Swedes rely on Swabian sharpness expertise 2025-05-23

The Swedish company Kvarnstrands uses more than 50 machines from sharpening specialist VOLLMER for its maintenance and repair services for circular saws and band saws. These include several machines from the CHX series for sharpening carbide-tipped circular saws, as well as erosion machines for machining tools with PCD (polycrystalline diamond). Kvarnstrands also trades in circular saw blades from Kanefusa and manufactures high-performance tools that ensure precise wood cutting in planing machines worldwide.

‘Wood is the raw material on which the world is building - in the truest sense of the word, because wood is becoming increasingly important as a building material compared to steel and concrete,’ says David Kvarnstrand, Managing Director of Kvarnstrands Verktyg AB. ’Wood is a renewable raw material that releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The more that is made from wood, the more cutting tools are needed - and that's good for us.’

At home in the neighbourhood of Michel from Lönneberga

Kvarnstrands primarily manufactures, sells and services cutting tools as well as circular and band saws for the wood industry - but is also active in the plastics and aluminium sectors. The company is based in Ekenässjön in Småland in southern Sweden - just a few kilometres from Lönneberga, where Astrid Lindgren's Michel (Emil in Swedish) once carved his wooden figures in the shed. Kvarnstrands' cutting tools are manufactured for planing machines used by customers in Europe and even worldwide. The tool manufacturer will also be exhibiting its planing tools at Ligna 2025 in Hanover and will be showing, among other things, two newly developed tools for which patents have recently been filed.

‘We are currently producing perhaps the largest planer cutterheads ever made in Europe,’ says David Kvarnstrand. ‘The weight of a planing cutterhead is almost 300 kilograms and they will run in a large planing machine that processes construction timber at a speed of up to 1200 metres per minute.’

The company is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year

Kvarnstrands sells high-quality knives and circular saws from the Japanese tool manufacturer Kanefusa. Kvarnstrands offers its maintenance and repair services for cutting tools exclusively in Sweden and Norway - the company also has sites in Nybro and Älvsbyn as well as in Stange, Norway. With its 110 employees, the tool manufacturer generates an annual turnover of around 19 million euros, which is divided roughly equally between the three business areas of production, trade and services.

‘This year we are celebrating our 80th anniversary. In 1945, my great-grandfather and his two sons bought the company, which manufactured drilling tools at the time,’ says David Kvarnstrand. ‘My father took over the company at the end of the 1970s and the transition to the current generation took place in 2002 - today my sisters Linda and Frida run the company with me.’

The company has relied on VOLLMER for its services for decades

Kvarnstrands serves more than 1000 customers worldwide - including sawmills, planing mills, wood panel manufacturers and furniture and window manufacturers. When it comes to servicing circular and band saws, the Swedes rely on the sharpening expertise of Swabian machine manufacturer VOLLMER. Kvarnstrands has been investing in VOLLMER machines since the 1980s and is convinced by both the technology and the support provided by VOLLMER - there are now more than 50 VOLLMER machines in Kvarnstrands' production halls.

‘In earlier years, we often received a crate of beer from VOLLMER, which was packed in the machines from Germany,’ remembers David Kvarnstrand with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Even though we miss those days, it is clear to us that we will continue to rely on VOLLMER in the future. The machines are reliable and of high quality and we haven't found anything better or more efficient on the market in the past four decades.’

Automatic grinding of hundreds of circular saws around the clock

Even today, many VOLLMER machines from the very beginning are still in daily operation - including grinding machines for circular and band saws, straightening centres for band saws and also stelliting machines. Due to the increased use of carbide-tipped circular saws in the wood industry, Kvarnstrands has recently invested in grinding machines such as the CHC 840, CHX 840 and CHD 270. The CHC 840 sharpens circular saws with diameters of up to 840 millimetres and can also process chipper segments thanks to a transversely installed feed pawl with pneumatic lifting. The VOLLMER operating concept with multifunction handwheel simplifies the work of the Kvarnstrands team, as the axes are selected and moved using just one module, thus avoiding possible operating errors. Using the ND 340 handling system with four loading carriages, Kvarnstrands can load two grinding machines with up to 350 circular saw blades. The circular saws are fed to the grinding machine unmanned via a fully automatic measuring and scanning system, which enables round-the-clock maintenance and servicing in 24/7 shifts.

Machining diamond tools with VOLLMER erosion technology

‘We use the VOLLMER QXD 250 and QM eco select erosion machines for the maintenance and servicing of PCD-tipped tools,’ says David Kvarnstrand. ‘In the field of diamond tools, our customers come not only from the wood industry, but increasingly also from the plastics and aluminium industries.’

The QXD 250 and QM eco select are both disc erosion machines for sharpening cutting tools with PCD (polycrystalline diamond). With the QXD 250, PCD tools can be machined in a single set-up, i.e. from measuring, eroding and grinding through to polishing. Extended travel paths and swivel ranges for tool diameters enable Kvarnstrands to service tools with diameters of up to 320 millimetres and tool lengths of up to 250 millimetres. Thanks to a tool store, automated machining is also possible with the QXD 250, which runs unmanned and around the clock.

‘Two thirds of Sweden consists of forest, which is roughly three times the area of Austria, which is why many of our customers come from the timber industry,’ says Daniel Vacha, Managing Director of VOLLMER Scandinavia in Växjö. ‘However, we are noticing how the boundaries between the wood, plastics and metal industries are becoming increasingly blurred and we at VOLLMER usually design customised sharpening solutions for our customers, which consist of the different technologies of grinding, eroding and lasering.’