Fish, Chips and Saw-blades

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Late post today; I'd been working down the studio workshop all day and then we went over to see the boys for an early Fish and Chip supper at their place this afternoon so I've only just sat down. The fish and chips were from Enoch's in Valley and mighty fine they were, too; I can recommend them highly.

I took delivery of some new blades for the table saw today from Rutlands' tool supplies. The OEM blade that came with saw was a rather poor general purpose blade that frankly was none-too-sharp from the off and was too coarse for fine cross-cut stuff, anyway. The set of three came as in the picture: a 24 tooth rip blade, a 48 tooth GP and an 80 tooth for finer cross-cut work. I decided to try out the 80 tooth before we set out this afternoon: what a joy. It sliced it's way through some of that 100 plus year old pitch pine like it was butter, leaving a nice clean cut with no chipping or tear-out; and the design of the blade makes it much quieter than the original, too. I've got some lengths of softwood to rip down tomorrow, so I'll give the 24 tooth job a try-out.

I've also got my dad's old bench-top bandsaw lurking in the back room of the studio, which I intend to dismantle and repair in the near future: another project! Next spring, I'll get the old man's metal lathe up and running: I'll probably move both it and the rather more substantial 12-foot bench from the smaller shed and just use that for the gardening stuff in the future. I'll probably use the smaller bench for metalwork and the twelve-footer for wood. We'll see...

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