Jigsaw blades for WOOD

My Experience:

Jigsaw blades that make clean cuts in melamine are few that perform well on both sides of the board without resorting to tricks. But some have surprised me.

High-quality wood blades are better sharpened, suffer less from overheating, and their edge lasts longer in good condition.

Some high-quality blades for fast cuts that have slightly larger teeth cut very well and make very clean cuts if we don’t rush them too much and disable the pendulum action of the saw.

Clean cuts: if you want to make clean cuts, disable the pendulum action of the jigsaw. Set it to zero.

Blades for CURVED cuts with the jigsaw

To cut wood in curves with the jigsaw, I’m referring to slightly tight curves, there are blades available that are much narrower than usual. The idea is that they don’t rub as much on the back against the edges of the already cut groove. But they don’t perform miracles, and as soon as we push them a bit too hard, they overheat, burning both the wood and even the blade’s metal.

Interestingly, there are blades on the market for curved wood cuts that also have teeth on the back of the blade. Their appearance curiously resembles the legs of insects like grasshoppers.

In principle, this allows the back of the blade to cut the wood instead of rubbing against it, reducing overheating and making it easier to turn. But again, if we try to force the jigsaw to cut tighter curves, the blade will overheat too much. Still, I tested them and noticed that they cut more freely, more smoothly, although they create a slightly thicker groove in the board.

Extra LONG jigsaw blades for wood

Those who follow my videos on YouTube know that in my jigsaw guides, I use slightly longer blades than usual. They allow me to keep the bearings in my guides further from the base of the saw, so they don’t interfere when cutting wood. Otherwise, I could only cut thin wood.

Length of wood-cutting blades

Jigsaw blades have a more or less standard length, but in some cases, that length can vary significantly. Let’s see what these lengths are approximately, depending on whether they are normal, short, or long and extra-long blades.

• • Normal length of cutting blades: Approximately 10cm.
    This is more or less the length that typical blades sold for cutting wood with a jigsaw usually have.

• • Length of blades for cutting curves in wood: They are usually around 8cm. We’re only going to cut tight curves in boards of a somewhat limited thickness, so it doesn’t make much sense for these blades to have the normal length. And if they were longer for thick wood, they would deviate a lot vertically. However, the blade that also has teeth on the back measures 11.4cm.

• • Long jigsaw blade length: 15cm. For when we need to cut thick wood, such as a not-too-thick beam.

• • Extra-long blade length: I’ve seen some that are 18cm long. These blades are longer than the normal long ones and allow us to cut slightly thicker wood. It’s likely that the brand has decided to sell slightly longer blades, and we can probably find them in different lengths.

• • Length of Wolfcraft super long wood-cutting blades: 25cm long. When I tested these very long blades, I thought they would bend too much, but they made a pretty decent cut. They might be interesting for pre-cutting thick wooden beams.

Longer blades allow you to cut thicker wood, of course, but remember that jigsaw blades tend to bend, and that also happens with longer blades. Sometimes we use the jigsaw to easily pre-cut wood pieces, and when we have more manageable pieces, we use other machines or tools to make the final cuts.

Thick blades for professional saws

To reduce the annoying problem of blades bending vertically and causing inclined vertical cuts in the wood, there are blades made with thicker metal sheets on the market that are more rigid. Thanks to this, their tendency to flex sideways is much lower, and they make a straighter vertical cut. However, they don’t work 100%, and the cut with the jigsaw can still come out slightly crooked, though always less so.

But why do I say they’re for professional saws? Well, because the guide wheel on jigsaws has a groove that can be thicker or thinner. In the DIY jigsaws I have, that groove is somewhat narrow, and these thicker blades don’t fit, whereas, in the professional saw, they do.