clean cutting blade for Makita DSS611Z circular saw

Possibly a 165mm 80 tooth blade. Youtube reviews says a 20mm abor.

Thin kerf (for cordless)

Set the correct blade depth and properly support the work piece so the blade doesn't bind - as shown in

I have a 190mm mains powered version, it came with a 12T blade and I bought a 24T blade, between them they've given good cuts on 8x2 oak, 3/4 OSB and various thicknesses of ply. So far I've not felt the need for

Greatly useful info Alan, thanks. I'll go for one of these, though I was surprised to see the plate with of the saw was said to be 1mm.

I think this selection of blades would probably do for my purposes. But I do tend to go near the extreme when things get unfamiliar, just to be on the safe side.

It's shown delivered with a 6 1/2" blade with 16T (the blade is for "ripping", where the quality of the cut is not the concern and just the speed of the cut matters to the operator).

I can find a 40T, 60T, 90T.

This 90T is similar to the larger blade I have on the table saw which is a 180T. You can see the tooth shape changes when the tooth count goes up. The table saw is a 10" blade (255mm), so there is more room for teeth.

The battery Makita saw is "No Load Speed 3,700 RPM", so the blade should be quite safe in that case, on RPMs.

The throat on the saw (max thickness of wood you can saw) matters. This is one reason I would shop retail and look at the saws, and judge whether this is what I want. No matter what you buy, there is always a piece of wood which is too thick for your toy. I have a few posts here, where you can see there were "four cuts plus a handsaw cut" and the end of the post is never quite flat as a result. That's because the kerf of the circular saw, is different than the handsaw kerf.

"Kerf is defined as the width of material that is removed by the cutting/sawing process."

You might find the 16T blade has a wider kerf than the 90T blade, as an example. You are unlikely to be changing the blade back and forth, and discover this :-) Normally, once you put a blade on the saw, being lazy, it usually stays there.

Paul

Thanks for the useful information Paul. I just bought an 80T blade as suggested by Alan. I might be tempted to leave it fitted permanently for general purposes out of laziness but I somehow don't think I'll get away with it.

If you had bought it from a decent wood merchant, they should have been able to cut it for you, and cut dead straight lines too which you definitely cannot without cutting guide.

Even some larger B&Q's used to have this facility.

Wenban Smith in Worthing would definitely have cut it for you and probably fine-finished the edges. Plenty more outfits like WenSmith around the country too.

Obviously, not having any of the higher tooth blades for my circ saw, I can't comment on what difference they would make. You didn't mention if your sheet material is going to be ply or MDF?

I do have a 60T blade in my mitre saw, but that's a larger blade ...

Blades with high tooth counts are more useful for manufactured boards. I recently bought a 100T 255mm diam. from Saxton blades for my table saw and used it to cut melamine faced board, despite not having a zero clearance throat plate you would be hard pushed to tell which way up the boards were cut.

Richard

I just wanted to buy some useful tools. And use them while I still can.

I got this bit of kit for plywood. It will be a treat to minimise the finishing of the edges.

Using tape on both sides of the board (top and bottom) may also help

See the DIY wiki for a sawboard

On the two occasions I would have purchased boards if they could be cut I was asked to come back a couple of days later as there were only a couple of staff trained on using the wall panel saw and they were only in a couple of days a week. Don’t know if other branches were the same but I could not be bothered to try again and the panel saw was removed shortly after. I wonder if they ever recouped their investment in it.

GH

The simple answer is that the more teeth the better the cut (assuming you aren't ripping), but the result depends on the thing you're cutting. Is this wood, MDF, faced MDF, plywood, faced plywood , or ... ? A circular saw blade will always cause a little tear-out. This can be minimised by increasing the number of teeth and tackling the cut in two stages (a scoring cut before the full cut). If minimising tear out is important then you could cut slightly oversize and use a router to get to finish size.

I've the same saw/blade - bought a few months ago. A huge step up from the 18V Aldi I had before - quieter, quicker, good on batteries.

I'm not sure how much of that I can put down to the blade - a lot probably. But just to say I've found all cuts clean. That's cutting some solid pine doors down, MDF, 18mm chip flooring, scaffold board, and 12mm ply.

As others have said, a saw board or a clamped guide, and some decent support for what's being cut, pretty much essential too for a clean and accurate cut.

Very helpful, thanks.

Encouraging post, thanks.

I gave the contents of my workshop to my son a few years ago. To use that particular router I'd have to go to Canada.

Getting ever closer to 80, I don't think Ill be investing in a router at this stage. My wife quite likes the new saw but i don't want to push my luck.

The only thing to watch is which side of the work piece you cover with the saw-board.

If the saw-board is clamped or covers the piece you want to keep then aligning the edge of saw-board with a line drawn on the work piece that is the exact width you want then the cut will give you the exact width on the "kept" piece.

If the saw board covers the "waste" piece and the edge of the saw board is aligned with a line on the work piece the cut gives you a "kept" piece that is smaller by the width of the blade.

Depending on what you are making it may not matter if ALL pieces are short by the width of the blade as long as they are all the same. It may not matter if the cut you are making is a one off just to square off or to give a reference straight edge to the material before marking out. You can compensate by moving the clamping of the saw-board by the width of the blade. The danger is swapping the side the saw-board is clamped to without thinking during your cutting of ,say, a 8'x 4' sheet and expecting all cuts to be exactly to the marked line.