Table Saw Blade Recommendations

[ChuckM]

Are you too lazy to spend one minute or less changing a blade?

Unless someone is talking about production cuts or constantly working between different types of materials (ply vs. hardwood, vs laminate etc.), I agree we don't need too many rip/cross cut blades.

However, the reluctance to keep changing blades is not always a matter of laziness for some woodworkers. For instance, I constantly switch between rip cuts and cross cuts (using a cross-cut sled), and the combo option is the best, practical and the least inefficient approach. It is not just about the time spent on changing the blades, checking the clearance (for a SawStop), reinstalling the dust collection/riving knife, etc., but also about the interruption of the flow of work, which can be important for some of us.

Ideally, we could sort all the rips and cross-cuts, and use the best blade or tool (say, a Kapex for cross-cuts) for the job, but many of us amateurs don't work with an ideal shop set-up.

 

[Bob D.]

What does your one blade shop do when you send it out for sharpening?
What do you do when that one blade gets damaged ?

Hang out the "Gone Fishing" sign?

Or use the rip blade for crosscuts or the crosscut blade for rips.

What happens when you want to cut some cr[member=58670]P[/member] plywood or rough lumber,
do you bring out your one perfect blade and screw it up on garbage cuts?

 

[Michael Kellough]

Do you know someone who has only one blade?  [blink]

 

[Jesse Cloud]

On the Forrest for Sawstop issue, I don't know if this is still relevant, but many years ago, soon after SS first came out our school switched over and the SS balked at some of the Forrest blades, wouldn't start up.  A little research showed that the Forrest blades were ever so slightly smaller than 10 inches and this caused SS's default settings to complain.

The SS manual shows how to adjust for this, but the school didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) swap out all its blade inventory for Forrest, nor was it practical to readjust the SS every time we changed blades.  So we stopped using the Forrest blades.

Like I say, this was a long time ago and SS and/or Forrest may have changed their specs since then...

 

[Bob D.]

Do you know someone who has only one blade?  [blink]

No, an earlier post remarked that all you need is two blades, one for ripping and one for crosscuts, plus a dado set.
That, to me, is essentially one blade. One blade for each type of cut. And yes you can crosscut with a rip but the post was all about having one perfect blade for making perfect cuts of each type.

 

[RKA]

Thanks [member=457]Jesse Cloud[/member] , that is reassuring (well, for those of us that can afford the time to adjust the spacing without fear of being sued).  It sounds like the new model blade was intended to offer a plug and play solution for industrial and school environments.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Do you know someone who has only one blade?  [blink]

No, an earlier post remarked that all you need is two blades, one for ripping and one for crosscuts, plus a dado set.
That, to me, is essentially one blade. One blade for each type of cut. And yes you can crosscut with a rip but the post was all about having one perfect blade for making perfect cuts of each type.

I posted a comment similar to that.

Maybe you use the tablesaw a lot more than me. I might only need to make only one cut in a day. For example, rip a 2x4 down to 2-7/8” then square both ends. With a good combination blade the operation takes les than a minute. Changing the blade once at least doubles that time and and is conceptually disruptive.

 

[Alanbach]

I think it just depends what you do and your acceptable tolerances for each project.

I build end grain cutting boards as gifts most years. When I do, I buy 50-100 board feet of maple, cherry and walnut and build a bunch at a time. When I am ready to cut the strips that I use for my initial glue ups I change out my combination blade and install a high quality rip blade. By doing so I am able to cut glue joint ready strips and avoid having to run each strip over the jointer. Then after my blanks are glued up I then cut strips that will be glued into the final product. Those are cross cuts and because of the multi wood glue up the cuts are prone to chipping. So I change that blade again to a pretty specialized laminate blade with a boat load of teeth. It creates beautiful chip free cuts and helps me eliminate a step that would result in a thinner finished cutting board. So for me the minute or two involved in a blade change is well worth it. Having said that there are plenty of times that I don’t need that level of perfection and when that’s the case I don’t change that 40 tooth combo blade either.