All About Scroll Saw Blades

Let's talk about scroll saw blades there are hundreds of blades on the market today.

So how does a guy know which blades he should buy and use. There are thick, thin, spiral, reverse, skip tooth blades, etc, etc. So lets get down to it, first off reverse tooth scroll saw blades are the most used today. Most of the older scroll saw blades cut on the down stroke, this will cause the wood to tear out on the bottom side of your work.

Reverse tooth blades have teeth at the bottom of the blade that cut on the up stroke as well. This makes the scroll saw blade cut on the top and the bottom side so you get a splinter free top and bottom. This means that if you use the right speed and feed rate you will have almost no sanding to do.

Thick and thin scroll saw blades are numbered using numbers from #0 to #12 the smaller the number the finer the blade. TPI stands for the number of teeth per inch. The higher the number the thicker and wider the scroll saw blade thus making tight turns much harder to do, so that is why you should always round the backs of the thicker scroll saw blades with a wet stone or sandpaper on a block of wood to help them turn better.

The smaller blades can burn your work when turning tight corners. If you are running at to high of a speed, don't worry because you won't do it for long before your thin scroll saw blade will get to much heat and break.

Moral of the story, slow that speed down and let that nice thin blade keep on keeping on. Numbers #9 to #12 blades should be run at faster speeds, you will get sand free cuts and heat is not a real factor with these bigger blades.

Now we get to the spiral scroll saw blades. Everyone I know including me have a love hate relationship with these little critters. The spiral blade is as its name infers are round with teeth on both sides. If you are cutting small odd shaped patterns in thin wood then there is no better blade to use. Some guys will tell you that you can do just as well with fine reverse tooth scroll saw blades, don't belive it, with a spiral blade you can go in any direction without turning your work around. But if you have long straight lines to saw, then you are not going to like these guys, so use them where they belong and you will love them.

There are pin end and plain end scroll saw blades. The plain end blade are pretty much the blade of choice of most wood workers today because you don't have to drill large holes for the plain end blade when cutting internal cuts. The pin end blade has a cross pin on each end and most of the new scroll saws don't except pin end scroll saw blades. Well that is part of the story, there is so much more and I will talk more about scroll saws in coming articles because the more you know the more fun you will have.