[Daren]

I'm going to kinda show my ignorance here, but I still wanted to bring this up. I will start by saying I am not a big table saw guy, I have one (or 3) obviously but really they are not used by me like they are most. I know woodworkers who have table saw work down to a science. Mine is just a workhorse for ripping mainly.

Anyway I had a guy bring me a sawblade to sharpen like I have never seen before (prolly cause it is way older than me :laughing It has 8 carbide tips and no set in the teeth. The teeth have an alternating 5 degree bevel on the top, that is the only thing that makes them different from one another. When you sharpen a saw blade you normally sharpen 3 faces, but the carbide tips where just barely wider than the blade so I did not sharpen the side cause even a little would have removed it too much I think. I just reduced the outside diameter of the steel part of the blade to make the teeth stand up a hair and sharpened 2 faces on the tips.

I am not making this a sharpening thread, this is about the blade. I gotta hit some yard sales or something, I need one of these dudes. (No way to talk the guy out of this one :no:, he is an old guy and it was his Dad's) It says Sears & Roebuck on the other side. I was not sure how I did on the sharp job so I threw it on my little table saw...the best blade I have ever used. I threw a couple pieces of hard wood at it and it cut it like a cheese slicer. I ran a couple scraps of 8/4 hickory, 8/4 white oak, 8/4 honey locust...just whatever hard and thick I had laying around. I ripped it all pushing lightly with one finger, and spun the pieces around and crosscut them clean as a whistle with no splinters/tearout on the end. It cut easy and very clean. It is a thick blade (a full 1/8" on the steel a little more on the tips) I can't see it ever wandering.

OK, that is my contribution for the day. Some of you may think "No big deal, I have 10 of those in a pile". I thought it was still worth bringing up and asking if anyone was familiar with blades like this? Until now I was not, again I will say it is the best blade I have ever had on a saw.

 

[Burlkraft]

Hey Daren,

I have one of them Sears blades.....It's been sitting in my cabinet for years. It has been smoked...:glare: :glare: :glare: I hung on to it because I have never seen a blade burned as bad as this one....(sometimes I keep crap like that...why?) I don't even remember where it came from, maybe from my Grandfather's tool collection...He was Swiss too..:laughing: :laughing: So I don't know if he was the culprit or not...I'll maybe dig that out today...after I dig out the foot of snow we got yesterday...:furious: :furious: :furious:

 

[TexasTimbers]

Daren I believe it is a Hardy Board type blade for cutting cementious siding if it is a diamond blade. If not a diamond blade maybe it is a rip blade?

 

[Daren]

after I dig out the foot of snow we got yesterday...:furious: :furious: :furious:

It is spitting snow here this morning :thumbdown:...2 weeks ago it was 80 and I was wearing shorts. I am SOOOO ready for nice weather to stay around for awhile. My furnace is running full blast...I bet in 2 more weeks the a/c will be doing the same .

Dig that old blade out, I bet it could be made new again. This one is almost blue too, she's been hot. The carbide tips still took a good edge. 99.9% of the blade is just for a hole for the saw arbor and a place to put teeth. I reckon it doesn't matter what it looks like if it is flat :smile:.

 

[Daren]

Daren I believe it is a Hardy Board type blade for cutting cementious siding.

Like I said I am not too up on all that, it could very well be. I just knew it was different than I had ever seen. I bet it would cut about anything. It laughed at hard wood :laughing: for sure. It was not diamond...I used diamond to sharpen it. I'm sure it was made for ripping, I was quite surprised how cleanly it crosscut too.

 

[johnep]

saw blades

I have used a 12 tooth 160mm TC tipped blade in my hand circular saw for at least ten years. diameter down to 158mm now but still cuts like hot knife through butter.

Bought a Bosch 36 tooth TC tipped 160mm blade from Screwfix. Just waiting for the job to come along so I can try it. The 12 tooth did tend to tear the edge on melamine work surfaces.

By the way, how do I get a pic onto the forum so I can show the blades.?
johnep

 

[Daren]

By the way, how do I get a pic onto the forum so I can show the blades.?
johnep

When you are posting scroll down to additional options, there is a button "manage attachments" click it a window will open to give you options on the kinda files you can attach.

 

[Mad]

I have three of these blades from Sears. I wondered what they were for.

 

[woodnthings]

A 10 year old htead comes alive!

Daren's last visit here was 12-14-2015, so it's not likely he's still interested in the replies. However, that blade he referenced was one of the original carbide tipped blades sold by Sears back when. I have a 10 tooth with similar teeth, look like a "rip only" blade. He must have done a great job sharpening it, that was a side business he had back then, so it cut better than it probably did from the factory.

You should get out your old blades and give them a test, and post what you find out. I'll look for my old 10" blade, maybe I can find it... I donno?:wink2:

 

[Mad]

I dragged out the three blades, and it turns out they have 12 teeth, all carbide tipped. But the blades are 12" in diameter, which might explain the two additional teeth over your 10" 10 tooth blades.


Just guessing, based on the age of the blades and the saw they came with... these sparsely toothed blades were the beginnings of bringing carbide tips to the everyday joe blow homeowner tinkerer. And the scarcity of teeth was to keep the cost down, compared to the cost of blades that consumers of the era were accustomed to paying for blades, and yet still introduce the benefits of carbide teeth, which likely was a "newer thing" at the time. That is just my guess.


All the printing is completely worn off of both sides of most of my blades, but one blade still has a Sears part number... 720.32469


Going to go research it now. (I'm still assembling FrankCanSaw, so I can't test these blades as yet).

 

[Steve Neul]

As texastimbers noted those 6 and 8 tooth blades are fiber cement blades. They work really well for ripping and resawing hard hardwood.

 

[Mad]

As texastimbers noted those 6 and 8 tooth blades are fiber cement blades. They work really well for ripping and resawing hard hardwood.

I did read TT's post where he said "Hardie Board type blade", but given that James Hardie didn't even invent Hardie Board until the 1980's, and that was in Australia, and given that HardiePlank and HardieBoard didn't take hold in the United States until the 1990's, and given that my three USA made and marketed 12 tooth saw blades from Sears were sold in the 1970's, along with the saw that I got them with, and given that they are only carbide tipped, not diamond tipped... I thought there might be some other intended purpose or possibility for these older blades. I was not able to find any info based on the Sears part number though.

 

[WeebyWoodWorker]

I find it really interesting when an old thread gets brought up again. I know I've heard of Texas Timbers before but never seen anything by him before, it's cool to see who used to on here a while back.

 

[Mad]

As texastimbers noted those 6 and 8 tooth blades are fiber cement blades. They work really well for ripping and resawing hard hardwood.

Digging deeper, it appears that Sears used various blade suppliers, while maintaining some consistency in terms of blade part numbers for any particular type of blade. So for any given blade part number with a prefix for the supplier, and a suffix to denote the specific part, separated by a dot (period) in between... the suppliers sometimes changed (meaning different prefix), while the part remained consistent in specification (meaning same suffix).


The different table saw supplier codes are already widely known... 103. for King Seeley, 113. for Emerson Electric (who acquired King Seeley), 315. for Ryobi (I think... but I don't have any saws that new).


However, the different supplier codes for saw ACCESSORIES do not seem to be as widely known. And the codes themselves overlap, where the same code can apply to two different suppliers. In trying to learn what purpose Sears intended a super low tooth count blade to be used in a table saw for in the decades prior to Hardie Board ever being invented (previous fibrous cement type materials also had asbestos incorporated in the fibers, and by the '70's, it was well known that asbestos materials shouldn't be cut... especially by consumers of a lawsuit wary Sears), there are two supplier codes that seem to cover many, if not most, of the saw blades sold in that era:


720. Vermont American (well known makers of blades, taps, dies, drills, and other tooling)


720. (again, duplicated) Burgess Vibrocrafters Inc. (BVI) (not so well known maker of small woodworking machines, band saws in particular)


900. Black and Decker


900. Dewalt


900. Elu


The foregoing information is derived from Vintage Machinery's data base of owner/user supplied historical data on woodworking machines. In this instance, I have to assume that supplier code "9" is synonymous with "900", as there is no "9" separately listed on the otherwise dauntingly comprehensive database.


So, when I search blade part number 720.32469, I don't find much, but when I change suppliers and search 9.32469, I find the same 12" diameter 5/8" arbor 12 tooth blade described in Sears saw Accessories catalog as a "General Purpose" blade.


As a check, I investigated the difference between a few other blades that I have by suffix number, comparing the two different supplier code prefixes (720 and 9) with the descriptions of the blade for every given suffix (the actual blade number). I found consistency in the descriptions in each case that I tried, where I had a blade to compare. (eg, 32555 is the same blade, whether 9.32555 or 720.32555, and 32499 is the same, whether 9.32499 or 720.32499).


This still doesn't definitively answer what exactly is meant by "General Purpose", which is about as broad of a description as can be formulated in the English language. But the point is, at least during the time period of 40 years ago, these minimally toothed blades were not considered "specialty" blades. As a newbie to working with tablesaws, I find that to be interesting, if not instructive.


.

 

[Gary Beasley]

That looks very much like a blade for a water cooled concrete cutter. That might explain the blue color from overheating if the water got a bit sparse during the cutting. Those have been around longer than the Hardy board.

 

[Steve Neul]

I think if you studied it long enough there was probably a lot of things a person might use that type blade to cut. There is cultured marble counters, clay roof tiles. The house I grew up in had like a slate siding on it that was made out of asbestos. I know it was installed in 1960.

 

[Catpower]

The first carbide tipped blade I bought was a 9 tooth 10 inch blade, that was in about 1968-69, it was over $100, but it cut wood very well

I had to stack over 10,000 bales of hay to pay for that blade, the next summer I had to stack 12,500 bales to buy my Remington 700 BDL

A penny a bale, no wonder I am so worn out LOL

 

[Mad]

The first carbide tipped blade I bought was a 9 tooth 10 inch blade, that was in about 1968-69, it was over $100, but it cut wood very well
I had to stack over 10,000 bales of hay to pay for that blade, the next summer I had to stack 12,500 bales to buy my Remington 700 BDL

The Book of Isaiah talks about turning swords into ploughshares... but you turned ploughshares into swords... twice!


On that first sword, the 10" round one, with only 9 carbide tipped teeth, that you paid $100.00 in 1968... according to online inflation calculators, that would be equivalent of paying $712.00 today. For just one blade. With only 9 teeth!


Just imagine paying $712 for just one blade today! The most expensive Forrest blade I could find, at 12" diameter with 100 carbide teeth, made here in the USA with our high cost of labor, benefits, regulations, and tort liabilities... is only $277.00 today.


Carbide tipped saw blades were really a BIG DEAL some 40-50 years ago. I remember my old mentor and departed friend regarding them like GOLD 40 years ago. He had built special wooden trays to hold each of his carbide tipped blades individually. Even my neighborhood blade sharpener, who started his business 45 years ago in the same location where it still stands today, put the word "CARBIDE" in the name of his business, rather than the word "BLADE".


I even remember how much marketing space Sears devoted to promoting their carbide tipped saw blades back in the days before Sears shifted gears to promote "Come see the softer side of Sears." From as hard as carbide... to seeing the soft side. That marketing transition was the beginning of the end of Sears. Prior to that shift, there was no need for me to go anywhere else but Sears. Heck, I even bought an 80 gallon captive air tank for a water well at Sears, and picked it up in store!


Nowadays, no one working at Sears would even know what a captive air tank is. Sears has a lot of clothing now, and not a lot of customers. And not much carbide anymore either. I went there the other day to see if I could find anymore 12" blades. The pegs for pretty much all the blades were empty. The table saw they had on display had a PLASTIC top. Not even aluminum!


Anyways, back onto blades... the high cost of carbide blades 40 years ago, combined with the "general purpose" description that Sears Accessory catalogs of the era describe the sparse tooth blade with, makes me think that the low tooth count was less driven by optimization for the material being cut, or the direction of the cut, and more driven by providing carbide tipped performance at a lower price point.


$712 divided by 9 teeth = $79 per tooth. Imagine if that blade were the 120 tooth 10" finish cut blade from Tenryu? $9,480.00 !! in today's dollars. Catpower would have had to pay $1,333.00 for that blade in 1968 dollars. Or stack 133,333 bales of hay. He wouldn't just be worn out today. He'd be dead.

 

[Dodis]

I still have a 7.25" 4-tooth carbide blade made by Creedo. Bought in the mid-80's. Seems to me that was about the time more blades were coming out with carbide but were still expensive. Then Credo came along and started selling low-tooth count blades cheap. And that blade also cut very smooth until you finally put some wear on the carbides. I kept it around for rough cuts and unknown items in suspect wood, still drag it out from time to time, usually to cut up scrap for disposal now, so I don't have to worry about nails, etc.

 

[Catpower]

The Book of Isaiah talks about turning swords into ploughshares... but you turned ploughshares into swords... twice!


On that first sword, the 10" round one, with only 9 carbide tipped teeth, that you paid $100.00 in 1968... according to online inflation calculators, that would be equivalent of paying $712.00 today. For just one blade. With only 9 teeth!


Just imagine paying $712 for just one blade today! The most expensive Forrest blade I could find, at 12" diameter with 100 carbide teeth, made here in the USA with our high cost of labor, benefits, regulations, and tort liabilities... is only $277.00 today.


Carbide tipped saw blades were really a BIG DEAL some 40-50 years ago. I remember my old mentor and departed friend regarding them like GOLD 40 years ago. He had built special wooden trays to hold each of his carbide tipped blades individually. Even my neighborhood blade sharpener, who started his business 45 years ago in the same location where it still stands today, put the word "CARBIDE" in the name of his business, rather than the word "BLADE".


I even remember how much marketing space Sears devoted to promoting their carbide tipped saw blades back in the days before Sears shifted gears to promote "Come see the softer side of Sears." From as hard as carbide... to seeing the soft side. That marketing transition was the beginning of the end of Sears. Prior to that shift, there was no need for me to go anywhere else but Sears. Heck, I even bought an 80 gallon captive air tank for a water well at Sears, and picked it up in store!


Nowadays, no one working at Sears would even know what a captive air tank is. Sears has a lot of clothing now, and not a lot of customers. And not much carbide anymore either. I went there the other day to see if I could find anymore 12" blades. The pegs for pretty much all the blades were empty. The table saw they had on display had a PLASTIC top. Not even aluminum!


Anyways, back onto blades... the high cost of carbide blades 40 years ago, combined with the "general purpose" description that Sears Accessory catalogs of the era describe the sparse tooth blade with, makes me think that the low tooth count was less driven by optimization for the material being cut, or the direction of the cut, and more driven by providing carbide tipped performance at a lower price point.


$712 divided by 9 teeth = $79 per tooth. Imagine if that blade were the 120 tooth 10" finish cut blade from Tenryu? $9,480.00 !! in today's dollars. Catpower would have had to pay $1,333.00 for that blade in 1968 dollars. Or stack 133,333 bales of hay. He wouldn't just be worn out today. He'd be dead.

After I got it I took it to school to show my shop teacher, he was green with envy, I told him my brother would be baling next year he could come help LOL

It was amazing how good it cut for so few teeth, it was like glass compared to a new HSS blade