Pacific Saw Blade Reviews

Woodworkers have a new source for cost-effective tungsten carbide tipped saw blades and jointer/planer knives. Stuart Clark of Pacific Saw Blades, LLC, in Seattle is manufacturing edge tools in Thailand using European carbide and steel for the North American market. The variety in the line is impressive see list below and covers just about every application I can think of.

Stuart sent me a 50 tooth combo and a 60 tooth finishing to test for him, and has given me permission to post the results.

The mailer packaging is simple but effective.

The first impression is one of weight/mass. These are industrial quality tools with heavy steel plates and massive carbide. The relative size of the carbide tips is evident in this photo where the top blade (foreground)is a Makita 80 and the bottom (underneath) is the Pacific 60.

On closer examination the appearance of the brazing is excellent throughout. No roughness anywhere, and, believe me, the teeth are sharp.

I used a Lee Valley steel straightedge on both to test for flatness, and was, at first, a little concerned to detect a .004" concavity in the center. However, the .004 feeler gauge also just slipped under the straight edge on the obverse face. When the second blade produced exactly the same results, it's clear this is built into the manufacturing.

The kerf is nominally 1⁄8". I say nominally, because when I miked them, the 50 tooth came in at exactly .011" but the 60 tooth was a shade wider at .0115.

On the saw, both blades ran quietly. No screamers here. However, while the combo is a simple, solid plate, the finishing blade is laser cut and contains four brass damping slugs.

After spending some time thinking about how to actually test these blades, I decided to put them head to head against blades I already had in my inventory. Since I rarely use a combo, preferring 24-28 tooth rip blades for ripping, and finishing blades for everything else, I had only one contender for the combo, a Dewalt 50 tooth thin kerf, fortuitously recently sharpened. To some extent, the thin kerf blade was disadvantaged because of its greater potential for the flex that showed up in some of the test cuts, but that's countered somewhat by its having less work to do. I had several finishing blade possibilities, but none with 60 teeth. I decided to set the Pacific against a sharp Makita 80 tooth and a never used Delta 80 tooth.

Before beginning, I checked that the saw was properly tuned, and installed a narrow—not quite zero—clearance insert to prevent the thin slices from dropping into the saw cavity. For the combos, I ripped and then cross-cut small pieces of hard maple, red oak, poplar, spruce, and fir. I also cut Baltic birch and marine mahogany plywoods, MDF, and melamine coated particle board. This sample contains enough variety to represent a realistic cross-section of materials we use regularly.

I cross-cut the same materials with the finishing blades.

To the best of my ability, the same feed rate was maintained throughout, and to be consistent, I did not slow down on exit (hence, the ragged trailing edges).

I cut each sequence of woods on one blade then, in turn, on the other(s), labeling each off-cut as it exited the blade.

The chart rates the quality of each cut on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being a glass-like finish, 3 satisfactory for gluing, and 1 indicating burn or tooth marks. Yes, these are subjective.

For the melamine particle board, the relative roughness was about the same for all blades except the Makita which was evidently smoother than the others. However, what really matters with melamine, of course, is chipping, so in this one instance, I used chip-out as the basis for scoring, with 5 for none, and 1 for unacceptable. I was surprised that four of the five blades, including both Pacific models, produced truly perfect top edges. Only the 50 tooth thin kerf left an edge showing minor signs of blade wobble, but still producing a chip-free cut.

I did not adjust the scores for chip-out on the bottom edges, and since the insert was not zero clearance, all blades chipped out. However, the Makita stood out for the smallest number and size of its chips.

After all the cuts had been completed, and with the slices lined up by species and blade, I then rubbed a finger in each direction over each cut to rate the smoothness of the cut by itself, and then repeated the motion to rate the relative smoothness each blade/species/cut combination compared one to the another. I noted the scores, and took a coffee break. After an hour or so, I went back and repeated the same test without reference to the first, marking these scores on a clean sheet of paper. I admit to surprise that only three scores differed, and then only by a single mark in each instance, not enough to affect the original overall rankings.

While hardly empirical, I am satisfied that this testing approach is reasonable in that it judges each blade in isolation, but also comparatively.

Once finished, I took the blades to a professional woodworker's shop, knowing he has a collection of Forrest blades. We cross-cut some African mahogany—a difficult stringy wood—with a very sharp, but well-used Forrest High Angle ATB blade, and a brand new, unused WWII blade. We then did the same with the two Pacific blades. Both Forrest blades left cleaner finishes than either of the Pacific blades, but none of the surfaces was slippery smooth. Were I to include the Forrests in the chart above, for the mahogany, I'd rate both the HA and WWII a 4, the Pacific cross-cut a 3, and the Pacific combo a 2. However, this result is inconsistent with the earlier scores for other materials, and I have no explanation for the fact that the Pacific blades cut much more smoothly on my Unisaw with Unifence than on his Unisaw with Biesemeyer.

Conclusion:

The Pacific saw blades performed well. As the chart above indicates, Pacific offers a specifically designed and machined blade to meet just about each and every exacting application a woodworker might meet. On the other hand, for those wishing to avoid frequent blade changes and willing to accept the compromises inherent in combination blades, the 50 tooth combo offers a very happy solution.

At their price points, I believe these blades represent excellent value.