Band saws are mostly used for industrial applications such as sawmills, cutting large stocks of lumber to size, especially where curved cuts are required. Versions made for home woodshop use are smaller but just as useful. These models will cut through wood thicknesses of up to 6 inches in either straight or curved cuts. Observe the proper safety guidelines, such as wearing safety goggles and suitable clothing.

A band saw blade consists of a toothed steel loop welded at the ends, moving on two encased wheels, which provide a continuous cutting edge. Home shop models have blades ranging from 1/8 inch to ¾ inch wide. Narrower blades are designed for cutting tight radius curves, while the wider blades are used for making more straight cuts. The teeth of the blades have a spacing of from 6 to 24 teeth per inch (called the pitch). Finer pitches are intended for cutting metals, and the larger pitches are good for cutting large sections of lumber.

Saw Tooth Shapes

Wood chisels are hand tools designed to trim wood and clear away the waste material from mortises and joints. They roots go all the way back to the late Stone Age, when crude rock and then flint was used for general purpose chiseling and cutting. Later, wooden handles were added.

Anyone that has been faced with the need to create a good joint either into or around a corner, knows that just having one piece of material butting up against another does not produce a neat job. Instead you need to cut angles into the material, so that both pieces adopt the shape of the interior or exterior angle forming the corner; requiring you to cut 45 degree angles through the material.

Top reviews on consumer review sites consistently go to both Makita and Bosch for their compound mitre saw models. For 10 inch blade models, the Bosch 4410L, which is priced around the 500$ point, comes out on top. A close second is the Makita LS1013L, which handles slightly less well.