25 - Special Table Saw Issue, страница 24
SELECTING TOOLS Combination Blades • GULLET It's a "jack of all blades" But which combination blade is the best? We have several specialty blades for the table saw in our shop. But the one that gets used day in and day out isn't a specialty blade at all — it's a combination saw blade. Basically, it's designed to make a number of different types of cuts without changing blades. So you can rip a board one minute, crosscut (or miter) it the next, and still get good results. teeth. What makes this work is the design of the teeth. Not so much how they're arranged (in groups of five), but the shape of the teeth in each group. For ripping, each group has one flat-topped tooth (raker) with a deep gullet in front for removing chips quickly, see drawing above. And to make smooth crosscuts, four teeth are angled across the top in alternating directions. Okay, so it does a good job of CMT 110-500 (&00-531-5559) $62.90 ripping and crosscutting. But which combination blade does the best job of both? test. To find out, we tested six 10" industrial quality blades, see photos below. When selecting blades to test, we also noticed several "general purpose" blades. So we decided to test two of them as well, see box on next page. Delta 35-617 (300-223-7278) $49.95 team. As with our other tool reviews, we rounded up our team of three woodworkers to test the blades. Once again, to provide a wide range of viewpoints, each person has a different level of woodworking experience. So the "best" blade for a professional cabinetmaker like Ken may not be the one that Gary (a beginning woodworker) chooses. And an advanced woodworker like Steve may pick a different blade altogether. procedures. While the final selections may vary, the test procedures were identical. The same contractor-style table saw was used throughout the test. (Using a dial gauge, we measured the runout of the saw at .0005".) And the same type and number of cuts Freud LU 34-10 (&00-334-4107) $49.95 Oldham C3470 (300-&23-9000) $44.95 Master • Combination an CRRFT5M8N Q ® Sears 932035 (300-290-1245) $69.99 SystiMatic (300-426-0000) $59.95 24 ShopNotes No. 25 |
