Thread: Circular saw blades - Number of teeth??

According to Roger Cliffe, the advantage of plain steel blades over carbide-tipped is lower cutting resistance.

I surmise available motive power was a major factor in blade design of those old mills. Sharpenability in the field was probably very important also.

#2. I've seen the insert blades in a lucas or peterson mill at a field days a few years ago.
Performed quite well.

Originally Posted by gpigeon

Why is it that the old circular saw blades used in sawmills had many many teeth and today the mobile mills get away with only 5 or 6 teeth?

Another factor is more teeth in a plain steel blade means less load per tooth so they don't go blunt as quickly. A plain steel blade with only 5-6 teeth will go blunt VERY quickly.

fixed mill blades had a lot more teath as bob said co tehre are more teath cutting so it cuts quicker and stays sharp longer.

the reason for teh 5 teath on a lucas mill is if there was any more teath the power would not be sufficient.

most mills haqd there own sharpening and settign machines and teh blades could be used in the saw untill they became to small then they would eb put on the smaler saw. no need to pay anyone to retip or retention.

With saw benches the saw actually pulls the timber onto the bench thats why they have powered rollers, if lucas or similar mills had the teeth that a bench saw had the carriage would be pulled sideways on the horizontal cut & down on the vertical, for the portability, weight of the frames & rails the teeth number with the hook angle is a happy medium
A lot of high volume mills do use tungsten tips saws but they tend to back cut a fair bit so they are not common on breast benches
regards inter

the portable saw mills all use soldered on carbide tips ,that can be replaced in the field . the insert blades generally have a wider kerf -cuts more sawdust - cheers bob

Circle saws need about 2 or 3 hp per tooth.

So a big saw with 25 - 50 teeth needs 50-100 hp to drive it properly. No problem if you have a big diesel engine hooked up to it.

On a swingblade mill you have 12-24 hp, so 4 - 8 teeth is all you can drive properly. Each cutter is running at the same speed into the wood, and has the same hp per tooth. Your feed rate is slower as there are less cutters, but each tooth is taking out a similar sized bite as the larger mills with more power.

Ian