Save Money by Sharpening Your Wood Chipper Blades Instead of Buying New Each Time You Change Them!!

As our costs go up due to inflation and even tariff wars, our first thought is we must reduce our costs by buying wood chipper blades 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 blades, the wood chippers that tree service companies employ use these blades, so 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.  Less expensive blades are made from something other than the A8 tool steel that most wood chipper blades are made from.  These other grades of steel are either much harder than A8 and are prone to chipping and cracking, or they are softer than A8 and 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.

So, now to the discussing the “incidental” costs. when you have to buy blades more often and ship them in, you are paying more in shipping costs. This may tempt you to run these blades longer to make up for the increased wear and the chipping, but that increases the work your wood chipper has to do to force the blade to chip the wood. This can result in premature failures in you wood chipper itself! Changing blades more often incurs down time when the chipper is unable to process felled trees and limbs. This is a cost that many people do not recognize and it can really add up.

Although almost all blades are very sharp when you open a new box, the ones from much harder steel will chip and that forces you to change the blades more often–more on what happens when you must change blades more often a bit later–. Blades made from softer steels will initially seem quite sharp, but their ability to retain their edge is not there and the blades will dull quite fast, again forcing you to change blades more often.

With wood chipper blades you want the hard, strong, and more wear resistant A8 tool steel to be the metal of choice for your blades.  This costs 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 the A8 tool steel is more resistant to wear, the edges of blades made from them will last longer than the less expensive steels, both harder and softer than A8.

That means you can go longer between needing to change your blades and have them resharpened which saves two things that are often overlooked.  As was said a bit earlier, 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 wood chipper 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, reminding again from earlier, when you are buying more blades, you are incurring more charges to ship the blades in to your shop!

If the description of the steel in a blade does not mention A8 Tool Steel, you can rest assured that information is not provided for a reason, that blade is made from steel that is either softer and will not hold an edge well or harder and will chip when in use.  Since you are already on our web site, please click on this link to be taken to the pricing list for sharpening flat blades.

What we do when we sharpen Wood Chipper Blades:

When we sharpen blades, we use our machine that is designed specifically to sharpen flat blades, such as your wood chipper blades.

We have a mandatory cleaning charge of $8.00 per blade to remove all the sap, dirt, and other contaminants from each blade so it will sit properly in our sharpening machine and we can grind an accurate edge on the blade!  This allows us to grind the edge without overheating the metal and it allows us to ensure the edges on both sides of the blade are the same distance from the center line of the blade.  Having equidistant edges means that once your chipper is adjusted for the blades edge length, the entire set of blades, on both sides, will be identical and that will allow your chipper to run at its maximum efficiency.

As we finish with each blade, we weigh each blade and write the weight on the blade so that you can choose to set blades of the same weight on opposite sides of the chipper drum and maintain the balance and the efficiency of operation!

Finally, many tree companies we talk to have a store of old blades. Our sharpening service allows you to send us those blades and we will sharpen them for you and make the blades earn money for you again!