Hitting a screw with a mitre saw blade

[Sleepy]

Hi all. I was cutting some old wood on the mitre saw earlier (using the factory blade that comes with the Bosch GCM10SD) and hit a screw that had snapped off inside the wood (that's why I didn't notice it). There were a few sparks but nothing major and within a second or two I had raised the blade out of harms way. I have inspected the blade and it looks fine, but just wondered whether it's generally accepted that I can continue using that blade with no troubles, or whether that blade is now for the bin. I think the screw was a TurboGold, which are apparently made from carbon steel.

Thanks for any reassurance you can give!

 

[LancsRick]

If it looks fine it is fine.

Check each tooth for damage - even a couple of damaged teeth are fine so long as they're still planar to the blade.

 

[LancsRick]

P. S. If you're cutting suspect wood it's well worth having a blade designed to cope with metal/rough cutting.

 

[Sleepy]

Great, thanks for the reassurance. I'll double check each tooth when I go back to the workshop to make sure they're all ok.

I will definitely look into a rough cutting blade, thanks!

 

[PAC1]

Your lucky. I hit a nail with the rip saw. There was not a tooth left.

 

[dc_ni]

Try cutting a piece of wood with it to see if it:

(a). cuts
(b), leaves scorch marks,
(c), leaves scouring from a damaged tooth.

If it doesn't do (a) then its for the bin (or saw doctor), (b) or (c) you can keep it for rough cutting suspect wood in the future.
If none of the above then jobs a good un

Your lucky. I hit a nail with the rip saw. There was not a tooth left.

Recently at work they went through a few band saw blades on the big mill because of nails in the logs, one of the blades had to be cut up with a grinder so they could get it out of the saw (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

Edited because i'm an idiot Thanks Pete

 

[Racers]

So (A). cuts, its for the bin :shock: looks like I need to throw a lot of my blades away :wink:

I have had teeth replaced on saw blades its quite cheap, most saw doctors will do it.

Pete

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. I went through a four inch nail lengthways with a chainsaw, leaving a perfect half of the nail in one ring and the other being taken out with the cut without even blunting a tooth - but took the edge completely off an M42 bandsaw blade with a hit of a plasterboard screw. Plasterboard screws are probably the hardest of all other than Obos and tend to break right below the head so are easy to miss (as in not see, not work around ).

 

[skeetstar]

I've done it with my Makita, it didn't cause any problems, but I wouldn't recommend too many recurrences. Tungsten carbide teeth will be harder than steel anyway. A carpenter friend of mine swears by Bosch blades as being the most long lived and highest quality, so you'd be OK, I would have thought.

 

[Sleepy]

Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I double checked all the teeth today and they are all still there and look straight. And the blade still cuts. I think that it's louder now when cutting (although I might be imagining it) and feel like it might be struggling a bit more than before, so I wonder if it has been blunted slightly. I might get a new blade and keep this one for any suspect wood I cut in the future, just to put my mind at rest.

To change the topic very slightly, how important is having a negative rake on a SCMS? Lots of people recommend Diablo blades, but there isn't one in the size I need (254mm x 30mm arbor) with a negative rake so I was wondering if I could get away with not having it. There's an Axminster negative rake blade in that size, but it's over £70.

 

[Racers]

Negative rake pushes the workpiece down and positive rake pulls it up, so negative is used in chop saws.

Pete