How to Properly Sharpen a Circular Saw

Circular saws are used everywhere in construction. Many works require resizing of used building materials, making incisions and much more. A circular saw allows you to quickly cut a wide variety of materials, while the cutting speed is very high, and the quality of the cut is the best. The constant use of the equipment in question determines that the cutting tool begins to become dull, this has a significant impact on the efficiency of the work and their quality. That is why many people think about how to sharpen circular saws with their own hands. After all, the ability to qualitatively perform such work will significantly save.

How to Properly Sharpen a Circular Saw

Necessary tools

With your own hands, disks for a circular plate can be sharpened only with special tools. There is also a machine that allows you to automate the process, to make it more efficient.

To carry out work on sharpening a disc with your own hands, you can use the following tools:

  1. mounting vice;
  2. file;
  3. bar made of wood.

You can also use a grinding machine for circular saws, for which the above tools are not needed.

When do I need to restore saw blades?

A rather important issue is the determination of when the grinding of circular saws should be carried out. Heavy wear can lead to the inability to carry out such work. Three distinct signals can be identified that determine the need for sharpening a circular saw blade:

  1. The appearance of smoke, heating the protective cover. The device, as a rule, has a special protective cover, which can heat up if the disk is dull. It should also be noted that in special cases smoke appears due to strong heating of the cutting zone.
  2. Also, with mechanical feeding, when the pressure is controlled by one’s own hands, great effort should be given to obtain the desired result.
  3. When processing wood or other material in the cutting area, traces of soot and the corresponding smell appear.

In the above situations, it is recommended to sharpen the circular saw blade.

Principles and angles of sharpening circular saws

The saw has four main sharpening angles of the circular saw along the working part. The angles under consideration, as well as the shape of the tooth itself, can be called the main operational characteristics. Each tooth can be characterized as follows:

Video: How to Properly Sharpen a Circular Saw


  1. front and rear corner;
  2. cutting angles of the front and rear surfaces.

The values ​​of the above parameters depend on the purpose of the sawing device, the type of workpiece material.

Tooth surfaces of a circular saw

According to the above parameters, several saws can be distinguished:

  1. to perform slitting. In this case, the rake angle should be between 15 ° and 25 °.
  2. when performing cross cutting, the considered indicator should be from 5 ° to 10 °.
  3. The universal version is recommended to be sharpened at an angle of 15 °.

The type of material being processed also determines what indicators a tooth should have. As a rule, the harder the material, the more difficult it is to work. That is why it is recommended to sharpen cutting teeth to a lesser extent.

With prolonged use of carbide saws, significant wear occurs at the top cutting edge. When considering the plane of the tooth, it is worth noting that more wear is on the front surface.

Types of teeth of circular saws

Grinding circular saws at home

You can grind the saw yourself without using a special grinding machine, which has a high cost and is rarely used for its intended purpose due to the use of carbide material to create the cutting edge. However, you simply cannot hold a circle in your hands, since you need to achieve certain cut parameters to provide the necessary indicator of work efficiency.

To fix the gear circle in a strictly predetermined position, an ordinary flat stand is used. It has the features below:

  1. The surface of the flat stand must match the level of the axis of the grinding wheel.
  2. We place the serrated circle on the stand so that the sharpening plane is perpendicular to the saw blade.
  3. The considered device for teeth located at a certain angle is equipped with a swivel joint.

The device under consideration allows fixing the workpiece in relation to the abrasive material used. Using a colored marker, marking lines are drawn that allow you to select the correct angle. A vise is also needed in which the created fixture for fixing is mounted.

Sharpening with a machine

If it is possible to purchase a special machine, then the process in question can be carried out with a maximum efficiency indicator. Such a device has compact dimensions, it can be used at home.

Particular attention is paid to the choice of abrasive wheel. In this case, we note the nuances below:

  1. Carbide discs are difficult to grind.
  2. When choosing, you should pay attention to circles made of elbor, with diamond chips or green silicon carbide.

The sharpening process using professional equipment is very simple. The disk is mounted using a special lock. It was created with the design features of the circle. We will pay special attention to the fact that when using special machines it is very simple to sharpen circular saws with maintaining the required parameters. In this case, the error is minimal. This is due to the fact that the design has a special angle indicator. In order not to be mistaken at the time of the work with which teeth have already been processed, it is necessary to mark the starting point with a marker.