Speaking of saw blades...........a mini review

Mark Rios

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Central CA
Frank P. mentioned in a post in the Funding thread that some more content was needed including tool evaluations so here is a little review that I've been thinking about.

The Freud LU80R010 10" x 80-Tooth HiATB Coated Industrial Ultra Finish Saw Blade. (For clarification, the name on the blade itself is: "Ultimate Plywood and Laminate")

I was turned on to this blade late last Spring by someone over at SMC when I was asking about a plywood blade in a discussion about blades in general. He said that I should expect the sweetest of sweet cuts from it and he wasn't exaggerating.

I bought one from Amazon and used it the day that I got it on some old, ratty looking but clean 3/4" CDX. When I took it out of it's cover it even looked sharp. VERY sharp, pointy teeth on this blade. If you get one, be careful handling it....very pointy-pointy. The cut was great, both on the top and on the bottom of the plywood WITHOUT using a ZCI on my old Ridgid Contractor saw. I figured that I should try it out on some "good" ply so I put some 3'4" oak ply up on the TS with the same standard insert. Again, extremely crisp, sharp edges on the top and bottom. I went right in and ordered a second one.

Forward to the past couple of weeks.......

I recently finished cutting out all of the carcass pieces for a set of 14 cabinets for a kitchen remodel that I'm currently involved in. This is for a regular, paying customer and not for a rental or sale by the realtor that I work for so this is to be a nice set of cabinets (I hope :D ). I'm using birch for all of the interior carcass material and maple ply for the exposed sides. The doors and drawers are inset panel so I used 1/4" (5.2mm ?) mdf core maple ply for the panels. Drawer material is 1/2" BB. This is the second set of cabinets on this blade, now on my Unisaw, and it is still cutting crisply and cleanly. It doesn't cut very quickly on other, solid materials but it is an 80 tooth after all. It also doesn't have a good feel when cutting through oak or maple solid wood but it has, appropriately, a very good, natural cutting feel when going through plywood. I happen to be a person who prefers a dedicated blade appropriate to the type of cutting at hand and this blade is by far the nicest blade that I have used. BTW, the cutting that I am referring to and judge cuts by is crosscutting plywood, as I feel that you can get a great rip cut in plywood with most any good quality blade, and some not so good ones.;)

The blade costs upwards of $100, I paid $92 or $93 for mine, so it's not cheap. But I feel it's worth it to not have to worry about my crosscut plywood having furry edges and trying to edgeband to them. The teeth stay sharp and produce excellent edges. It does all that I can ask for in a plywood blade.

Thanks for reading.
 
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Mark, nice review. Have you done any crosscutting on hardwood with it? I would like to get a good crosscut blade and if it excelled cutting sheet stock so much the better.
BTW, I pulled out my new LM74 rip blade and gave it another shot, this time lowering the blade so it was just above the board thickness. The results were much better. Still not what I would call “no sanding required”, but very close.

Glad to see you got an avatar up but your camera sucks!
 
Thanks for your quick reaction to my appeal Mark! And, thanks even more for reacting with an excellent review of something that I had not given much consideration to. I cut most my plywood with a circular saw, so this blade would not be of much use to me, but I am sure that a lot of members here could take advantage of it.
 
Mark, nice review. Have you done any crosscutting on hardwood with it? I would like to get a good crosscut blade and if it excelled cutting sheet stock so much the better.
BTW, I pulled out my new LM74 rip blade and gave it another shot, this time lowering the blade so it was just above the board thickness. The results were much better. Still not what I would call “no sanding required”, but very close.

Glad to see you got an avatar up but your camera sucks!

No Bruce, sorry, I haven't crosscut any hardwood with it. However, you know how on Freud's blades they have the little horizontal bar graph showing the rating of how well a blade will cut different materials? It is the same for hardwood as it is for plywood and melamine; the highest rating. So I imagine it should be real good. I would expect it to be so anyway.

Thanks for the kind words Frank and your very welcome.

Brian, I'm sure you have much more experience with blades than I do but this blade, after cutting all of the plywood for two sets of cabinets and quiye a bit of other plywood work, is still cutting very, very nicely, I can see no difference in the cut. The teeth are still very pointy-pointy sharp. :eek: I'm very happy with it.
 
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