Chainsaw Sharpeners

About a year ago I was looking for a power sharpener to keep the chains for my two Husky chainsaws sharp and ready for action. I live in Northern Maine and heat our house with wood. I had been using hand file sharpeners for about 30 years and I felt it was time for an upgrade as I had gotten used to sending them to the local True Value to have them sharpened during a particularly busy time in my life and I liked the results. 

Now living right on Moosehead Lake and quite a distance from any saw shops I wanted to be able to quickly sharpen my own chains so I ordered the $30 unit from Harbor Freight. The unit arrived and after setting it up I realized that it was more suited for the very casual user and I started looking for something a little more robust. Basically it was made mostly out of plastic and I needed a solid metal version. Harbor Freight was very gracious on my returning the sharpener. Nice people to deal with. I have made many good purchases from Harbor Freight.

Next I checked out the forums and learned of a great bench top (or wall mount), well made and very reasonably priced unit from Northern Tool. The unit was on sale for about $100.00 and looked very much like the $200.00 - $400.00 units I've seen and got great reviews. I ordered one and it arrived in a couple of days.

Well this was much more like what I was looking for. For starters it was made of metal. It came with three sizes of grinder wheels and went right together. (Some assembly required) I bolted it down and, set it for my size chain and put it to work. I soon got used to the technique and sharpened about  6 chains before I knew it. It was actually fun and very productive. I highly recommend this sharpener for personal use or even commercial saw shop use. The price is so good you could even purchase 3 or 4 and not have to reset them for the most popular sizes. The really nice thing about one of these, over hand sharpening, is the consistent results in terms of cutter depth on both sides of the chain. Perhaps that is the most important issue even above speed and it has both.