Ice Auger blades

[sawknives]

Has any one had luck with sharpening ice auger blades? I fabricated a jig to do Jiffy blades, seems to work quite well, any one else into this kind of sharpening, like to hear how you do them

[grepper]

Welcome to the forum sawknives.

Can you post a picture or a link to replacement blades so we can see what type you have?

Have you tried the regular knife jig?

[sawknives]

I have, the angles dont work, the jig hits the wheel, not sure how to post a pic?

[grepper]

You need to upload your image to a hosting site such as PhotoBucket or Flickr or the like.  Then: http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2342.msg11402#msg11402

Are the blades replaceable?  If so, can you provide a link to the manufacturer / model number?  It would be really helpful if we could see the blade.  We can search Google if we know the make/model.

Would something like this work?

http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1592.msg6634#msg6634

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWAkQmoU8c

Search the forum for HK-50.  There are many posts about it.  It's very useful.

Could you drill some holes into a piece of sheet metal and bolt the blade to it so that you could clamp the jig further away from the blade edge thereby avoiding hitting the jig on the wheel? 

The Tormek can't sharpen everything,  but I would think that it should, maybe with a little ingenuity, be able to sharpen an ice auger blade.  But like I mentioned, it would be cool to see the blade.

[sawknives]

Great information thanks, I will post pictures of the blades and jig I fabricated to see if any on can give me some further advise. I have been a sharpener for some time and wish I would have found this resource long ago.

[Elden]

   Welcome to the forum, Scott. I personally have no experience with ice augers. This subject was mentioned in the following thread.

http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=950.msg2230#msg2230

   Here are several links that Google brought up. You can decide which is the best advice!

http://www.iceshanty.com/ice_fishing/index.php?topic=18854.0

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=ESy8FUM6mUo

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Lfyi_4TliKc

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=zC8jAnd9nTE

   The last one does not discuss sharpening, but appears to have good protective information.

[Ken S]

"The Tormek can't sharpen everything,  but I would think that it should, maybe with a little ingenuity, be able to sharpen an ice auger blade."

Grepper, 2015

  Bruce H
      Newbie
       Posts: 1
◦      
Drill Bits
« on: February 13, 2004, 10:17:42 pm »

   Is there a way to sharpen drill bits on the Tormek? 


Jeff Farris
      Hero Member
           
      Posts: 1272
◦        

Re:Drill Bits
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2004, 03:03:57 pm »

   Not at this time.


We keep pushing the frontier further back.

Ken

[grepper]

I have not sharpened an auger blade but from looking at a bunch of them online they don't look particularly hard to sharpen.

Specifically, they don't look all that thin (narrow) from the edge to the spine, so I don't see why the jig should hit the wheel as is the common problem with thin knives that require the Tormek small knife jig or something like the HK-50 or just doing it freehand. 

Additionally, Jeff said in the first link in Elden's post, "The ones with a removable blade are not a problem."  Just from looking at pictures of those blades, I wouldn't have thought it would be a problem either, hence my request for pictures or links to the blades.

But the OP said, "...the angles don't work, the jig hits the wheel".  Considering that Mr. sawkinves has been a sharpener for some time, I presume it is so.

I find it difficult to fathom why an ice auger should be so fussy about its edge that it requires polish for sharpening.  I can see why having a sharp blade would be important, but we are not talking about super precision cutting here.  It's just chewing its way through ice whilst you stand there freezing your butt off in the middle of a frozen lake.

Another Tormek mystery to solve!

Question: Mr. sawkinves, what are the dimensions of the blade?

[Elden]

   What stood out to me was, there are two different angles. The top one appears to have a significantly larger bevel angle than the bottom angle.  It appears to me, that the top angle would be great enough that it could be ground on the Tormek, but I don't have one to verify that. The drawing of a blade one of the videos showed, indicated it was ground with a hollow bevel. That would be great for the Tormek.
   The bottom angle very well could be too flat for the Tormek to readily handle. On the Ice Shanty forum, it was stated more than once that this angle should be left alone other than a very light touch. That sounds like burr removal and polishing clean-up to me.
   Watching videos of the augers in action are impressive. Considering that no down pressure other than the weight of the machine is added, I can see where sharpness would be necessary.

[sawknives]

The feedback is great, thanks for the assistance, I will get photos posted this morning

[sawknives]

http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/w497/sawknives/IMG_0001_zpsixdu6via.jpg

[sawknives]

I just posted the images of the blade and the jig I fabricated, keep the feed back coming, appreciated

[grepper]

Looks like we have another jig creation!  Nice job!  Thanks for posting the images.

You might be able to accomplish the same sort of thing by bolting a plate to the scissors jig platform or possibly the Tormek tool rest.  That would give you the ability to clamp it down.  I don't know if that would be an advantage or not.

So, does it work well?  Does it get the blade nice and sharp?

[sawknives]

It works perfect, many, many variations before I came up with this, I have to remake the slide with something other than wood, it slides nice but not perfectly round inside. I will insert a sleeve in the wood or remake it with plastic of some kind.

[sawknives]

I did try it with the scissor slide, its is just not quite enough clearance for the jig, it still hit the wheel, I did learn an awful lot , I was very frustrated at first but just stuck with it. There is only 2-3 hours from start to finish , that's with all of the other failures.