What blade TS55 for job

adkinsb48

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Sep 17, 2016
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I am building a hollow mantle from 7/8 maple. 10”x8”x72”.  The mantle will slide onto a skeleton attached to the studs.  In cutting the 45 degrees on the maple what blade would you use.  The milled pieces will be connected with domino’s and glue.  Any ideas would be appreciated.
 
What I get from your description is that you are planning to miter-fold the pieces around a central core/support.
In this case, best practice is to use an actual ripping blade for the cuts with the grain and a higher tooth count cross-cut blade for the ends. In reality, most folks are not going to do that, thus the general purpose blade that comes with the saw in the first place.
 
Thank you.  This may be a weird approach but when using ripping blade the glue line was not really smooth.  I was considering using ripping blade as you suggest for long grain but cutting it long by 1/8 inch and then cutting with fine tooth the last 1/8 to provide smooth accurate glue line? What do you think.
 
A ripping blade (especially a 12-tooth Panther) won’t give you a cut anywhere near flat and smooth enough to create a tight glue joint in a million years. Best approach is via the standard 48-tooth, doing the rip cuts in 2 or 3 passes. Take care to ensure that the rail stays exactly still - clamp it tight. I do this quite regularly to create drop mitres on 50mm hardwood countertops. It works beautifully.
 
Crazyraceguy said:
thus the general purpose blade that comes with the saw in the first place.

And what blade would that be? Different versions of the same Festool saw are (or at least used to be) sold with different blades. For example; The bare ones without electronics with the 28T and the "EBQ" version with 48T
 
Yeah, I think mine came with a 48atb.

I used the rip blade a few months ago to do the miter-fold corner caps on the barnwood bar project. The cut was clean enough to use it straight from the saw.
I have quite a few different blades for mine, since I just never know what might be coming along.
Triple chip for solid surface and 3from acrylic sheets a true ripping blade and a couple of back ups for the general purpose.
 
As far as I know, in NA, the TS55 ( in all variants) has always come with the 48 tooth blade which is for sheet goods and cross cuts.

Seth
 
Strange. Even the new TS 55 FQ is sold here with a 28 tooth blade and the TS 55 FEQ with a 42 tooth blade.
 
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