've sharpened one side of my knives and they turned out better than new, I also put a microbevel with a 4000 and that made my wood shine when it was getting out from the planer. I was really impressed how nice was cutting. I am due to sharpen the other side soon but since my first sharpening I've milled at least as much as I did with the blades as the came with the machine. The basic bevel for the blades is 50 if I remember correctly or 40 and I've put 50, I am not very sure but you definitely can increase the angle. Make sure you don't take much during sharpening, the blades are disposable and it is easy to get them too short. I usually set the jig to take almost nothing, I just set the blade and do not move the adjustment wheels, I take a sharpening session and when I feel the machine does not take any more material I check the blade and if I need I add just a little bit more until I get to feel a burr on entire the blade. That's the setting I use for the other blades. I believe that if you do the sharpening with care you can get up to three more perfect edges until you will have to change the blades. But I am not very sure I didn't get there. The sharpening was fast though, I don't think I spent 30-40 min from the moment I had the blades out until I had them set back in.
   I also didn't use the sharpened side on birdseye maple but I think you'll be happy, if not make sure you have a hand plane close by with a nice 50 degrees knife edge.

Ionut