Welcome to General Purpose Saw Blades, a site dedicated to helping you make a wise decision when you’re shopping for a general purpose blade for your table saw.
If you’re a woodworker with a table saw, you’re undoubtedly familiar with general purpose blades (or all-purpose or combination, whichever name you prefer). These are the blades you can use 90% of the time, whether you’re cutting plywood, chip board, or cross cutting or ripping solid wood products. Who wants to be changing blades all the time?
That being said, there are a lot of all-purpose blades out there on the market that simply won’t do ANY job all that well, they just do an okay job on all types of cuts. Only the cream of the crop will give you excellent results on all the jobs described above. Only the best blades will get you through a whole project without compromising cut quality somewhere along the line. And only the best will hold up and stay sharp project after project.
Wood Magazine’s Comparison Test
In May 2008, Wood Magazine did an extensive comparison test of 28 10″ 40 tooth general purpose blades. Well, actually, it was a re-test after they discovered some flaws in their testing process they used for the same comparisons in December 2007. Kudos to Wood Magazine for not only admitting they made some mistakes, but for re-doing the test.
(If you’d like to see the published article/test results, go to Wood Magazine online.)
Anyway, in their May testing Wood separated the blades into categories for full kerf (.125″ or thicker) and thin kerf (.118″ or thinner) and in price ranges – as we all know, you usually get what you pay for. And they awarded Top Tool honors in both full and thin kerf, along with Top Value honors in each. By contrast, in the earlier comparison they only used price ranges: $90 or more and $65 or less. And didn’t break them down or give awards based on kerf.
The testing and rating by Wood Magazine was so exhaustive and detailed, we see no reason not to go by what they found. Besides, other comparisons have been done and – no surprise – the results were about the same.
So, believing that buying the best tool – especially in a general purpose saw blade that does the work of two or more specialty blades – brings the best return on your investment, we’re going to concentrate our articles on the Wood Magazine Top Tool award winners. And we’re going to give you links to some good sources to buy them, where you not only get a good price, but good service.
And The Winner Is?
Now, as you can probably imagine, once you get into an exclusive class and price range of saw blades like these, you’re not going to find much difference in overall performance. Wood Magazine agrees with that and handed out Top Tool honors to three blades in the full-kerf class. The only differences they found were where one blade does one thing exceptionally well, another does something else better. Because to gain performance in one task, naturally a blade is going to give up something in another.
On the right side of this page you’ll find links to the articles/reviews of the best of the best in general purpose table saw blades. Hope you enjoy picking your blade! And using it. Keep it sharp!
