Table saw blade for hand tool users
Patrick Gibbons
>I'm still working on my bunk beds project and I was stalled at cutting out the legs. I wanted to mill them out of 2 1/2 inch maple and my D-12 rip saw dulled in the process producing crooked cuts and very slow progress (if you can call it that). The wood caused my table saw to stop owing to the wood's thickness. I had a Forrest 40 tooth combo blade installed. I switched to the 30 tooth combo blade and it cuts through the thick maple like butter. It also did a great job on 3/8" wood up to 1". There was little or no burn on these rip cuts. I cleaned the cuts up with planes and/or scrapers and have just about finished cutting out all the pieces. Soon I'll start work on the 130 hand-chopped mortises and 20 tenons. Cutting and milling parts tends to be the most tedious work for me. I have posted this review of sorts on the assumption that many here use power tools as I do, to speed up this process.
On a related note, I am building the spokeshave kit that Lee Valley recently introduced. I also bought some of their dogwood spindle blanks to use for the body of the shave. I flattened and squared a blank with handplanes and I'm frustrated with my poor abilities at performing this task. I'm afraid that my errors will compound as I proceed with the project. The worst that will happen will be that I start over with a new wood blank. Over time my skills will improve. In the meantime I'm glad I got the new table saw blade.
