A lot of you want to know how thick is a table saw blade and how wide is a table saw blade. People often say very thin. The truth is that table saw blades come in a wide range of sizes. What kind of blade you can use will depend on what you are cutting.
In short, the normal blade for a table saw is 1/8 inch (0.125 inch) thick. Some saws can use dado stacks that are up to 0.7 inches wide.
All that matters is how much money you want to spend and what kind of cut you want. The type of material you want to cut should tell you what thickness of the blade will work best. Continue reading to learn more!
How Thick is a Table Saw Blade?
If you have a very thin bit of metal, you might need a thinner blade than if you were cutting through stainless steel tubing, which is definitely much thicker. Here, we’ll talk about both situations.
Table Saw Blade Varieties:
A table saw can use three main types of blades: normal blades, thin-kerf blades, and dado blades.
Standard Blades:
Standard blades have a kerf width of.07 inches, while thin kerfs were made so that manufacturers could make more money by making more cuts with less expensive tools while still making high-quality cuts.
Thin-Kerf Blades:
Also, saws with smaller blades often have motors with less horsepower and weigh less, which makes them easier to move around in a shop and take with you. The kerf on standard-width blades is.07″, while the kerf on thin blades is.042″.
Use a standard blade if you want to cut wood in a relatively clean way, like when making a bookshelf. If you want to cut plywood or sheet goods, you should use a thin-kerf blade instead of a normal blade.
Dado:
A dado is a groove in wood that is used to join two pieces of wood together. Dado blades are a thick table saw blades made for cutting dados. Dado blades have blades that are bigger and thicker than regular blades. They also have blades that are made in a special way to make grooves in wood.
Does it Matter How Thick the Blade is?
When choosing a blade for your table saw, you should think about the thickness of the blade, which is also sometimes called the width or kerf.
First of all, the width determines how much material the blade of the table saw cuts away with each pass. A bigger blade takes off more material than a thin blade, but there are other things to think about when it comes to table saw blade thickness.
The full-kerf blade is 1/8 of an inch thick, so if you want to cut holes 3/16 of an inch wide, you’ll need to make multiple passes with a small overlap between each one. You can choose from table saw blades that are thin or thick.
Knowing what your table saw can and can’t do is another way that the thickness of the blade affects its total performance. For example, a full-kerf, 1/8-inch thick blade will take too much power from the motor of a table saw with less than 3 HP.
When this happens, the motor can’t give the blade enough power to spin it properly, which causes a big drop in speed and a lot of friction. This can leave burn lines and/or big tears on your board. The damage it could do to your tool is much worse. The blade could bend or the motor could catch fire.
Other Things to Think About:
So, we know that the thickness of the blade on your table saw is important for not only cutting boards to the right size but also cutting holes of the right width. But if you are looking for a new blade for your table saw, the thickness is not the most important thing.
Check out our list of the most important things to look for in a table saw blade.
What are Your Plans?
Make sure you know what you’re doing before you start cutting up your boards. We can get rid of metal and plastic from the situation because table saws aren’t made to cut through them.
But you also need to pay close attention to your boards, especially the direction of their grain, their thickness, and what they look like after you cut them.
How Many Teeth:
The way a table saw blade cuts is shown by how many teeth it has. The cut is easier when there are more teeth. The fewer teeth a blade has, the more material it can cut through.
If you want to crosscut your wood boards, which means slicing across the grain, you should use a blade with more teeth because it will cut more smoothly against the grain. Look for a blade with fewer teeth if you want to cut across the grain.
Also, keep in mind that the more pressure there is, the more heat there will be. This is because there are more teeth. Remember this the next time you want to cut ten 4x4s in a row without stopping.
Gullet:
The space between each tooth is the gullet. When the gap is bigger, the blade can cut away more material each time it turns. Also, the more space there is between each tooth, the fewer teeth there are. This makes the saw better for rip cuts.
Shape and Angle of the Teeth:
What the blade is meant to do is based on how it is made and what angle the teeth are at. For different reasons, different configurations work best.
Flat tops, which are made for rip cuts, alternate top bevels, which are made for crosscuts, and combination teeth, which are made for all kinds of cuts, are the most popular shapes.
To make things even more confusing, you also need to pay attention to how the teeth are set. Positive-angled teeth lean forward at a certain angle, while negative-angled teeth lean back and in the opposite direction of the blade’s spin.
The more aggressive the cut, the faster you need to sand to get a clean finish when the positive angle of the blade’s teeth is high.
Best Blades for Different Jobs:
We hope you’re still here and that you haven’t given up on becoming a builder. If you’re still reading, you might be glad to know that the next section will tell you which blades we think are the best for ripping, crosscutting, and measuring sheet goods. Just keep in mind that you need to know what size, thickness, and width of table saw blade can handle.
Ripping:
Since pulling means cutting a board that is a little too long to the right length, you have three good choices. The first is a flat-top blade with 24 teeth that cuts fast but makes the surface feel rough.
A 40-tooth replacement top bevel blade and a 50-tooth combination tooth blade are the second and third choices. Both of them cut pretty slowly, but they don’t need much or any polishing afterward.
Crosscutting:
If you want to change the width of a board by cutting it across the grain, you should use a top bevel blade with between 40 and 80 teeth. A combination-tooth blade with 50 teeth might also work. But the quality of the blade also affects how well the finished product looks, so it’s better to get a high-quality 40-tooth blade than a low-quality 80-tooth blade.
Sheet Goods:
We suggest that you use an alternative top bevel blade with 40 to 80 teeth to cut sheets of PDF or particleboard to size. Again, a better tooth count means a finer finish, but you’ll be fine with anything in this range.
Bottom Line:
A table saw blade is a thin metal disk with teeth that fits between the saw’s frame and motor. This thin disk is what actually spins at thousands of turns per minute and cuts through the material as it goes past the rip fence.
There are many different sizes, widths, and materials for blades, like carbon steel and carbide-tipped blades.
How much material is taken off the top of what you’re cutting will depend on how thick it is. In other words, the wider the blade, the more it can cut at once and the better the result will be in the end.
Thicker blades work best on harder materials, while smaller blades work best on softer or thicker materials like plywood.
FAQs
How do I know if My Saw can Take a Dado Stack?
Check the instructions that came with your saw. It will list the measurements for the biggest dado stack that your model can handle.
Can I use a Blade that is Smaller or Thicker?
You could do it, but you shouldn’t. A 1/8-inch blade is made to work best with table saws. If you go thicker or thinner than that, it can throw off the way your saw is set up, making it harder to cut straight lines.
What about Those Fancy Blades that Have More Teeth? Do I Really Need One?
No, not for most basic woodworking tasks. The blade that comes with your saw, which has 40 teeth, will work just fine. If you make a lot of rip cuts (cuts along the direction of the wood), you might want to get a blade with fewer teeth to help reduce tear-out.
For cross cuts (cuts across the grain of the wood) or working with fragile materials, you might want to get a blade with more teeth to help keep it from breaking.
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