I received the Slydart dart sharpener over the weekend but,
unfortunately, I cannot yet report on its usefulness for sharpening
pin stems. The gizmo I received is defective; it fails to make the
electrical connection needed to run the motor most of the time. I
haven’t been able to keep it running long enough to test it.
I have emailed to ask for a replacement and will report back when I
have news.
Beth
For those of you interested in the Slydart dart sharpener
experiment, here’s the latest. I got a replacement for the faulty
Slydart and this time it functions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear
that it will work for our purposes. It doesn’t get the pin stem quite
sharp enough and it’s slower than I would have expected. So I’m
giving up on it.
After trying various suggestions from several of you, I’ve settled
on a method which is definitely faster than that I was using before.
I’m putting the pin stem in a pin vise (thanks, Pam C.) and using a
mizzy wheel to create the taper (thanks, Katherine P.). I then polish
the point and round it slightly using my favorite smoothing tool –
one of those padded abrasive sticks made for filing finger nails. It
works great for this.
Cheers, Beth