Have you experienced burn on your wood, lots of chips out of it, or struggling hard to push through? Those are some of the situations caused by a dull blade.
The space needs a new blade for the table saw and I am wondering who would be interested in helping to buy a new one.
The blades can also be re-sharpened apparently, not sure if that would be a significant savings on a new one. Paging @Stevemopolis for expert know-how.
Edit: Also thanks Leo for noticing that and bringing up the issue/fundraising for a new blade.
Blades can be re-sharpened but I would send it to a professional service instead of doing it myself. However, like any other tools, re-sharpening means lost of material on the blade and sometimes change some of the angles on the teeth. It will be cheaper though.
Does anyone knows if the blade we are using now has been re-sharpened before?
Does anyone have done this service before and want to give us a feedback?
Saw blades can certainly be resharpened a few times and is quite a bit less expensive than a new blade if you’re using decent blades to begin with. I’ve been using Quality Saw & Knife to sharpen my tablesaw, jointer and planer blades for years and also purchase all of my bandsaw blades from them. They moved from Vancouver to PoCo a few years ago but offer free pickup and delivery in the Lower Mainland. Cost to sharpen a saw blade is dependent on the number of teeth on the blade.
Before having it sharpened, you may want to try giving it a good cleaning. A dirty blade will behave like a dull blade and often cleaning it will restore its cutting quality. Most blade cleaning products are highly corrosive and/or expensive and I don’t recommend them. I clean mine by soaking them in concentrated Simple Green for about 15 minutes and then lightly scrubbing the teeth with an old toothbrush. The built up pitch and crud usually just falls off after soaking. It’s also a great way to get a good, close look at each tooth to see if there are any cracked, chipped or missing carbide on the blade which is not all that uncommon.
If you decide to replace the blade, purchase good quality blades as they have a higher grade of carbide and larger carbide chips which means they can be sharpened more times and stay sharp longer making them more economical than cheap blades with their lower quality carbide and smaller teeth which can only be sharpened once or twice, if at all. I recommend Freud, CMT, Amana or Dimar blades.
This is not a bad blade but is really only meant for crosscutting. It is not at all suitable for ripping. If you want a single blade for both ripping and crosscutting then you want a Combination blade. I find that 'multipurpose" blades do not perform as well as combination blades.
While I do use a good quality combination blade on my own saw for general cutting, I have both rip and crosscut blades that I put on the saw if cut quality is important.
Here is an excellent chart summarizing all of the different types of tablesaw blades and the different tooth configurations.
This would also be a good choice. It’s a bit more expensive but probably a longer lasting blade. I honestly haven’t done the research to determine the difference between Freud’s Industrial blades versus their Diablo line.
Let’s get the Diablo Combination from HD, it’s thin kerf which is probably better. Can’t sharpen it as many times as the industrial but that doesn’t matter too much right now
Better is dependent on your criteria. If you have an underpowered or low-powered saw, like the Dewalt at VHS, then thin kerf is most definitely a better choice because it only has to remove 75% of the wood a full kerf saw does. The downside of thin kerf blades is that they are more prone to chatter and heat deformation which can affect the surface of your cuts. This has been a problem with thin kerf blades in the past. Having said that, new blade designs are considerably more stable and, if it’s a good quality blade, usually fine for most day to day general use.
If you have a decently powered saw then, IMO, a better choice would be a full kerf blade. The full kerf saw plate has more mass so is less prone to chatter and heat deformation than a thin kerf blade. I would still recommend a full kerf blade on any type of tablesaw for accurate, good quality joinery cuts.
Thin kerf blades are also less expensive because they use less steel and carbide to manufacture, so that is a big selling point for most people.