This
article has been provided by Highland
Hardware, Inc.
The
Makita 9820-2 Electric Sharpener Does Them All
The
venerable Makita Electric Sharpener has been enjoying something
of a boom in popularity lately, which has inspired us to
offer this review of an old favorite's fine performance
features. The 9820-2 is a powerful waterstone sharpener.
If you've ever used Japanese waterstones for sharpening
by hand, you've seen how terrifically efficient they are
and how sharp an edge they can create; perhaps you can imagine
how easy sharpening is when the stone does all the work
for you at 560 rpm.
Makita
designed the 9820-2 for sharpening jointer and planer blades
up to 16" in length. It does that job beautifully, and the
quality of its work makes a great difference in the quality
of work you can expect from your machines.
The
sharpener's territory isn't limited to machine knives alone.
Practically any hand tool in the shop can be ground and
sharpened with ease; chisels and plane irons can be jigged
and ground to a perfect bevel, while carving tools, turning
tools, knives or any other tools you can think of can readily
be sharpened free-hand. All your grinding and sharpening
can be done with absolutely no risk of overheating an edge
and drawing the tool's temper; a constant supply from a
gravity-feed tank on the sharpener keeps stones from clogging
or glazing and keeps a tool cool through even the most vigorous
grinding.
Green
Wheel
We're
proud to have developed several years ago a coarse grinding
wheel for the 9820-2, a stone that vastly enhances the machine's
speed and general usefullness. Makita equips the sharpener
with a 1000 grit wheel, a stone which provides a very good
cutting edge - sharper that you've ever seen on a planer
blade - but which is too fine to quickly waste away the
large amount of steel you've got to remove when an edge
is badly damaged or misshapen. Our Green Wheel, a silicon
carbide stone of 120 grit, will grind the hardest steels
as aggressively as a coarse wheel on a conventional bench
grinder. Rather than spending ten or fifteen minutes on
the 1000 grit wheel, we'll get the job done in a fraction
of the time on the Green Wheel, then follow up with about
sixty seconds work at 1000 grit to polish the edge to perfection.
We
expect to routinely turn out edges that are within a few
thousandths of dead straight over twelve inches, with no
bowing or distortion of the knife and absolutely minimal
wastage of steel. We've been able to re-grind knives a good
dozen times when they'd normally last through no more than
three commercial sharpenings before having to be replaced.
Mounting Machine Knives
The 9820-2 comes equipped with a stout cast iron blade holder
that can handle practically any known make of jointer or
planer knife up to about 16" long. If you're willing to
ignore reasonable limits and work a little harder, you can
sharpen 18" or even 20" knives pretty well, too. Jointer
knives are a snap, since you can put two or three of them
end-to-end in the holder and sharpen them all at once.
The fine points of operating the tool are covered pretty clearly
in one of our Highland Hardware user's guides that we provide
with every sharpener we sell. The guide has worked pretty
well for the last ten years or so - it's only two pages
long, but it has helped thousands of people master the sharpener's
capabilities with no trouble at all.
Sharpening Hand Tools
Chisels and plane irons almost always get the benefit of being jigged
in a simple optional aluminum fixture manufactured for the
purpose. The Hand Tool Jig replaces the Makita tool holder,
but rides on the tool rest in a similar fashion, allowing
easy set-up for correct grinding angle. We also use the
sharpener on the backs as well as the bevels of some tools.
Though we're fanatic enough to insist on using a lapping
plate or a diamond stone for flattening the backs of plane
irons, we've found no faster or more effective way to polish
the backs of chisels than the 9820-2.
Hand
tools other than chisels and plane irons can be sharpened
freehand far more easily than you might expect. The tool
rest can be removed from the front of the sharpener, leaving
the front 3/4 of the sharpening stone fully accessible.
All you have to do is show the tool to the stone at whatever
angle is called for, and let the stone do all the work.
Knives of all sorts are simply stroked lightly across the
stone at a low angle; scissors, screwdriver blades and gardening
tools can be ground or sharpened with a few seconds work
and very little effort.
Proven Reliability
Well, gosh. Sounds too good to pass up - guess we'd rush out and
order one ourselves if the 9820-2 we've been using for years
weren't perfectly sound. The Makita sharpener is one of
our top two or three all time low maintenance machines;
we've had no more than two or three calls for help in all
these years. If bells and whistles are where you get your
jollies, there's bound to be something else out there that
will make you happy. But if you're willing to settle for
a sharpening machine that's just simple, effective and reliable,
we've got your number. Give us a call.
Find
out more about the Makita
9820-2 in Highland Hardware's Online Catalog!
This article
has been provided by Highland
Hardware, Inc.
