Jigsaw/Blade for Engineered Wood Floor

Don't know about the blades as I've only ever used Makita & Bosch.

Probably the jigsaw. A jigsaw is one of those power tools where the quality increases drastically with price. I've never found a cheap jigsaw that works properly. You would be looking at £100+ for a decent machine.

For clean cuts with a jigsaw look for worktop blades. Those non-specific "hardwood" blades look rather vicious and cut on the down stroke.

Possibly if you aren't applying a fair amount of down pressure the saw will tend to bounce on the cutting (down) stroke. You have to be careful to apply the pressure straight down the blade or it will bend and/or the will wander.

Erbauer jigsaw blades are a bit rubbish. Buy Bosch (made by Scintilla in Sw itzerland) or if you can get them (usually in 50s) buy Scintilla.

Also I'd echo the comments about jigsaws working a lot better from £150+ Bosch barrel body or Makita. B+D were always a bit rough.

You want a mitre saw really. How much flooring are you doing, if its a bit a decent hand saw and a mitre block.

Is it those blades in particular? They're BRF, with the "R" meaning that they're reverse cutting (on the downstroke rather than the upstroke)

They're like that to reduce chipping on the top surface, mostly a problem with laminates. It also means that they're forever trying to push the saw upwards and jerking it against you - hard to control, and often giving a worse result overall.

Keep your body weight over the saw and hold the damned thing down.

Don't use reverse cut blade, if you can avoid them. I would very rarely use them on oak. Instead I might just knife mark the cut lines first, which is a better way to reduce splintering in oak. Also use a brand new and sharp blade, from a good maker.

To avoid snagging you need a jigsaw with a pendulum action where the blade moves backwards and forwards as well as up and down with every stroke.

To cut 18mm oak you probably need a jigsaw with a lot of torque which presumably doesn't simply equate to the nominal wattage of the motor. And is why you can pay from ?30 to ?280 for jigsaws with the same nominal wattage. And using the best blade for the job.

If you're only need to crosscut the flooring to length then you're probably better off buying a cheapo chop saw for around ?50 although check first that its a standard blade size and bore and you can buy replacement blades from the likes of Toolstation or Screwfix.

michael adams

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Poor form to reply to your own posts but a quick skim of reviews of cheapo chop saws, shows them to be crap unless the reviewers are particularly inept at changing blades etc. As, in addition to the saw, the cost covers the table, clamps etc. the saw clearly won't be up to much. Probably better to make a jig, one piece of ply and two pieces of softwood - one to run parallel to the edge of the flooring screwed on the underneath of the ply, and another at screwed at right angles on top, to run the saw against, and spend the ?50 on a slightly better quality circular saw.

michael adams

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I just used a Bosch cleancut blade - no issues on 3mm oak engineered flooring.

/For clean cuts with a jigsaw look for worktop blades. Those non-specific "hardwood" blades look rather vicious and cut on the down stroke. /q

Er... Worktop blades cut on the downstroke???

Jim K

Well spotted that man. B-)

In that case the poor cut is probably due to the saw bouncing on the work and possibly trying to cut the timber too fast.

My guess would be the TPI of the blade is too much. try blades with a bigger TPI.

Thanks for all the replies.

I've got about 5m length to cut down, including 2 door openings - it's the hall floor.

I've now managed the longer run with a (Aldi £15) circular saw. It's an absolute pig to use, and makes a right racket, hate the thing, but managed OK. That still leaves the cuts for round the doors, and I'll have a go with a combination of jig saw and a better Bosch blade, hand saw and fret saw.

I'd like a decent jig saw - I use it a fair bit. But £100+ - I think not.