Clean cut?!

[woodpig]

I bought one of these some time back to cut some solid alloy bar.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/erbauer-multi ... 55mm/91585

I've only cut a couple of bits of alloy but it worked very well. I used the same blade the other day to cut some 1/2" thick softwood and was surprised to see that it left a cleaner cut than either of the two wood cutting blades I have! Is this normal?! :lol:

 

[Eric The Viking]

Seems to be.

I've got what I think is a plastics (or alloy) blade in my mitre saw.It's Freud, with quite a wide kerf, but the rest of the info has worn off. The saw is very secondhand and the blade was in it when I got it. It's 60- or 80-tooth in a 250mm blade (can't check right now).

It has a fairly shallow, but not negative rake, so I have to be moderately careful (no issues so far), but, once professionally sharpened, it cuts really well. I have used it for aluminium extrusions a couple of times, and the result is very clean. Even in softwood there's hardly any tearout on one side, but I suspect at some time someone set the saw to be slightly skew to the arm, as one side of the cut is always better than the other. I'm very nervous of fiddling with this because of the risk of messing it up entirely. It must be a tiny amount, as I can't measure it, and I don't think it's play in the shafts or anything similar.

The only issues I have are the crud build-up on the teeth and occasional burning (I think these are related), but I do cut a lot of softwood with it so that's probably to be expected. I used it on purpleheart a while back (very smelly, gooey resin), and smoke came off. The wood surface was very smooth, but almost black, and I had to clean the blade thoroughly between cuts. That stuff is vile to work with though.

E.

 

[woodpig]

Yes I think build up may perhaps be a problem with hardwoods. I noticed there was a small piece of aluminium almost welded to one of the teeth before I used the blade the other day. Luckily I managed to get it out without damage to the tooth.