I’ve used many blades from Sawstop, Tenryu, Ridge Carbide, Freud, etc… This is not my first expensive blade that is supposed to be the best. I’ve also had my go at blades between the 24-tooth rip style up to about 80-tooth finish blades. This 2-blade combo is so far beyond the others that it’s not funny.

I change blades frequently because it’s fast and easy on my saw. I always turn the saw on and listen to the sound of the blade without cutting anything because every blade sounds different. Then I usually do a few different cuts to hear the blade under a load; the sound is always different and it helps me to hear when something isn’t right later on. The interesting thing is that I barely heard a change in pitch on the combo blade with a slow feed rate and I’ve never experienced that before. Even with my best blades on sheet goods, the pitch changes and either I have chips or the occasional smell of heat if I feed too slowly while trying to avoid chipout. With the combo blade, there were fine fuzzy little shavings. Yep, just like another reviewer, shavings. I was cutting Baltic Birch and without using a backer, only the very last singular fiber on the board would break. Again, no backer. If I hesitated just a moment on the last few fibers, I could cut them cleanly every time, no blowout, no backer board. I was completely dumbfounded.

My Tenryu makes a good cut but not that good. My Ridge Carbide cuts alright but I’ve never been as impressed with it and it doesn’t feel Nearly as clean or smooth. I always have chipout on the underside with Ridge, even if small. The Leitz had zero chipout below and in back. I could cause a tiny amount of burning if I personally was sloppy, but it was negligible; I actually had to try in comparison to the other blades. If I fed normally, the cut edge had that perfect balance of a clean cut and burnish that left a smooth and polished edge. Holy $h**! that’s a good blade. I was like I was using my festool track saw (I know, same MFG).

I have MDF, CDX, Baltic Birch, hardboards, domestic lumber, and several exotic hard woods. I am fairly certain I will only be purchasing Leitz blades from here on out because of the performance.

Toss out the Forrest and the Ridge. Most people compare them as a close cut quality and the cut is trash if you compare to the Leitz. Plus you’ll save money buying Leitz anyway. The Tenryu is also good, but you’re only going to get crosscut blades. Freud is alright but I’ve come to look at them as main stream and emergency blades since you won’t get nearly the same life out of them. Leitz still works out to a better deal when compared to the other well known top end blades and honestly, I wish I would have known someone that owned Leitz before before I bought all of the others; I would have saved a lot of money. Buy Leitz and be happy