It’s highly important to keep your circular saw blade sharp because a dull blade can lead to many unwanted consequences.
It can damage your circular saw’s motor, provide you with imprecise cuts and even make entire pieces of wood unusable.
Quick Summary
In this post, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide on how you can effectively sharpen your circular saw’s blade by using a Dremel tool.
Let’s start by talking about the equipment you’ll need.
Tools and Equipment Needed
To sharpen your circular saw blade quickly and effectively, it’s a good idea to first get everything you need in one place.
Having everything on hand beforehand can do a lot to save time regardless of what task you’re doing.
The equipment you’ll need to sharpen your circular saw blade with a Dremel is:
- A Dremel tool
- A wrench
- Blade lubricant oil
- Woodworking gloves or other heavy gloves
- Eye goggles
- A square piece of wood
- A cylinder
Sharpening a Circular Saw Blade with a Dremel (Step-by-Step Guide)
Follow the steps in this section to quickly sharpen your circular saw blade with a Dremel:
Step 1: Preparing Your Work Surface and Safety Gear
Before getting started, it’s important that you prepare your work area appropriately.
It should ideally be a large and open area that’s well-ventilated. You don’t want to be in a closed area when working with sawdust and other debris.
It’s also important that your work area be well-lit. You want to be able to inspect minute details of your equipment such as the teeth of your saw blade.
Once you’ve prepared your work area, you can go ahead and put on your safety gear.
This would include eye goggles and heavy woodworking gloves. If you have a respirator on hand, it’s a good idea to put that on too.
Other important safety precautions include not wearing any loose clothing and tying up hair if they’re long.
Step 2: Unplugging Your Circular Saw
Before sharpening the saw blade, it’s important that your circular saw is unplugged to avoid any injuries.
In the case of a corded circular saw, remove its plug from the power outlet.
In the case of a cordless circular saw, remove its battery.
Step 3: Removing the Blade
First up, you’ll have to remove the dull blade from the circular saw so that you’re able to sharpen it with ease.
The way you detach the blade from the circular saw may vary depending on the model and manufacturer. We recommend reading any instructions or a manual that may have been provided by the manufacturer before attempting to remove the blade.
In most cases, you’ll need a wrench to detach from the circular saw.
If you can’t find manufacturer instructions that came with the box, you can look them up online.
Step 4: Holding the Saw Blade in Place
Now it’s time for the real deal, you’re going to need to build a platform to hold the saw blade in place while you sharpen it.
You’ll build this platform using a square piece of wood and a cylinder.
Attach the cylinder to the piece of wood firmly. The cylinder should have a diameter that is the same as that of the hole of the saw blade in its middle. You can put the blade into the cylinder to hold it in place now.
Once the attachment is done, you’ll hold the square piece of wood in place by adding a strip of wood to the bottom of it.
Take an additional piece of wood and chisel a strip that goes all the way down it. Ensure that this strip is large enough to hold onto the strip on the base of the square piece of wood that’s holding the cylinder.
Now that the cylinder (and consequently, the saw blade) is firmly held in place, you can use the Dremel tool to sharpen it as much as you want with ease.
Step 5: Setting Up the Dremel Tool
Once the saw blade is set in place, it’s time to prepare your Dremel tool.
Start by attaching the smaller round cutting head of the Dremel and securing it at a 90-degree angle to the saw blade on its left side.
Set up your saw blade in a way so that the longer exterior curve of each tooth runs against the Dremel tool.
In order to avoid double sharpening any tooth, you’ll have to mark the tooth that is closest to the Dremel tool.
Step 6: Sharpening the Circular Saw Blade
Start by activating the Dremel tool so that it runs while firmly held in place.
Next, hold the edges of the saw blade and carefully brush the outer end of the marked tooth against the working Dremel tool.
It should ideally take you 1 – 3 seconds to sharpen each tooth on the circular saw blade.
When you’re done with one tooth, bring the saw blade back and rotate it slightly to bring the next tooth in position for sharpening by the Dremel tool.
Repeat this process until all of the teeth on your circular saw blade have been sharpened.
You will know that all of your teeth have been sharpened when you return to the first marked tooth.
Step 7: Sharpening the Other Side
Once you’re done with the left-hand side of the saw blade, flip the Dremel tool so that it’s now on the right-hand side of the saw blade.
Remove the saw blade from the cylinder and flip it around.
Sharpen it using the same method that we described in step 6.
Once this is done, your circular saw blade will be fully sharpened.
Wrapping Things Up…
This brings us to the end of our tutorial post on how to sharpen a circular blade using a Dremel tool.
It may seem slightly complicated but it’s not too hard if you don’t want to spend money to buy a new saw blade or get it professionally sharpened.
How do you sharpen your circular saw blades? Let us know in the comments below.