Home Improvement Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for contractors and serious DIYers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Bought a new saw blade, most expensive one I've seen and it still burns the wood and takes some pushing to get through. I am ripping 1 3/4 thick oak with the grain. Blade is Orange Chrome Heavy Duty Multi Purpose Carbide 10" x 0.126" 60 TCG
Am I expecting too much? Wrong type of blade? Bad blade?
High tooth count will give smooth results in most cases, but they can heat up in hard wood. More teeth leads to more friction. It's probably a fine all purpose blade, but ripping a hardwood like oak, especially very thick boards, is probably a reason to use a dedicated ripping blade.
Ripping blades have 24-30 teeth, and the tooth profile is flat on top. Some may have a slightly thicker kerf to avoid binding if the board twists or pinches when it's cut. Each tooth takes a bigger bite, but when you're going with the grain, you can afford to do that. Fewer teeth means less friction and heat.
Check that your rip fence is parallel to the blade. If not, you could be forcing the workpiece into the blade as you feed.
Rip cutting a length of hardwood like oak is a much tougher job than cross cutting and you're trying to cut through a very thick piece. Note this is dangerous on a table saw, and especially if there's high feed resistance. Do not push harder to feed faster hoping to avoid the burn marks! Instead, you have to avoid the situation that is overworking your blade and/or motor.
You say it's a new blade so it's probably not gummed up with pitch yet and it hopefully is still sharp. Many hardwood species will burn (get the black scorch marks) if the blade is binding and cutting too slowly or if your feed rate is too slow. Species like cherry are very susceptible to this.
You say it's hard to feed, so you likely have one or more of these situations, some of which have already been mentioned:
Assuming you have already thickness-planed the oak, one way to do this kind of cut is to set your blade height to just barely more than half the thickness and run it through once on each side. This is easier for any blade and table saw to handle. Note that for the FIRST pass you have to have most types of blade guards removed (but it's an embedded cut), but you should still replace the guard before the flip cut since it can pass the splitter.
By the way, although it is certainly feasible to make that cut on most table saws with the right blade, it would be vastly easier and also far safer to make thick rip cuts like that on a band saw.
you have the wrong blade. 24tooth ripping blade is what you want. please have someone with experience show you how to use the digit cut off tool. I say this because the RED FLAG that popped up when you stated "it takes some pushing to get through". That's a no no, let the blade do the work and you should never have to force lumber to cut it. fyi fingers n thumbs don't grow back and table saw will remove then in a blink of a eye.
