Well fellas I have been doing local chain sharpening as a side income and am now going to extend it too you guys. I do not do online sales as of yet however the website and online payment is getting set up as we speak. Here is what we offer. Chains are cleaned before sharpening to remove old tar and grime. You can request no cleaning and they will not be cleaned. Chains are then sharpened and rakers adjusted accordingly ( if needed ). Safety chain raker & links are hand filed to assure proper depth. The tooth is done on a bench grinder. After these steps chains are re-oiled to prevent dry links. $5 a chain to be sharpened. Free return shipping via USPS Flat Rate for 5 or more chains. We don't square chisel or fix broken chain loops as I am not currently set up to do that. If you have stone chips or cracked teeth that can be sharpened back to a good we will fix them. If they can't be sharpened for some reason there will not be a charge for that chain. If your interested send me a PM and I will send you the address and payment method to ship your chains. As of right now this is a night and weekend job however I will do my very best to sharpen & ship fast to you! If your unhappy for any reason let me know and I will refund your money! I am not out to rip anybody off. Please bear with me as this is a new venture and things may need to be tweaked to make it effective. Thanks all Pete
That's awesome Pete. If, for some reason, the locals don't/can't/won't do my chains anymore, I'll send mine to you. Heck, I may have you do the oldest one to get it balanced left to right ( I hand sharpen for a long time). I have a friend who does this for me if I ask, but he's not the most careful person on the planet, and I'm a little OCD about some things, so.........
Any reason you couldn't have your announcement also on the chainsaw & firewood pages too? Glad to know about your biz.
I'm gonna leave it here for right now. We try too keep all our business adds in the classifieds for now but I did add it to my sig. Besides If people like my service it will travel around the forum anyhow.
That is more than a fair deal Pete, especially when you consider what it costs in gas to drive and drop off chains needing sharpened to a dealer.
I can get 'em done locally for about $4, but I'd trust Pete more than those guys. ETA: Come to think of it, that was what I paid about 4 years ago. Probably more now, so Pete's price keeps sounding gooder.
And gooder is betterer every time… Yeah, I'm thinking your charge per chain will bring in lottsa biz.
My local sharpening options are kind of terrible because nobody does it while-you-wait; I'd have to drop the chain off and then make another trip to pick it up later, and this bad service is rather expensive. So, I've been getting better at hand sharpening and am happy with that until I run a chain into a rock, at which point the extensive restorative filing gets to be less than fun. A recent used saw purchase came with a couple of chains that were victims of extremely sloppy hand filing, but which could have some life in them still if someone with a grinder were to aggressively even them up. I've used two different sharpening services offered on eBay. They did an okay job, though the second one took a bit too much off of the rakers and the chains bite harder than I like. Both used the same approach to shipping: the USPS small flat-rate box, which is about the size of a VHS tape. Chains are heavy, so maxing out a flat-rate box makes mail order sharpening more economical than it would be if you were paying shipping by weight.
Jon I am offering free return shipping for 5 or more chains at this point. I called and talked to the post office again today and verified the price of flat rate so it is now official. I will not do any other method free though as it is very expensive and we are a very small operation (2 Man ).
That's an AWESOME deal!! I do mine myself with a dremel, only because the only shop I know of around me that will sharpen a chain told me $40, and it would take 2 weeks!!!! I said, "$40? Isn't a new chain about $25?" He said "yes, it's cheaper to buy a new chain then to get them sharpened". I thought that didn't make any sense.... Anyway, when I'm done HACKING away at mine, I'll send it your way to get it straightened out. I'm 100% sure it will need it.
Either that guy's time is worth hundreds of dollars an hour, or he doesn't know how to sharpen chains.
...or maybe he was traumatized as a child, watching his father mangled in a horrible sharpening accident?
I'd bet that guy doesn't "want" to sharpen them. As Pete has said, it's a lot of work and time. I've decided not to even get into yet another power tool in the shop… and just let Pete sharpen em. Good fee vs shops in our area.
Pete, would you be willing to turn a "safety chain" into a "nonsafety chain? In other words, take those goofy high rakers down so the chain can actually cut worth a hoot. What payment option are you making available?
