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I would assume hollow ground means that the inside surfaces are ground such that the pressure compressing the blade is at the outermost edge of the stiffener. I can't imagine any other reason for hollow grinding.

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Waddy

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Stew Mac sells the hollow ground blade, right? No stiffeners required? Is it better to go with a blade that requires stiffeners?

A single damper is what we use on all blades, including the StewMac fretting blade. Our stiffeners are from Forrest...we use a 4" on the smaller Diablo blades and fretting blade, and a 5" on larger blades. The LMII blade is a slitting blade, so needs more support than the thicker StewMac blade...two 5" stiffeners would run $64 plus shipping from Forrest.

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Not sure which is better or if one is better than the other, I just got a good deal on the same blade the LMI sells (I paid $25) and decided to give it a shot. I've recently moved to a power slotting setup but have yet to use or test it. I have 5 in the works so if I end up with the LMI stiffeners, the SM blade or something else I'll be sure to update this post with my conclusion based on whatever my experience ends up being. I'm a small builder so I don't worry about blade replacement as much as someone who slots hundreds or thousands of fretboards for a living as was mentioned earlier. If my current setup is adequately accurate I'll go with it. If not I'll have a nice plate of crow and buy the dang high end stiffeners.

Wow. Adding stiffeners to the Stew Mac Blade? I am currently interested in upgrading to table saw slotting... need to learn more. Help appreciated.

Sorry OP, not meaning to hijack, I personally think whacking on a forum sponsor is bad form. I'm not picking... I've made that error myself before. So, maybe we can turn this into a positive thread?

I use a cheap stiffener with with SM blade as well, mine aren't as nice as the ones woody suggested.


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Questioning prices- sponsor or not is not a whack on a sponsor. I've learned quite a bit from this post and isn't that the point? Whether I've learned enough to be swayed into $120 stiffeners remains to be seen but I do hope that at the very least it helps in your decision making process. I'm not one to refuse to admit that I was wrong. I don't know about the Forrest stiffeners but I can tell you that the stiffeners I ordered for $20 from Infinity Tools were 0.3 G off and looked like $20 stiffeners. I'm sending them back tomorrow. I'll try the forest stiffeners next and if those don't work or I'm not happy with them I'll admit I was wrong, praise LMI and spend a good chunk of me next check on their wonderfully priced stiffeners.

You know, I've been leaving this alone, but, since you keep repeating that you never bashed LMI, and I'm the one who said you did, I feel compelled to explain my reasoning. Here's you're original post:
That is not "questioning prices." That is a mocking, accusatory indictment of LMI's ethics, capped off with a crude analogy describing their pricing policy. I have no beef with you personally, Joey, and typically find your posts informative and entertaining. This is a remarkably positive forum and I believe a great deal of that is the result of longtime members (like you) leading by example. I think we can (and should) hold ourselves to a higher standard. In this particular instance I thought you crossed a line, so I pointed it out.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. Best to you and everyone else,

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George :-)

I can't fault you for that. My comment indeed implied that the price was a bend me over price, which I truly believed and maybe I still do- on that particular item. Turns out there might actually be a reason for it (although I'll have to see for myself). Apologies if I've offended anyone- maybe it's my own ignorance. One way or another I'll find what works for me. It's still not easy for me to wrap my head around two steel disks that cost $120. Before anyone mentions "machinist" again I'll tell you that my stepdad and uncle were both machinists for Corning Glass- where I'm from. They agreed with me (and they rarely agree on anything)- too bad they don't still have access to the shop as they are retired now and Corning's Pressware was sold to World Kitchen.

Lee Valley offers a set of blade stiffeners that contact the blade only at the rim; these come in 3" and 5" diameter pairs and must be used as such, so might work quite well for stabilizing very thin slitting blades of the type sold by LMII for fret slotting and commonly used in industry for a range of tasks.

As mentioned, we use the modified hollow-ground planer blade offered by Stewmac with a single dead-flat stiffener, but it would be interesting to see if the $25 pair of stiffeners offered by Lee Valley shows any deficit of performance in comparison to the $119 pair of stiffeners LMII offers and recommends for use with their blade. I have to suspect that LMII did testing with commercially available dampeners, stiffeners, and stabilizers before specifying their own for the system, but as the shop's resident gear-getter and researcher, I am always looking for either better performance or equivalent performance at a lower cost.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Mike, I have the newer StewMac blade and it works great without stiffeners.

Bob

No, in my opinion, you whacked on the sponsor. I've done similar or less and have experienced the woodshed. I like your posts. Keep up with the positive input. I don't see you as anything but a source of good will for this site. U just got sticker shocked. Been there, done that. But it just doesn't serve any good posting stuff that dings a sponsor.

Maybe the point of stiffeners is the ability to use lower cost blades? Busy shops may prefer?

I've known professional cabinet makers who made blade stiffeners out of plywood. I've used their saws , and they worked fine. Most decent saw blades don't need much in the way of blade stiffening, and in some cases the stiffeners degrade their performance. The "stiffener " I generally use matches the size of the one on the saw's arbor. I have a set of larger stiffeners, but don't generally use them - don't need to.
I'm sure we have all shopped places that had "loss leaders" to draw us in, and have been "gouged" a little bit when we grabbed something we don't normally buy there. LMII may sell stiffeners of an equal quality as Forrest's, but probably sells far fewer and needs to charge more to make them worth stocking. I don't have to agree to someone else's price. If I don't like it I don't have to buy.

Amen. I'm not a free market zealot, but we all have the ability to vote with our feet. If a product sells well enough at a price that I personally feel is too high, then there is obviously a market out there for it; I'm just not part of that market. If, on the other hand, all or most potential buyers feel the same way I do, and few people buy the product at that high price, then either the price goes down or the vendor gets out of the business of selling that item. It can't solve all economic problems, but the free market takes care of problems like this just fine.

Companies like LMII and StewMac do a great job of offering, in one convenient place, most of the things we need to build or repair guitars. I can hustle and find less expensive versions of many such items; I can build or modify some of them myself; I can use other means of accomplishing the relevant tasks so that I don't have to buy the items in question; or I can buy the items from these places at the prices they charge. I've done all of those things, depending on the item. I'm thankful I have so many choices, and I'm thankful for the role LMII, StewMac, and other companies (both sponsors and non-sponsors) play in providing me with so many choices.