Framing Saw Blades – A Show Down

Is a framing saw blade just a saw blade or are they are all the same?  Honestly I don’t know.  The manufacturers would like me to believe so and they would also like me to believe theirs is the best on the market.  I do know a blade is very important since that is what makes contact with the material I am cutting.  Well we decided to see if there was a difference.  Now we are just two guys in a shop.  We don’t have fancy equipment to pinpoint if they are identical or slightly different.  We will do our best to push the saw with the same amount of force for each blade, but it’s not a science.  However does it really matter if one blade cuts one one-hundredth of a second quicker.  I guess if your cutting a million board feet into 6″ pieces.  But we just want to know if there is a noticeable difference.  One thing to note is there is more to a blade then just these couple of cuts.  How does the blade hold up in the long run?  Does one stay sharper longer?  Does one truly help prevent kick backs more than another?  We understand all that is important.  We are just looking at a couple of factors

1. Speed of Cut
2. Easy of Cut
3. Product of final cut (We understand these are framing blades)

For this we are using three different blades that all have 24 teeth and have the same options such as body and expansion slots.  Here are the three blades

• Dewalt
• Diablo
• Irwin

For the comparison we will attach the blades to a Dewalt DW368 which is an in-line saw.  I had Dan cut through some 3/4″ plywood.  I tried to set it up where Dan didn’t know what blade he was using, just like the Coke vs. Pepsi taste test.  I don’t think he cheated, but you never know with Dan.  When Dan was done I did some cutting also with the blades and for the most part came to the same conclusion Dan did.  We did a lot more cutting then the video shows, but we edited a lot as we were pretty sure you didn’t want to see us cutting wood for two hours. So lets take a look.

Irwin Framing Saw Blade

Dan and myself both agree, while it is a nice blade and will get the job done, it did take a little more effort with this blade than the other two blades.

Diablo Framing Saw Blade

This ran a lot smoother through the wood than the Irwin.  Again not a huge difference, but you could feel the Diablo was smoother.

Dewalt Framing Saw Blade

The Dewalt performed much like the Diablo, but the Dewalt has a little smoother starting cut.  Both the Diablo and the Dewalt ran through the wood very nicely.

Conclusion

While a long term test will tell us much more (which we are doing and will report back), over the short term there is not a huge difference.  The blades run from $10-$13 in the market place.  We did notice the Diablo and the Dewalt were more smooth.  But again if your using them by themselves, anyone of these blades will do the trick.  It is kinda of like buying an LCD TV.  When they are next to each other, you can maybe see the small differences, but when you get it home and its by itself, it works and does what it is suppose to.

 [pptgtool]OFMzLKiHTBI[/pptgtool]