Maintaining Your Sharpness in Inflationary Times
As our costs go up due to inflation and even tariff wars, our first thought is we must reduce our costs by buying things more inexpensively. In almost every case, that is the wrong action to take. At Goldys Brand, Inc. we provide sharpening services. We maintain a sharp edge for you and save you money while doing that. Read on to find out how we can help you save money in these trying times!
Since Goldys Brand, Inc. sharpens tools, and the blades the printing industry employs in its paper guillotines use these blades, we can help you save money here. The very first myth I want to dispel is that buying cheaper saves money. In almost every instance buying cheaper costs you more money because of the “incidentals” associated with buying, shipping, and installing blades—not just paper guillotine blades, but ANY type of blade.
By necessity less expensive blades are made from one or more lesser grades of steel and as such these blades dull faster, are more easily damaged in the normal course of cutting, and must be changed more often. Let’s look at the “incidental” costs associated with the above-mentioned issues.
With blades you want the harder, stronger, and more wear resistant steels to be the metals of choice for your blades. Now, these do cost more up front, but these have the ability to be resharpened multiple times and at a lower cost than the initial purchase price so you are saving money there. Next, because these steels are more resistant to wear, the edges of blades made from them will last longer than the less expensive steels.
That means you can go longer between needing to change your blades and have them resharpened which saves two things that are often overlooked. First, it costs money in time and labor to change these blades, and many people do not consider this cost. Most folks I know say “well the person/people working to change the blade are getting paid the same no matter what”, and that is true, but there is an opportunity cost that many do not see where the person/people could be working on other things that directly contribute to the bottom line. The more often and the more time that is spent changing a blade is more loss of contribution to the bottom line. Hand in hand with that cost is another opportunity cost of having the cutter down and not performing its job while the blades are being changed. Now, many people will say that is true every time you change the blade, and they are correct, but if you are changing your blade more often than necessary, you are incurring more downtime than is necessary and that is reducing your production contribution to the bottom line. Finally when you are buying more, less expensive blades, you are incurring more charges to ship the blades in to your shop!
At a minimum, you should be looking at “High Speed Steel” (HSS) which is designed to have better edge retention and therefore stay sharper longer and allow one blade to perform for a longer period of time before requiring a change. If the description of the steel in a blade does not mention HSS or the type of steel the blade is made from, you can rest assured that information is not provided for a reason, that blade is made from steel that is softer and will not hold an edge well.
One of the first questions we get asked when making these recommendations is “How much longer will a more expensive blade last than the cheaper ones?”. That is 100% dependent upon what you are cutting, and how often you are cutting. We have no way to predict any specific savings. The first trial of a better blade is going to be purely an act of faith that spending the additional money will show savings. We know it will, we just don’t know how to quantify those savings before you try a better-quality blade.
Since you are already on our web site, please click on this link to be taken to the pricing list for sharpening flat blades.