User Reviews - World’s Best™ Saw Blades with Cermet II Tips

These are some of the experiences that customers who have tried our World’s Best™ Cermet II Tipped Saw Blades have had. Get a free quote on a custom made Cermet II saw blade or buy one of our standard Size Cermet II saw blades.

1.  Barry Stubbs, Home User, Huntsville, TX 

I have been using both blades on comparable cuts.  To be honest with you, the ceramic tips cut as well or better than the C4 carbide tips.  Both types of blades tips on the Forrest WoodWorker II cut very well.  If you want me to compliment your product, here goes:

I put the ceramic tip blade on first and did several rips and crosscuts.  The cuts were glue ready.  There was no need to sand or prepare the surfaces at all.  You couldn't sand finish a cut to be any smoother than the cuts made by the ceramic tip blade.  It's pretty sad when you want to keep making cuts just to show friends how pretty the blade cuts.  I look forward to using it in the future.

I don't know how you guys did it, but I figured your product would be hard to prove against the technology of the Forrest WoodWorker II blade.  The ceramic tips you put on gave such precise cuts.  I appreciate having been given the opportunity to use your product and would recommend it to anyone.  Please keep me posted about your future plans for these ceramic tips.  If you need any further information from me or need this in the form of a letter please let me know how I can help.

2.  Letter from Marvin Wood Products

Emily,

Hi.

I’m Nathan Hull the grinderman at Marvin Wood Products. Chris Folkman handed this off to me to give you some info on the saw that we tried.

 How many times we re sharpen a blade before we order new or have retipped we are not sure. Most blades get damaged by hitting something so we have the carbides retipped a lot.

 How often do regular blades have to be resharpened? We normally have our carbide tipped blades sharpened every week.

 The new Cement II blade normally last twice as long before it gets damaged.

 The best so far is four weeks and one and a half million cuts before we changed it out which is four times longer.

 Hope this helps and keep up the good work on those tips.

Nathan Hull
Grinderman
Marvin Wood Products

3.  Letter From Potter Lumber

 A message from Mr. Potter

“I am placing another order for the Cermet II tips. We are cutting a lot of pine and fir with these tips. We are now starting to cut a lot of hard woods, such as oak, alder, mahogany. We also cut a lot of the radiata wood here. We ran a test of the Cermet II tips side by side with the Jonalloy tips and they performed just as well. I hope you have a great day. 

4.  Letter From Dave's Sharpening

“Dear Emily, Shannon & all at Carbide Processors.

Thank you for the WC7200N tips. They look very nice. What they can do is even better. I have proven the tips over many years. We have a 26” x 20 Kant gang here at the mill.

I once witnessed sawing badly frozen white oak for two days without a chipped tooth. The logs were so nasty , the head saw operator had to stop every half hour to grind the blade. We were running 28 blades in the gang at that time . The teeth we had in the gang before broke down terribly.
I am sending the letter I told you about from one of my portable mill customers. This is what he thinks of the tips.

Thanks for your help.
Dave (Dave Cessna )
Dave's Sharpening Service

5.  Letter from Dave Cessna's Customer 

“Dave,

We’re extremely happy with the teeth on our new six tooth blades. We cut though several strands of barbed wire embedded in a log and, while the teeth suffered a few chips, they’re still cutting.
Thank you for your craftsmanship, detailed knowledge and friendly service. We’ll be back.” 

6.  Mike Goodpasture at Fabrication Specialties in Centerville, TN

Mike Goodpasture at Fabrication Specialties in Centerville, TN was looking for longer life out of his saw blades.  He is now getting at least twice the life he was before he started using saws from Murphy Saw Shop in Redmond, OR.   He is using asymmetrical saw blades to control vibration.  Long life is achieved by using Cermet 2 tips from Carbide Processors, Inc, in Tacoma, WA.  The specially cut saw plate is supplied by Peerless Saw Co. in Groveport Ohio (800 973-3753).   The saw blades are built at Murphy Saw in Redmond, Oregon (541-548-2515) by Monte Murphy and Steve McCall.

7.  Darrell Wong at Forintek

Darrell Wong called from Forintek to tell us that the saw mill tests on two of our Cermet II grade were going very well.   These were mill tests in Northern British Columbia on beetle killed (hard) Lodgepole pine.   “The Cermet II® A & B grades that you sent me were cutting mountain pine beetle (MPB) killed lodge pole pine.  Lodgepole pine is a softwood indigenous to the pacific north west, Alberta and other areas.  MPB-killed wood tends to be dried at half or less of the moisture content of green wood”.   As of February 14th both our grades of Cermet II had run twice as long as standard grades and were still doing very well.   These grades have run 5 to 10 times as long as standard carbide for our customers.   However this is the first fully scientific test done by a world renowned research institute.

8.  Jeff Galloway, Lead saw filer at Alder Creek Lumber in Portland Oregon

Jeff Galloway at Alder Creek Lumber says that he loves our "Tuff Tip" / Comet "M" tip.  He ran the tips on his saws that accidentally sawed 12 penny nails and when he took the saws off there wasn't even one tip missing or broken.  He is the guy who originally called and said he's cutting the 12 penny nail.   He said he loves our tips, they last so much longer than any he has used and he just wishes he could order more, but they last so long he doesn't need to order as often...so he says he'll send us as much business as he can.  He also says that I should let "all your people there" know that we're doing a great job and he's a big fan of our pretinning too!
 

9.  Ken Sharp, Home User,  Berkeley Springs, WV

I must say I was very skeptical about the performance of your product. That is no longer the case and I put the blade through its paces on four different projects with 5 species of wood (hardwood). IMHO, if you put the tips on good blanks, keep the price competitive, and most importantly, provide good customer support, you will be successful.  These opinions will be reflected in my review. You may even get a 17 year Forrest blade user to change his stripes.:-)

10. Stephen Koschmann, Fluid Forms, Inc

 This is just a short message to update the group on my experiences with Tom Waltz and his new ceramic tipped saw blades.   

1.  Tom's company has developed a ceramic material (cermets, I believe, is the name) that has applications for cutting tools, particularly saw blades. 

2.  We make retail counter top displays out of a 6"x12" granite tile with an oak frame.  Since we make the retail displays in batches of 500 we rip a LOT of oak for the frames!!. Up until Tom's ceramic blade, I have used three major blades; a Freud 50 tooth combination (oldy but goody); a Systemic 60 tooth blade and of course my top of the line Forrest WW II blade (I have two that I rotate between using and sharpening). 

3. The bottom line is the ceramic blades WORK!!.  I have used one of Tom's latest ceramic blade for about two weeks now and I have ripped over 1500 lineal feet of 5/4 and I resawed about 500 lineal feet of 8/4 red oak.  Next week we start another run and that will be another 1500 to 2000 lineal feet. 

4.  There are three main things I like about the ceramic blade:  ripping speed, quality of cut and the apparent durability.  The ripping speed is FAST.  Since I rip so much wood, speed becomes a real issue.  With the ceramic blade, the blade will cut almost as fast as I can feed it.  (We use a General 350 TS, 3 HP with Bies fence).  Unlike any carbide tipped blade, the ceramic blade works better at a FASTER feed rate than slower.  And yes, you can feed it TOO fast, but overall, the ripping speed is noticeably faster than the WWII or my old standby, the 50 tooth combo Freud. 

The quality of the cut is very, very good.  I will admit it is not quite as good as a new or freshly sharpened Woodworker II blade.  But, by varying the feed rate, I can very close to the WWII cut. 

My sense is Tom’s ceramic blade has excellent durability.  I can slightly dull my WWII blade in about1500 feet of ripping 5/4 oak, and start to see a decline in the cut quality and I have to use a lot slower feed rate. On my last ripping run, the ceramic blade wasn't even hot after a couple of hours of solid ripping.  The cut quality was the same on the first board and the last oak board and the feed speed was just as fast (no need to slow down the cut). 

I also tried the ceramic blade on two side melamine.  VERY good cut. Almost no chipout on the bottom.... but I did have a zero clearance throat plate installed and my saw and Bies fence is quite accurate (blade parallel within .002 of miter slots, fence .007" out of parallel at the back). 

Net, ceramic cutting tools is a very exciting technology. maybe not for the hobby woodworker, but for anyone doing a lot of cutting in "hard" or "abrasive" wood, check it out.  Please feel free to call or email if I can answer any questions.

11. Glen Bradley, Home user

I had used a Flat Top Grind 24 tooth rip blade with mixed results. Better results were achieved with a router bit and the router table but, an 1/8” bit is delicate and I sometimes wanted more capacity than I could find readily available. The circular saw blade gave me the depth I was after but had drawbacks.

Despite jigs and backer boards, the 24 tooth rip blade could still cause a bit of unpredictable tear out. The miter-key-slot cutting step is just a step or two prior to adding the finish on a box. This hands you the opportunity to ruin all your work that led up to this point. Thus began my quest . . .

After a bit of casting around I decided that what I needed was a Flat Top Grind blade for the table saw with a higher tooth count to provide a cleaner cut. This product was not easily located. As a matter of fact, I could not locate one currently available. Enter Tom Walz of Carbide Processors ( https://carbideprocessors.com/).

I contacted Tom about one of their existing blades to see if it would meet my needs. The blade I was asking about was close but, would not leave a true flat bottomed groove. Not to worry, Tom said he knew someone who was a wizard with cutter geometries and loved a new challenge. One thing led to another and a 50 tooth Flat Top Grind blade arrived at my door.

The Review –

The blade arrived well packed and with a protective coating on the teeth. The coating was secure but easily removed. Although the blade looked and felt clean, I gave it a wipe down prior to use just to be sure I didn’t introduce any unwanted elements.

The positive tooth pattern consists of a Flat Top Grind tooth followed by four Alternate Top Bevel teeth. Each five tooth pattern is followed by a deep gullet. The blank has no expansion slots or noise- cancellation plugs. The arbor hole fit perfectly and the blade did not introduce any detectable run-out.

My saw is a 1-3/4HP machine built by Orion prior to the appearance of Steel City Tool Works. This machine is well aligned and has never lacked for power with thin kerf blades. This would be the first full kerf blade (specifically 1/8” by design) I have run on the machine. I slipped the blade on the saw and confirmed alignment and perpendicularity to the table.

Using my newly designed miter-key jig and a scrapped box off the pile that had not passed my previous inspection, I made the first cut. The blade cut so quietly and so smoothly, it was a bit eerie. The cut came out clean at the entrance and exit points and left a beautifully flat bottomed groove ready to accept a key. I ran a similar cut on a scrap of mahogany.

The blade worked so well that the subsequent tests were almost anti-climactic; . . . yep, that one looks perfect too . . . , yep so does that one . . . , etc. Not willing to have the review be so highly focused (and therefore so short) I performed some cuts for which the blade was not specifically designed.

I grabbed a piece of quarter sawn white oak out of the scrap bin and performed a cross cut. Now, granting that the blade is brand new, the cut was still excellent without any tear out, fray or milling marks.

The crosscut came out so well, I performed a rip cut in the same 4/4 material. I also did some stopped and through grooves as you might use for spline based joinery. The result was clean with no sign of burning, mill marks or even heat buildup.

At the end of the reviewing efforts I would give the blade 5 stars. The quality is equal to or better than any of the high quality blades I have used. It performs the task it was designed for very well. It also does remarkably well on common through cuts as shown.

My experience with this blade and dealing with Tom in general will certainly have me looking to Carbide Processors to fulfill my needs for blades and other cutters in the future. I can recommend this blade to anyone performing these types of cuts and looking for top notch performance.