Stu's Shed

Intended purpose: ripping
Tooth count: 24
Price: $85
Source: Woodworking Warehouse

Tooth Grind: ATB (alternating top bevel)
Kerf: 3.2mm nominal, 3.11mm measured
Carbide thickness (measured front face to braze): 2.85mm
Carbide length: 11.1mm
Front face length: 7.5mm

Blade axial runout: 0.004″ (0.10mm)
Expansion slots: 4, flattened hook design
Anti-noise slots: none

Blade body thickness: 2.21mm

An initially wide expansion slot that culminates in a laser-cut line that hooks back towards the initial slot. A tiny crack arresting hole is at the end of the cut. The interesting aspect of this design is if for some reason the crack is not arrested, it will only grow back towards the cut.

General Description:

A very aggressive-looking blade, it has none of the now typical anti-kickback features you see on many ripping blades. It feels a heavy, chunky, agricultural sort of blade, with massive lumps of carbide on the teeth. However, looks are deceiving as when it was put through its paces, its performance was second to none, and even on cuts that it just should not have been able to achieve without significant damage to the material (such as melamine and crosscutting), it not only performed significantly above expectation, but even outperformed some of the blades that are dedicated to those roles.

In its forte, it was a pleasure to use – ripping hardwood and softwood like butter, and coped with unreasonably high feed rates without missing a beat. Large gullets, strong and sharp carbide tips and a strong blade body gave this blade a real edge (excuse the pun).

Blade bore detail

The body of the blade has an unusual feature of a recessed slot that runs around the blade about an inch in from the edge. The blade thickness is the same on both sides of the line, so I haven’t been able to ascertain its purpose or advantage.

The bore of the blade is flanked with two holes for certain commercial machines that engage into these holes to prevent blade slippage. Again, interestingly, there is a laser-cut slot between these small holes and the bore of the blade. The photo shown here includes a 30 to 16mm reducer.

The cuts:

Melamine (Particle Board Backing)

Top Edge

An immaculate top surface cut. There is little else to add – the top surface cut is perfect. Of course I could add that there is no way this met with my expectation of what this blade would do to melamine!

Bottom Edge

There is, as you can observe, a tiny amount of tearout from the bottom surface. Compare the size of the defects to the millimetre scale, and you can see that they are astoundingly tiny. I was honestly expecting to find the board ripped to shreds, not cleaved like it was almost cut with a dedicated melamine blade

KD Hardwood Rip

(Sawmarks severely sidelit and stained to reveal them)

This rip was an absolute breeze – the blade didn’t miss a beat even when it was significantly loaded up with a high feed rate through this reasonably dense material. The resulting cut surface is pretty smooth – sufficient for a glue-up, or finishing after receiving a quick sand (starting at around 320 grit) There are some blade marks apparent, but are not particularly deep. The photo above needed some pretty severe side lighting and staining to get the sawmarks to show up.

Where the blade really excelled during this cut was the feed rate – cutting like butter is bantered around quite a bit, and fits here as well.

Treated Pine Rip

Both the treated and untreated pine rips were simplicity. The finish isn’t as smooth as what can be achieved with a blade with a higher tooth count (such as a 60 or an 80), but the advantage is the overall ripping speed can be 3-5 times faster, without drastically reducing the quality.

Softwood (Pine) Rip

Hard to add much to this one – the finish is definitely glueable, and very little if any surface defects. There is a tiny amount of surface tearout.

KD Hardwood Crosscut

This cut is one of the ones that I didn’t think this blade would be able to achieve, especially given the quality of the resulting surface. There is no indication on the surface that the blade was not a dedicated crosscut blade.

Closeup of tearout on hardwood crosscut

Given the type of blade that did this, it is pretty minimal damage to the backedge fibres.

Treated Pine Crosscut

An average finish to the treated pine crosscut. A moderate degree of tearout is apparent in the softer portions of the timber. Chipout at the back edge is pretty minimal.

Softwood (Pine) Crosscut

A pretty reasonable attempt at crosscut, with mild tearout of the softer portions. Again chipout is minimal.