What blades for thick wook (Pinewood Derby)

[KJones]

My wife works with scouts in inner city schools and I have been blessed with the job of cutting several dozen Pinewood cars.

Used this as an excuse to get my first scroll saw, a hardly-used Delta SS350. Some Delta PGT blades came with it. Had to be better than using my old jig saw, right?

So, not knowing any better I did a bit of research and found that the blades that say they will work with thick stock (Pinewoods are about 1.5 inches wide) tend to be fewer tpi, like 7-10). So I went out and got 2 Deltas, one 9.5 tpi x .024 x .062 (40-616) and the other an agressive looking 10 tpi x .025 x .187 (40-193). These cut very slowly while pushing very hard.

So, saw that Olson and Flying Dutchman were recommended and found someone fairly near to try. Sadly there didn't have much, but got a crown tooth Olson 16 tpi x .016 x 038 and talked to the guy there who recommended getting some coping saw blades and cutting them to fit. Neither of these worked very well either (but at least I have some nice new Olson blades for my coping saw).

Decided to try the PGT blades that I got with the saw, and those worked WAY better that those that were supposed to be for thick stock. The 12 tpi x .018 x .040 (40-670) seems to work best although the 10 tpi wasn't bad either.

So, any ideas why blades recommeded for thick stock don't work well? Maybe I just picked the wrong types, or could it be user error?

Thanks for the help and insights!

KJ

[Max]

KJ,

It seems you are on the right track. Here's a link to an Olson blade chart from Sloan's Woodshop. http://www.sloanswoodshop.com/PDF/blade%20chart.pdf

Hope this helps.

[Jediscroller]

Depending on the wood (and pine is actually one of the tougher woods to cut) I use either #9 or #12 FD-SR's. I've tried others but keep coming back to these. These are 8 and 7 TPI respectively. As with anything, the thicker the wood, the less teeth you want. Even though they're reverse tooth, they've smoked every other blade I've compared them to (on thick wood).
As an FYI, what I did (and what I would recommend) is try different blades from different manufacturers and decide what works best for your cutting style. I tried blades from 3 different mfg's in 1.5" - 2" thick hardwoods.