Old and New Saw Blades

December 20th, 2019
tools
Five years ago I bought a used Model 77 Skilsaw. I've used it for a bunch of house projects, and it's very versatile. I noticed that it was starting to be more work to cut things and I was getting some burning and smoking, so I decided to put on a new blade. Here's the last cut with the old blade:

And the first cut with the new one:

You can see that the old one is much rougher, where the saw has torn its way through the wood. The rings are raised, because the dull blade has torn out more of the soft earlywood the harder latewood. The edges are splintered and there are burn marks. On the other hand, the new one is smooth, because the blade was sharp enough for a clean cut. No burning, minimal splintering. It was also a much quicker and easier cut.

Mostly this is to say, sawblades are not that expensive or difficult to change, and I should have replaced this one sooner!

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Mindful posting

It is important, for the preservation of American democracy and maybe the world, that the Democrats take the House and Senate in November.

via Thing of Things September 18, 2026

There's no point at which turning your brain off will work

In early 2025, I started seeing people turn off their brain as they use LLMs1. They would have an LLM take an action (summarize text, write some code, etc.), and just assume that it worked2. This generally didn't work in early 2025 and the result was …

via Posts on September 18, 2026

My Weirdy Creatures

Over the last few days, I've been working on some little creatres. But they're very weird. I call them "weirdy creatures". I've made quite a lot of them, I think maybe 5-6, not sure. Weirdy Predator This is a weirdy predator. They'…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts September 13, 2026

more     (via openring)