There are two main considerations to take into account: What material are you cutting? Is it-manufactured board such as MDF or Plywood or is it solid timber? If it’s solid timber, are you mainly ripping or crosscutting?

There is a large variation of saw blades on the market, many of them have noise reduction and anti-vibration features. Most worth using these days are tungsten carbide- tipped. Tungsten gives the saw tooth greater hardness and durability and a better edge holding capacity, but it can be slightly brittle and requires some care.

It’s important to keep your blades free from a build up of gum and timber resins, turps will work for this. Some have Teflon coating and are less likely to gather timber resin. Store your blades in their packaging or with cardboard or paper between individual blades so the tips never make contact with other saw teeth or metal.

The tooth design can vary greatly, as can the number of teeth. A rule of thumb is that when ripping solid timber, the blade needs fewer teeth, this enables you to cut easily along the grain. The fewer teeth a blade has, the less resistance there is. A total of 24 teeth is a fairly typical tooth configuration for ripping. The gullets are designed to remove the waste material as you cut.

The disadvantage of a ripping blade is that it will leave a rough finish along the edge of your board. If you use it for crosscutting solid wood or for MDF or plywood, it will chip out severely.

Often a blade is described as ATB, if a blade is described as having a 20° ATB, it means that alternating teeth are bevelled at 20°in the opposite directions to reduce chipping out. The leading edge of each tooth scores the surface of the timber leaving a cleaner edge. Ripping blades tend to have a steeper rake than crosscut blades. Some come with a raker tooth between the alternate bevel, this acts like a plane and cleans the surface of the cut giving you a very good finish straight off the saw.

A blade designed for crosscutting will have a lot of teeth usually a total number of between 80-96 teeth overall. These blades make a smooth cut with very little chipping of the surface fibres. If you are cutting manufactured board with a Melamine laminate, an alternate bevel with a high angle such as 40° will prevent this very brittle material from chipping.

A TCG (Triple Chip grind) has every second tooth ground at the edges to 45° and the alternate teeth flat across the top. This style of blade is recommended for laminated board and is often fitted to panel saws that have a scribing blade that score the line first before the main blade makes the cut. This style of blade is also used for non-ferrous metals. For this purpose, it usually has a negative rake as it is often fitted to mitre saws.