Months ago, I finally bought a Stihl carbide chain (expensive!) to try it on dirty oak logs because I figured the only way to know is to just try it. It cuts sufficiently well. I was not underwhelmed by its cutting ability. It is still sharp enough to use but at some point it will require sharpening soon. Does anyone know a source that sharpens regular chains and carbide chains? Shipping costs would be prohibitive if I just shipped one carbide chain to someone; I would rather send a batch of regular chains along with it. OTOH, if you think buying whatever type of gizmo is required to sharpen, or if you have any experience with this, please chime in with what you know.
I only know of one guy around me who used the carbide chains and he hadn't had to have them sharpened yet. They lasted a very very long time. He did chip or break a tooth cutting a tree that had barbed wire in it. Long story short, we both worked in a machine shop across the street from a tool maker who replaced the tooth. Carbide is definitely going to require special tooling to work with, basically carbide is so hard it's brittle and it's hard to work with; if you don't use an industrial diamond abrasive it will do as much damage to the grinder as the grinder does to it. I would reach out to a shop who makes custom tools (e.g. can grind carbide) and see what they can do or they may be able to send you in the right direction.
Having said that I wouldn't have a second thought of buying my own grinding stones assuming you can get the right size for the tool you're using and doing it myself. Carbide is just a different material requiring a different abrasive.
McMaster has them. Listed as diamond grinding points. Maybe a cylindrical one the size of what you would use for a file on a normal chain and use the diamond point in a Dremel? That would probably be my first try anyway.
