What saw blades do you use?

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:10:05 -0600, the infamous "Dr. Deb" scrawled the following:

Dina has a $5 HF 40T blade on her, and one of those is on my Ryobi portable TS. HF's $5 50T blade is on my Delta 10" CMS. My old 7-1/4" circular saw (Dad's aloonimum Craftsman) has a $2 HF 18T blade on it. I wore out the Piranha blade after 4 years and HF had a sale on. I spent 20 minutes filing the damned diamond arbor hole larger, so I won't be purchasing any more 7-1/4" HF blades, TYVM.

I may go with a Freud Diablo on the CMS next time.

If I were cutting more hardwoods, I'd put real blades on my saurs. I sometimes run old lumber through these saws, so cheap blades are cheap insurance for the stray nail or piece of embedded gravel I find.

-- Sex is Evil, Evil is Sin, Sin is Forgiven. Gee, ain't religion GREAT?

[dadiOH]

[Roy]

I'd disagree here for a couple reasons.

ATBR (or rip blade) gives a flat bottom kerf. I sometimes make candle lanterns, and prefer the flat bottom in the groove to hold the glass. Also makes a flatter bottom when nibbling out a tennon.

I don't own a MS, and have never used one, so cannot comment if the following applies to them or not.. Using a blade with negative hook in the RAS makes a huge difference in how aggressive the RAS is when cross cutting a board. In my younger days my first cut with a RAS scared the living shit out of me. I thought that sucker was going to eat my right arm before I could get it under control. I eventually got some training/advice, did a lot of reading and tried a negative hook blade. Made a huge difference in safety. In the last year I acquired a Forrest WW-I (driveby

- $60 new on closeout at The Cutting Edge) for the RAS and have never regretted it.

If you must use a strong hook angle blade on a RAS, I suggest you pull the blade all the way out, position the board against the fence, then push the blade into the board to make the cut. That forces the board and cutter head toward the fence, rather than letting the RAS monster loose to try to climb over the board and eat your right arm. BTDT, have the stained undies to prove it.

BTW, I use a Freud SD209 (??-too cool this morning to go look it up, but the cheap - $95ish - Freud dado set) for dados. I bought it used, and have had it about 4 years. Love it. Nice flat bottom groove. I liked it so much I bought one for my son last summer.

This has been a good thread so far.

Regards, Roy

[Larry Blanchard]

On any saw, a thin kerf blade will require less power for a same speed cut or, conversly, make the same cut faster with the same power. And, as I mentioned, they do save wood. Priced any ebony lately?

They have two drawbacks. In sustained use, they heat up faster than a thicker blade which increases the odds of warping. For most hobby woodworkers that's not a problem.

The second problem, at least in my mind, is that sometimes it's nice to have a consistent 1/8" kerf instead of something out to 3 decimal places. But unless you have almost zero runout you won't get that anyway, so it may be a moot point.

I've used thin kerf blades on a contractor saw for years. I had a rip, a crosscut, and a combination - all Freud. I finally got old and lazy and now I run the Fusion blade for everything. I've never owned a benchtop saw.

[Hoosierpopi]

[SteveBell]

Third problem: My contractor table saw has measurement guides on both sides of the blade. If I put use a thin-kerf blade, measurements will be off by about 1/32 inch--or not, depending on which side of the blade I put my fence.

[Larry Blanchard]

Agreed. But I use blade stiffeners on all my blades, so none of them match the measures. As long as I know the offset, it's no big deal.

[Puckdropper]

"SBH" wrote in news:1Bc%m.36$ [e-mail]:

Tablesaw: Combination blade (40T) (usually do rips, but often switch to cross cuts) RAS: Dado Stack or Cross cut Mitersaw: Cross cut (80T)

I'm using Irwin Marathon blades on my TS3660 and Kobalt CMS, and really need to pick up another cross cut blade for my TS.

Not interested in starting a new thread about this, but would a WWI or WWII blade make that much difference cutting pine (SPF actually) vs other blades?

Puckdropper