Well, if there's a score mark, _something_ is wrong and that shouldn't be particularly difficult to find out what.
If I had just spent _big_bucks_ (tm) on a blade and it didn't perform, I'd also surely like to know why.
And certainly if it's for the purpose of a comparison and I'm going to claim something of one over the other they each deserve a fair shake. If the Forrest was, in fact, somehow damaged in shipment or somesuch it pretty much invalidates the whole object and result doesn't it?
Actually I have seen tooth marks from my Forrest, that all started after tilting the blade and forgetting to remove the zero clearance insert. ;~) Forrest fixed it for a very reasonable cost.
If one blade cut better than the other alignment is not the reason the Forrest performed worse.
Still using the yet to be sharpened Forrest that we used on the never ending kitchen job last year, the Murphy bed and tower cabinets, cutting table for Kim, Bryan's bed, Kitchen drawers for our house and the neighbors house, our new pantry, a corner dining room cabinet, 3 sets of book cases, and the wall of book cases you helped me deliver a couple of weeks ago.... did I leave anything out? :~)
Well that all makes sense and is a reasonable reason to buy American..... but if the Forrest blade was damaged during shipping, and that is quite likely if the op thought the Forrest performed worse, I would be just as afraid to use the Forrest as the "brand x" blade.
Could it be that the Forrest blade was faulty? That is certainly possible.
That'd be my guess. I'd be inclined to send it back for a replacement and re-run your test with a replacement blade. Forrest Woodworkers usually give a superb cut.
What are you doing buying the expensive HF blades? The 00529s last years on my old saur. She's a low-mileage model, though. They're an extremely good value at $5 a pop.
Buy 'em on sale, usually half price. I wonder how much Forrest would charge to retip one with their carbide... Just kidding. (sorta)
Fascinating, Deb. Thanks for the test and report. I've had very good luck with both sizes of HF blades, 7-1/4 and 10". The 12-incher on my miter saw is working fine, too, but I have a Freud Diablo to replace it when its day comes. The $10 thin-kerf Freud on my skilsaw has been a real nice blade, too, replacing the $1.99 HF jobs.
-- It takes as much energy to wish as to plan. --Eleanor Roosevelt
If I was returning the blade, I'd explain why I was doing so to Forrest. And, I'd ask them to examine it for any flaws as well and let me know if they found any.
I noticed that the blade was bought from Amazon. Who knows the path it took before it got to the buyer. It's much easier that you'd think to warp a saw blade. They are also very easy to straighten out, but you really have to know what you're doing to keep from making it worse.
And, it might not have been a warped blade at all. IIRC, there was a comment about tooth makes. That might imply a bent, slightly chipped or misaligned tooth.
I think I'd want to get in touch with Forrest about this, before I returned it to Amazon ~ if only for future reference. I've never owned a Forrest blade, but their reputation hinges on the quality of their products. I have no doubt they'd be all over this in a flash.
IMO, pretty much any new blade, no matter what brand, should be sharp enoug= h, properly flat and otherwise aligned to make perfectly clean cuts for, at= least, some reasonable time period. Beyond that, how its sharpness and al= ignment (flatness or teeth) holds up, for continued perfect cuts, is anothe= r matter.
Given the info, I would suspect the Forrest blade was likely defected, in s= ome way.
Not sure what you're saying. I'd guess that Forrest would want to know what was wrong with a disappointing blade. After all, it reflects directly on them whether or not it was a shipping/handling damage problem.
Well, then, I certainly have no idea what specifically it was that you _were_ trying to say...
You never proposed that something could have been suspect in the comparison--either the blade, the saw, a combination to explain the grossly unexpected results; only afaict a willingness to blindly accept that a very inexpensive run-of-the-mill blade would outperform an obviously flawed cut made w/ a blade from a recognized premium industry leader...
I'll throw out one more war story as a _possible_ albeit unlikely culprit -- many years ago I bought a matched pair of blades (not Forrest but another of similar reputation and price point) specifically to cut a bunch of tenons for a large project. The first trial w/ them went very badly indeed and left a mark much like that OP described on one side in particular.
Investigation (and not a terribly intense one :) ) uncovered the fact that one of the two center holes was just a wee fraction small and would (and did) not fit over the unthreaded portion of the arbor shaft on the PM66 and so was cockeyed rather than resting flush against the arbor mandrel face.
Whatever it was that happened in OP's case, _something_ caused that blade to score agreed, but to draw a general conclusion from that one cut is just not supported w/o additional data and followup.
For example OP didn't report what he learned from Forrest when he contacted them to get their input before deciding to return it. It sounds like he was simply relieved he could justify getting the money back that he really didn't want to spend to begin with...
OK, but I surely didn't get the first thought--maybe I didn't read carefully enough, I don't know...
If the other blade isn't true it could smear out the single clean score mark the other (true) blade left. If OP is only used to an out-of-tune saw it's quite possible never has recognized a truly in-tune cut to clearly judge just what might have gone wrong. Certainly he saw a problem but immediately assigned blame to the blade instead of digging in was/is my biggest problem in the reported conclusion.
I wasn't/am not familiar w/ the particular saw so I did a search--John White of the FWW shop did do a introductory evaluation of it and reports it is a pretty nice machine overall. The test machine as received he noted was pretty accurate other than the fence was somewhat out of line and noted it was a real booger/time-consumer to align properly.
Lew, I was not trying to save money, I was more than willing to plonk down the cash for the Forrest - I just wanted it to work at least as well as the HF blade - thinking the C4 would make it last a long time with the way I use my TS.
BTW -- I recut the side of the red oak that I had used to test the Forrest with the HF blade - baby butt smooth. So, all of you who were saying the blade had to be defective, were probably right.
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