Randy Brandt of Winchester NH came by the house today to show me the mill tooth sharpener that he designed and made a couple of prototype . With his permission I took some pictures of Randy and his sharpener at work on a spent "Preffered " mill tooth. I ll post them if I can He will be using the "rejuvenated " mill tooth today and said he will let me know how he found it as compared to a new "Preffered". This method sharpens the tooth from both sides at once using diamond coated abrasive which can be changed out as needed and is available in different grits.. Ray correction, the abrasive used was not diamond coated but aluminum oxide
Following up on the mill tooth sharpener, Last Thursday I met up with a local farrier that has used approx. 5 "Preffereds", and has been satisfied with them. I had called ahead to ask if he had any used up/spent "Prefferds" available, and told him about the sharpener. He produced one that had been pronounced dead , it was rusty ,not crusty, since he had worked in a barn that at the time required that his tools and vehicle be bleached, bleach being an oxidizer ...rust. I took the mill tooth,sprayed it down with brake cleaner and honed it with Randy Brandt s sharpener , took maybe 2 minutes ,and returned it to it s owner. He put a handle on it and stated that it was working, not like a new plane but certainly not like a dead one. When he finished that one horse he needed to move his set up to another part of the complex,while he did I attempted another going over of the plane to see if it could be in\mproved upon with a little more time put in. I brought the reworked "Preffered to him and asked if he would let me know the results. At about 4:30 pm we spoke and he told me that after the 2nd tune up the tool did not perform as well as after the 1st tune up so he decided to buff it and besides doing the 5 horses at that barn he used it all day Friday, retiring it on Monday to finishing. Today I stopped by to tune it up and he went right to the hind feet and pronounced"it s making cheese again!", said that he would buff it again and let me know the results. I never asked how many horses he got done with it from start to this point, but I think I ve learned a few things, 1st these mill tooths are not dead when we think they are, that buffing only sharpens on side of the tooth, quite probably producing an obtuse edge that requires sharpening from the other side to replace a cutting edge. I say this because when I sharpen a non buffed plane,both sides of the tooth show signs of abrasive contact whereas on a buffed plane there is very little shiney metal showing, the rusty plane made that pretty evident to me. For a little humor, I got a call from a dealer who buys Pferds from me, he asked if I would replace a bent Pferd Hoof Plane, I said sure ,if it came out of the sleeve like that. I asked "was it used " and was told yes, I asked when was it purchased and the dealer told me,after checking his records, July 8 2016, yesterday was August 23,2016,some 6 weeks......My Customer ,the dealer in this case said that he would find out a little more detail. Ray
Yesterday, I wound up shoeing at a barn at the same time that the farrier for whom I ve sharpened the mill tooth for on the previous wednesday, so I was able to ask how it held up, he got wednesday and thursday out of it before moving it to the finishing side, remember this was the "preffered " that had been delegated to deceased two week earlier. I did not have the sharpening mandrel with me so I couldn t touch it up again but he showed me that it still "makes cheese" with additional pressure, his customer, the horseowner asked if it was some new kind of rasp since she had never seen such large flakes. Ray
