Thread: Teeth I payed for but never used

do some saws have more travel?

Hi Carl,

Originally Posted by weisyboy

do some saws have more travel?

I've absolutely no idea.


Best Wishes,
fEZ.

Can't you raise or lower the table to use teeth near the ends of the blade?

It is because the blades can be used to cut materials up to about one inch thick, and not only that, they can used manually in coping saw and jewellers type saws as well.

Let's face it, who among us would buy a blade with just one inch of teeth in it?

Hi pugwash,

Originally Posted by pugwash

Can't you raise or lower the table to use teeth near the ends of the blade?

My machine doesn't seem to have either options.
But instead of raising the table I could insert something more or less thick between my piece and the table. That would solve the raising problem. Still the lower third of the blade would remain unused.

Anybody has tried this before?

Hi Buzza,

Originally Posted by Buzza

It is because the blades can be used to cut materials up to about one inch thick, and not only that, they can used manually in coping saw and jewellers type saws as well.

Well that answers the question why there are teeth along the whole blade length. Quiet well actually.

The concern was about finding a way to use most of of them on an electric scroll saw.

Originally Posted by Buzza

Let's face it, who among us would buy a blade with just one inch of teeth in it?

I'll have to find something that works as raiser.



Best Wishes,
fEZ.

The teeth have to stop and start somewhere. Every make and modell of scroll saw is set up in a diferent way. The blade makers couldn't posobly make blades to suit all saws so all teeth could be used.

You might even consider that when using a hand saw the teeth at each end of the saw are not used.

By placing a false bottom on the table of the saw it is possible to raise the working height to use extra teeth and get more out of your blades. I used to do this with my last saw but with my new one I just havn't been bothered mainly because blades are so cheap.

Red Gum

Thanks Red Gum,
There's more than one good point in your answer.
Blades are cheap I couldn't agree more, but I still need them to be shipped out, all the way to where I am ...

Best Wishes,
fEZ.

I had the opportunity to try out Red Gum's table topper and it worked very well.
Only when you have thicker material it made it a bit awkward to thread the blade through the holes because there was less clearance.

I also found the extra teeth good when I break a blade... most of the time I can reinsert it , lower the top arm of the saw and scroll away. Funny thing is that a lot of the time the blade seems to last longer once I broke it! lol

Juvy

Originally Posted by keju

Only when you have thicker material it made it a bit awkward to thread the blade through the holes because there was less clearance.

Well, I don't suppose you really need an answer to WHY they go unused, but I have a way to get around to using more of the blade.

How about once a blade gets dull, we add a sheet of 3/4 ply wood over the top of our scrolling table. That way we will now be using a higher portion of the blade which untill now has gone unused. I suppose that we would need to make sure we still have enough clearance between the top of the saw arm that bobs up and down and our knuckles as we feed the stock around. If your hands ended up too high and that arm came down on top of them I bet it would hurt.

I suppose that metal fatigue that comes over time from using more of the blade might make it more prone to breakage too.

Think this one through before trying...

Then let me know how it works out.

Hi labolle,
I have been using an extra thickness of 3/4 plywood as you said.
I beleive that apart from piece thickness new limitation and clearance constraint, the new thing is that the closer to the arm the blade cuts, the less likely it is to accept torsion (when cutting along small radius curves).
That forces to using more power to turn the piece, which raises friction and ends up burning the wood. I suppose that a minimum of 5" blade length have its importance in contour turning.