When using saw blades, you will find that saw blades not only have different sizes, but also have different numbers of teeth for the same size. Why is it designed like this? Is it better to have more or less teeth?

The number of teeth is intimately related to the cross cutting and ripping of wood to be cut. Ripping means cutting along the direction of the wood grain, and cross cutting is cutting at 90 degrees to the direction of the wood grain.

When you use carbide tips to cut wood, you will find that most of the wood chips are particles when ripping, while they are strips when cross cutting.

Multi-tooth saw blades, when cutting with multiple carbide tips in the same time, can make the cutting surface smooth, with dense tooth marks and high saw edge flatness, but the gullet areas are smaller than those with fewer teeth, making it easy to get blurry saws (blackened teeth) because of fast cutting speeds. Multi-tooth saw blades apply to high cutting requirements, low cutting speeds and cross cutting.

The saw with fewer teeth produces a rougher cutting surface, with a larger tooth mark spacing, faster sawdust removal, and is suitable for rough processing of softwoods with a faster sawing speed.

If you use a multi-tooth saw blade for ripping, it is easy to cause jam of chip removal, and the saw blade usually get burnt and stuck. Saw pinching are very dangerous for workers.

Artificial boards such as plywood and MDF have their grain direction artificially changed after processing. Therefore, use a multi-tooth saw blade, slow down the speed of cutting and move smoothly. Using a saw blade with fewer teeth will be much worse.

In summary, if you have no idea of how to choose a saw blade in the future, you can choose the saw blade according to the cutting direction of the saw blade. Choose more teeth for bevel cutting and cross cutting, and choose fewer teeth for ripping.