Various Styles of Saws

There are many things to consider when choosing a saw blade – making safe, smooth cuts with your radial arm saw, table saw; compound slider miter saw or chop saw depends on having the correct blade for the tool and, for the kind of cut you would like to make. Performance varies from blade to blade and presently, not a lack of them in the stores today, so choose wisely.

Choosing the correct saw blade –

It’s not all that complicated, really. In order to put together a top rate saw blade assortment of your own, you required to identify a small amount about what diverse blades do and what distinguishes the top-quality from the cheaper ones. Once you figure this out, you’ll be able to decide the blade that is best for the type of woodworking you will be doing and you budget can afford.

There are blades that are intended to do a number of things. Some blades are for crosscutting wood, ripping wood, cutting veneered panels and plywood, cutting melamine, cutting non-ferries metals and cutting plastics and laminates. Combination blades and general purpose, these blades are for using two or additional kinds of cuts. The amount of teeth, the gullet, the hook angles (the tooth angle) and the tooth configuration all determines how good the saw blade is.

Amount of teeth –

Saw blades with less teeth move the wood faster furthermore blades with more teeth offer a smoother cut. For example, a 10’ blade considered for ripping wood usually has fewer than 25 teeth plus are intended to move the material quickly through the machine along the extent of the grain. With the least little bit of effort and leaving a fresh cut and a least amount of scoring, the higher quality rip blade will out perform a lower quality rip blade which is not designed to make mirror-like smooth cuts. (mirror meaning both edges are the same).

Alternatively, a crosscut blade is well thought-out to give you a even cut crossways against the grain of the wood without any tearing or splintering. Between 60 and 80 teeth are found on the crosscut blade. Remember, moving less material, each tooth comes in contact with the wood less and this means a crosscut sharp edge makes numerous additional single and smoother cuts than the ripping blades. A polished finish will appear on the wood if using a good quality crosscut cutting edge.

Gullet –

The space missing from the blade plate in front of each tooth, which allows for chip removal, is called the gullet. In the crosscutting blade, the chips are fewer and smaller per tooth so the gullet is much smaller. In the ripping blades the rate is much faster than the crosscutting action and the chips are bigger so therefore the gullet needs to be bigger to accommodate the larger amount of material coming through it.

The hook angle –

Rather than be perfectly in line with the blade, the teeth are tipped either inward or outward, depending on the configuration of the blade. Hook angle is the slant shaped connecting a tooth face and a line drawn down the middle of the blade across the tip of the tooth. A downbeat hook angle signifies the teeth tip away from the path of rotary motion and the reverse is said for the positive hook angle. A zero hook slant demonstrates the teeth are in line with the midpoint of the blade.

A very aggressive hook angle (degrees of 20 or more) will also have a very fast cutting rate. A negative or low hook position will have a slower supply rate and will stop the blade from ‘climbing’ the material as often happens.

Tooth configurations –

The way the blade cuts is often affected by the way the tooth is shaped and the way they are grouped together. The configuration has to do with the way a blade will cut, if it’s a crosscutting, ripper or laminates cutter.

Hand saws –

No one can deny the aggressive speed of a table saw or a sliding chopsaw, however, for joinery; it’s hard to beat the backsaw’s precision for slicing just what you need. Hand saws are much cheaper and easier to control than machine saws. The backsaw can hold the sharpest, thinnest of blades and they can slice wood with minimum waste and maximum control.