There are many things to consider when choosing a woodworking 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 want to make. Performance varies from blade to blade, so choose wisely.

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

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

Number of Teeth

Saw blades with fewer teeth move the wood faster. Furthermore, blades with more teeth offer a smoother cut. For example, a 10 foot blade used for ripping wood usually has fewer than 25 teeth and is intended to move the material quickly through the machine along the extent of the grain. With the least amount of effort and leaving a fresh cut and the least amount of scoring, the higher quality rip blade will outperform 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 an 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 shape 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.