Making the World's Best™ Saw Blades 

It has been thirty years since anyone set out to build the best saw blade in the world using the latest

technology. What we have done is what has been done repeatedly in the tool industry but not for a great long time.  Making our World's Best™ saw blades requires close attention to the different stages and elements that go into making a saw blade.  We have outlined the meticulous steps we take and the best materials we use to construct longer lasting, smoother cutting saw blades.

Design & Material
An excellent saw blade starts with the steel saw plate. The world’s finest blades use steel made from ultra pure materials and use proprietary heat treat technology. The saw plate is designed using finite element analysis to sculpt and tension the saw plate so that the energy is directed into the cut Proper plate design gives longer blade life and straighter cuts. Waste energy comes out as noise and heat so a good saw blade runs quieter and cooler.

Laser Cutting
The steel saw plate is precision laser cut. Then each notch is individually ground out to remove the heat affected zone. Each notch is carefully cut so as to leave the surface with proper roughness for a strong, consistent braze.

Heat Treating
Every plate is heat treated for hardness to give it strength but hardness alone is not enough. The saw plate and the heat treat cycle must be very carefully controlled to give proper hardness without brittleness. A hard saw plate that is just hard will shatter under very little use.

Tensioning
Each saw plate is precision rolled and tensioned, then hand hammered as necessary to make it perfect. Our equipment is so good that very little hand hammering is require. Hand hammering is a very valuable tool but it can severely damage a saw blade. The hammering can compress and harden the steel leading to a source of cracking. Hand hammering is like filling joints with putty. It can be a very valuable technique. Our approach is to design the manufacturing process as much as possible so it is not needed.

Flattening
Every saw plate is cut from flat, really flat material. However every process of making a saw blade can distort the saw plate. During heat treating our plate is clamped under tremendous pressure to prevent warping and movement. Even after this the plates are inspected and reflattened if necessary. The steel saw plate is kept flat and reflattened as necessary during the entire manufacturing cycle. The plate must be flat to position the teeth well. It must be very flat to grind the saw blade to tolerances of under 0.001” (under one – one thousandth of an inch).

Modern Saw Tipping Material
C-4 carbide was a very valuable material in World War II. It was originally designed for giving fine finishes in steel where corrosion was a problem.  It has been sixty years since the U.S. Army and Buick created the “C-4” and other classifications for WW II.  Traditional carbide grades are cemented materials where the tungsten carbide grains are cemented together with cobalt. This is like poured concrete. Modern tungsten carbide has reinforcing much like rebar wired together. No one builds anything major using concrete anymore without rebar.  Cermets and ceramics have replaced standard tungsten carbide in about 60% of all metalworking applications. Carbide came to wood working from metal working and so are cermets and ceramics.

Inspect, Inspect, Inspect
Much is made of the tungsten carbide and cobalt chemistries of saw tips. This is like assessing the quality of furniture by the equipment in a workshop. Most people use the cobalt percentage, hardness and Transverse Rupture Strength to measure carbide performance. These are just three of the over fifty different things we use to determine saw tip quality.

Treat the Saw Tips Properly
Good saw tips are wear and corrosion resistant. They are made to be very hard to effect physically or chemically. Traditional preparation methods such as sandblasting or high temperature salt bath cleaning do not work very well and they subject the tips to forces that leave them stressed and susceptible to failure. Modern treatment methods treat saw tips the same way electronic components are treated; through carefully controlled electrochemical processes.  Many manufacturers simply use a solvent with possibly agitation such as ultrasonic cleaning. This is better than nothing but not the best possible solution.  See our articles on Cleaning Saw Blades and Effects of Cleaners on Saw Blades .

Brazing
Traditionally brazing has been just a means to hold the saw tip on the steel saw body. Instead we use a carefully designed brazing process that holds the saw blade on with much greater tensile strength as well as creating a suspension effect. If you understand the difference between driving a car with no suspension and driving a car with a good suspension you will appreciate this.  The Manganese we add to brazing materials makes them more expensive and harder to use but it also dramatically makes a difference in saw blades to the point where tip loss and breakage are all but eliminated.

Grinding
Each blade is precision ground using a multi axis CNC grinder with 600 grit, man - made diamond, high frangible wheels.  The wheels are 600 grit with man made diamonds to give proper fracture characteristics. Diamond size alone is not enough; the diamonds must fracture so they precisely remove the exact quantity of material in the proper manner. A diamond that wears wrong will round and create rubbing and excess heat which can destroy a saw tooth.  See our article on Diamond Grinding, or visit the Saw Sharpening Section for more articles on Grinding Saw Blades.

Coolant
Our saw blades are ground using strictly clean machine coolant. Saw grinding produces millions of hard, sharp particles of carbide and diamond. If these are not constantly removed you will get less even grinds and microfracturing. 

Tolerances
Each blade is ground using top quality, state of the art, rock solid grinders. This is extremely important because high speed wheels can move thin saw blades during grinding if the machine is not strong enough. Our quality equipment gives such great grinding precision that each tip is ground within 0.0005" (One half of one thousandth of an inch).

Inspection
Each blade is inspected and reinspected at each step of the process. We use the very finest instruments and, more importantly we use real experts who know what they are looking at.