Yeah: There's only one other guy at our shop who sharpens his handsaw/polesaw blades, and he does it like RopeArmour with the feather file. It takes him 20 minutes per blade max.
I sharpen all my own blades, but I wouldn't think of using that Godforsaken instrument. Please forgive me RopeArmour and whoever else is talented enough to use that bedeviled thing but I really do believe that it's extremely difficult for the non-initiate. Here's something that's not: a dremel with a cutting wheel. It's super easy and obtains factory-like angles.
Sean: I feel your pain. I would have said almost the same thing about, "I can't even believe that a human being could do this." I had a similar experience. Now boys: about eyesight--that's a very real and a very serious drawback, and one that none of you should chide yourselves for should that prove to be an insuperable limitation. Can't put in what nature's left out. I, however, happen to be extremely nearsighted. So much so that as far as survival of the fittest goes--I'd probably be the first of the Housers to get eaten alive on the African savannah by a lion, because it looked like a dust cloud blowing at me! However, when it comes to sharpening, all I've got to do is take out my contacts, and it's like I've got magnified vision.
With the dremel, I'd say that I can restore a blade to factory sharpness, or sharper (by making more acute angles, though it's a bad idea, because it dulls faster) in under twelve minutes. You guys have got to try this--the super cheap Harbor Freight types will do just fine.
Oh yeah Sean: Don't even worry about the set, man. You don't even have to mess with bending in more set with the needle nose until you're seriously on like your 15th sharpening, and if we can't afford a new blade by then, we're probably bidding our jobs just a bit too low. They get bent up (the cheap kinds) anyways. You don't hardly have to every worry about set with a handsaw anyways. Now if we were falling and bucking trees like the real men did it with the crosscut saws, it'd be a different matter. Don't tell me you boys are trying to handsaw through a ten inch top!
Oh yeah Brian: If a newish blade gets bent up a little bit; seriously: just get on a pair of gloves and just bend the crap out of it by hand until it's true again, seriously. It's pretty easy to do a tolerable job.
