I feel the need to know about feed speed

I've got a triton setup and went to Bunnies and bought a special 18 or 20 tooth blade for a big ripping job I have (lots of long lenghts of aussie hardwood). When I'm ripping, I really had to force the wood through and it was a real pain (not to mention effort). Once I had finished, I roughtly knocked it all to length (ie crosscut) with my little Makita CS and it went through the wood like butter.

Why is this? Is it because the blade on the makita is for ripping and the blade on my triton is for cross-cutting? The Mak has the standard blade that came with the saw, so I am not sure if it has the TCT teeth on it. I bought the 20 tooth for the triton specifically because I thought it would be better for ripping - now I am not so sure.

Your guidance would be appreciated

Trav

PS glad I bought the triton dust bucket. After blowing up my first one aboput 10 mins after getting home, the piece of ***** keeps clogging. I can feel a sturdy-mod coming on...

Trav,

This may or may not be related, however when I had my Triton/Dewalt setup I made the mistake of fitting a thin kerf blade to the Dewalt. The result was that there wasn't enough room for the blade to carry away the waste resulting in really heavy going when ripping, no probs cross cutting.


Himzo.

Hi Trav, a couple of points here in that with "ripping" the saw blade is designed with less teeth specifically to clear longer fibres produced by cutting in the flow of the grain and can have a tendency to "HOG"....whereas cutting across the grain produces miniscule portions of grain.

A good quality tungsten tooth blade in conjunction with a riving knife will allow the passage of timber thru the saw the riving knife allowing for the reduction of backend tension on the blade.This will readily give you means to RIP without having to maintain undue pressured feed.

The multiple teeth on a cross cut blade does not undergo the same problems having many teeth cutting across the fibres with a better clearance factor pedominately with dimension of the timber involved ..and this is where good aids in dust extraction is paramount in assisting with any clearance to alleviate heat build-up in the cutting process,and applies moreso to the ripping procedure.

Cheers :)

Trav, was the timber closing up on the kerf on the outfeed side??. If so it could be just a matter of fence adjustment. I have just ripped a fair bit of jarrah with a 20 tooth TCT blade no problems with my Makita 9 1/4" circ saw.

Cheers

Is the saw blade thinner than the riving knife?
That will bind up every time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by echnidna

Is the saw blade thinner than the riving knife?
That will bind up every time.

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Ech

Don't you mean that the other way around?

If the riving knife is thinner than the saw kerf, then it will allow the cut to close up and bind the blade.

Alastair

No, if the knife is thinner than the kerf then it will pass easily. If it's thicker you'll have real problems - how will it fit in the kerf?

Thanks for the responses. I was pretty careful about the blade when I bought it as the makita blade was too thin and it bound on the knife.

Perhaps I might pull it all apart this weekend and see if I have it set up wrong. There is a bit of resawing action happening, so it may be slowing things down.

Cheers

Trav

Sounds like an alignment problem as the blade shouldn't have much trouble unless it's really blunt. Good on you for getting a rip blade - I'll probably get flamed for this but I personally recon that combination blades should be called 'compromise blades'. They aren't generally great for ripping, adding strain to the saw and are only generally ok at crosscutting in solid timbers. For those who want a blade that can tackle two tasks there is a benefit from using them, but if affordable and you have the time to change blades when required it's akin to using the right tool for the job.