Diablo blades

I did not want to hi jack Brents blade thread but i feel its long overdue that we discuss these blades here.

Ever since i replaced the first blade on my craftsman orion made saw, i have used the cheap diablo blades from home depot.

They are thin kerf and i find at $39 Canadian that they very good value. Supposed to be capable of 6 sharpenings but i have yet to take one in since i just dont see how they gonna do it for less than $39. Some day i will find a guy see how much and take a batch to be done if they get to around $20 but i doubt that up here.

Anyhow I also switched to a diablo thin kerf in my skill saw (yup its a genuine skil saw ) and the improvement it made to useing this saw made it a dream. At around $13 per blade its a steel to cut down material with it.

In the diablo range which goes as high as $59 here, there are quite a few tooth number choices and i just dont see that they can be beat by the high dollar blades for a saw like mine with its power.

I get real good cuts with these blades, maybe some of you are way to fussy about the final cut. After setting up my saw properly i dont get burning and hey tear out is controlled by technique.

So anyone else prepared to admit they heretics and use the diablo range. Got any thoughts on why i should pay $100 plus for a blade.

I have used Diablo's in my circ-saw. I have also used other carbide tipped blades for it. All of them do a better job than the stamped steel blades that have come with those saws. I have a collection of TK blades that I run on my zipcode saw (I wish I could find something this saw can't do so I can justify an upgrade ) and they all give good results. These are Freud Avanti (from back when Freud used this name), Leitz, and Forrest. I have three full kerf blades from Carbide Processors and there is a marked difference in cut quality. This does not mean I do not use my TK blades, I do. This does not mean that Diablo blades aren't good, they are.

Voit makes a perfectly good baseball but, a lot of people use Spaulding, and I think Rawlings is the MLB standard. I don't know anything about sports so I'm not sure why I tried that analogy . The point is that if you are getting the result you want, you're using the right gear. I have a few blades that I paid $25 - $50 for and I have probably had at least 1 of each sharpened. The lower end blades probably won't take another sharpening in the real world despite the maker's claims.

Like you, I look at the cost of replacement versus sharpening and toss my $5 router bits and $25 blades. As LOML always says "another sale will come along". The $100+ blades have such a massive hunk of carbide on them that I would conservatively plan on 10 sharpenings even if the guy was a hack. So, $25 blade + $20 to sharpen = 2 blades for $45 - not bad. $100 blade + $20 to sharpen ten times = [$100 + ($20*10) = $300, so $300 for 11 blades = $27 per blade over the life of the blank for a top end blade. Makes them all 'about' equal doesn't it? Fun stuff

glenn bradley said:

The $100+ blades have such a massive hunk of carbide on them that I would conservatively plan on 10 sharpenings even if the guy was a hack. So, $25 blade + $20 to sharpen = 2 blades for $45 - not bad. $100 blade + $20 to sharpen ten times = [$100 + ($20*10) = $300, so $300 for 11 blades = $27 per blade over the life of the blank for a top end blade. Makes them all 'about' equal doesn't it? Fun stuff

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That's some good math there Glenn!

I do have some of the cheaper blades for rough cutting and junk wood on the 12" CMS. When I was redoing our floors with laminate I actually used some $10/blade bulk chinese because the laminate coating simply eats blades (maybe 1/2 a room per blade - you can see sparks on a fresh blade with it) and all of the cuts are hidden by trim anyway so cut quality doesn't matter that much. So for convenience being able to just toss them was worth it (and yes I compared lifetime to an $80 blade.. no better in this use case).

My TS requires specially bored blades (30mm + pin holes) that you can "only"? get in the more expensive varieties so I'm using Tenryu blades there which, I must admit, still amaze me with the cut quality (and a bored forrest dado set). Literally glue ready off of the saw, at least as good as and depending on the wood sometimes better than the planer.

Ryan Mooney said:

Literally glue ready off of the saw, at least as good as and depending on the wood sometimes better than the planer.

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+1 on that. For those pesky boards that suffer tearout despite having a spiral head I will go to the tablesaw .

I used to buy the gold ridgid line of blades. For the money those blades were awesome. The one I bought back in 2005 I'm about ready to send out for sharpening. I was very disappointed when they discontinued them.

Now I'm buying the Diablo line also as I don't see the value of blades costing twice as much.