Why choose a Carbide tipped saw blade?

It is never wrong to use a Carbide Tipped saw blade for cutting wood. Carbide tipped saw blades cut almost everything from asbestos to Zirconium, including paper, plastics, rubber, steel, insulation, aluminum, and even food, as well as every kind of wood in the world and all the wood composites. Sure, almost any of the dozens of blade styles will actually cut all of these materials, but when you consider accuracy, finish, tool life and safety, there is no blade that will do everything.

It’s not a wonder why woodworking tradesmen and hobbyists alike are often confused. “Which blade should I use for what job? How do I make the right choice?” If you are into cutting tough or abrasive materials, or if high surface finish quality is critical then a Carbide Tipped saw blade will do the job. By understanding what factors determine how a saw blade work, you can pick out a blade that serves your purpose.

There are two primary factors to consider when deciding whether to purchase carbide-tipped blades. Those two factors are cost and durability. The durability of a carbide-tipped blade comes from tungsten carbide, a powder, electronically derived from steel that’s mixed with a binder material and fused under intense pressure at an extremely high temperature. The resultant incredibly hard material – Cemented Carbide – is then brazed to the steel blade.

Features

Carbide Blade Teeth are wider than the body of the blade and typically have no set. Where the teeth on steel blades are ground on the front, carbide teeth are ground on their tops as well as their fronts and sides. The basic rule is the more teeth the finer the cut, but you also have to consider the thickness of the cut and the cutting feed rate. The fine tooth sawblades do tend to leave a smoother finish, because each tooth takes a smaller bite. However, if the material is too thick (remember, it’s the overall thickness when it’s stacked that’s important), or if it is being fed at a high rate, the gullet capacity of a fine-toothed blade is too small.

Durability

Although carbide-tipped blades last up to 10 times longer before re-sharpening is necessary, you will typically pay two to three times as much for them as for their steel counterparts. If you’re cutting tough hardwoods or man-made materials such as particleboard, melamine, MDF (medium density fiberboard) or laminates then you’ll be better off in the long run with carbide-tipped blades.

Safety is important as smooth and successful output to remember before operating a chop or band saw machine to avoid shop accidents. Like any other power tool, accidents are preventable by simply using common sense by avoiding the use of hazardous techniques.

Get your Carbide-tipped saw blades from Sawblade.com. For fast delivery, high quality circular, recip or band saw blades. Sawblade.com, the leading online distributor of all your sawing needs. Call us now at (800) 754-6920.

Contributed by:

Christopher Acla
(Sawblade.com Inside Sales)