What you should know to select the best 10 inch miter saw blades for crown molding

Rare thinking woodworkers such as you want to know all the time tested tips & tricks to insure making smooth high quality cuts. Knowing just how easy it is to select the best saw blades for all your cutting tasks and get the highest quality cuts possible is high on your list of need to know information. As you continue reading this article, I believe you will begin to see, understanding the terms used to describe the different features of a saw blade will help you to select the best blade for all your woodworking projects.

Miter Saws; sliding miter, compound miter and power miter saws are all crosscut saws. Equipped with the proper blade design for the task, homeowners, handyman and professional craftsman alike find these tools indispensible when making compound angled cuts on crown moldings, chair rails, door casings, and wood framing materials easily and accurately.

Sliding Compound Miter Saws; are the perfect combination of design and function. Designed with the widest range of flexibility of any miter saws, they are perfectly suited for making compound miter cuts on quarter round and baseboard projects, or the largest structural framing cutting tasks, such as roof trusses and floor joists. When equipped with the proper blade design a compound miter saw will make cuts on wood, plastic and vinyl building materials. For the serious minded woodworker and handyman alike, the quality of cut is a crucial part of any project, and having the right tool for the job is paramount. Subsequently any reason to add a new bright and shiny woodworking tool to the collection is right up our alley. Acquiring all the different blade configurations that maximizes the miter saw’s flexibility after all, is our goal.

Crosscut Blades; are used on miter saws designed, to make smooth, chip and splinter free cuts without burning the material. Across the grain of hard and soft wood moldings, and other polymer building materials such as vinyl and composites. However not all cross cut saw, blades will cut the same. To understand the differences, first we need to familiarize ourselves with the parts of a saw blade, and their function.

Teeth, for a blade to cut efficiently it must have a set of cutting surfaces designed to cut the particular material that you want to cut. These surfaces are the blade’s teeth. Smaller teeth allow more teeth to be set around the circumference of a blade. Leaving a smoother finished cut, because of the teeth taking smaller bites out of the material at a time, producing less chipping and splintering of the material. In addition, when less material is being removed by each tooth, the time it takes to make a cut through a piece of material takes more time, making the blade with smaller teeth cut slower.

Gullet is the space cut out of the blade plate in front of the teeth. This space in front of the teeth allows the waste material (sawdust) to get out of the way of the next cutting tooth. Consequently the more teeth a blade has, less space is available for larger gullets. Which does make a smoother cut on your molding and trim pieces with less splintering and chipping, however smaller teeth with smaller gullets removes less material and takes longer to cut through a floor joist, wall stud or roof truss.

Tooth Configuration, for a crosscut saw the best cutting blade is the alternate Top Bevel (ATB) blade. This means in simple terms, instead of being flat across the top of the cutting edge of the teeth, they are alternating between the right and left hand bevel. The alternating beveled teeth form a knife-like edge on both the right and left sides of the blade to make a smoother clean cut when cutting across the grain.

Hook Angle is simply, the angle of the cutting edge of a tooth. A positive hook angle is like the point of a fishhook; with the tooth angled in the same direction the blade rotates this configuration cuts aggressively, while a negative hook angle is just the opposite with the tooth cutting edge behind the centerline of the blade. For a miter saw, the negative hook angle blade is what you want. The negative hook angle is less aggressive, and is less likely to tear and cause splintering of your expensive hardwood moldings and window casings.

Kerf, the Kerf is how much material a blade removes when making a cut. A standard Kerf for a miter saw blade is one eighth of an inch, however there are thin Kerf blades available. Specifically designed for use with portable miter saws, underpowered saws, and especially when an extension cord is used.

Now that you have, a better understanding of the parts of a miter saw blade and how they actually work. Impress all your friends and relatives the next time the conversation of what the best saw blades for any given woodworking project is. Have fun with the information, be safe when using any power tools, and go and build that woodworking project you have planned.

The Trim Blade used by the professionals, when cutting chair rails, crown molding, baseboards and hardwood moldings an 80-toothed (ATB) negative pitch angled C3 or C4 carbide blade makes smooth high-quality cuts and can be resharpened several times.

The Framing Blade, used by the professionals to quickly make cuts to, wall studs, headers, floor joists and rafters leaving a good quality cut is a 60-toothed (ATB) negative pitch C3 or C4 carbide blade.

Be safe, use the proper saw blade and enjoy your woodworking projects. Mike

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