Stu's Shed

Intended purpose: Rip
Tooth count: 24
Price: $69
Source: Woodworking Warehouse

Tooth Grind: ATB (alternating top bevel)
Kerf: 2.86mm
Carbide thickness (measured front face to braze): 2.17mm
Carbide length: 6.48mm
Front face length: 6.48mm

(Note the very unusual cuts behind the tooth of the blade. I don’t think that is a good sign.)

Blade axial runout: 0.005″ (0.13mm)

Expansion slots: 4, hook design with mini crack limiter

Anti-vibration slots: non

Blade body thickness: 1.94mm

General Description:

This is an interesting blade, with an aggressive tooth, and significant anti-kickback hook.

Its distinctive colour is due to the Perma-Shield coating. To quote from their site:

“Perma-SHIELD™ permanent coating is a superior aluminum alloy coating that helps reduce friction, heat build-up, gumming, and is resistant to rust, which add up to longer blade life.“

I am a bit concerned about the apparent cracks that are visible behind the tooth. Actually, they bother me a lot. The Perma-Shield penetrates into the cracks, so they were obviously formed during some stage of the manufacturing process, but I see nothing good coming of them. A crack like that, without any sort of propagation retardation has a possibility of growing and could result in a failure of the tooth, or of the blade if not detected. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but is not something I like seeing in a blade that spins at such a speed, and incurs the sort of fatigue loading common to saw blades. (Fatigue being a very common element of tip failure).

The cuts:

Melamine (Particle Board Backing)

Top Edge

A pretty impressive top surface, given that this is a 24 tooth ripping blade!

Bottom Edge

The bottom edge is less so, but again, not surprising given what this blade is meant to be for. The defects are pretty small even so.

KD Hardwood Rip

Despite this blade being a dedicated rip blade, I found ripping hardwood harder going than I would have expected, in spite of the Perma-Shield coating. The finish is not too shabby for a rip blade though! Not sure what a glue-line would do in comparison, but this is pretty clean.

Treated Pine Rip

This is again a pretty clean cut for a ripping blade. Overall this was easier going than the other rip cuts as well.

Softwood (Pine) Rip

A notably smooth finish in softwood. The cut was notably more difficult than what I would expect for a rip blade, especially in pine. The resulting finish tempers that however, but if the blade is as hard to feed in rip as a crosscut blade, and gets the same result – why would you be encouraged to change blades from the fitted crosscut?

KD Hardwood Crosscut

Closeup of tearout on hardwood crosscut

Another weird result. A rip blade that outperforms some crosscut blades in crosscut, and in turn is out performed in ripping by some crosscut blades! This is a pretty tidy crosscut, and no fibre tearout at all at the end of the cut.

Treated Pine Crosscut

This is more like it – some tearout, but not overly so, some breakout, but again not too bad. An example of a good rip blade managing a crosscut in a reasonable fashion, without outdoing dedicated crosscut blades!

Softwood (Pine) Crosscut

As with the treated pine, not too bad.  Interestingly, the tooth marks showed up more in this cut.  As far as breakout is concerned, all I can add to the image is “CHOMP”

Overall, this blade was average for a higher cost rip blade.  I was disappointed in the difficulty of the rips, although the finish was very good.