Jigsaw Blades - Straight Cut - Plywood (Hardwood)

[sunnybob]

had the jigsaw since new, its always been rubbish.
Rephrase that, the machine has always started and run normally. The blades have ALWAYS bent and twisted withing seconds of starting a cut. hardwood, soft wood, construction timber or ply, straight or curved cut, old blade new blade, all branded makita.
it is always my weapon of last resort.
The teak was just too high to resaw on the bandsaw today. Whatever you say about teak, it is a beautiful wood to work with.

 

[worn thumbs]

Had to use the makita jigsaw today, all it had to do was cut a dead straight line across 24 cm of 4 cm thick teak. The teak is soft as butter. The jigsaw went wonky half way across and the blade tilted all by itself.
Horrible things jigsaws.

Theres something very wrong with that situation.We need to know more to determine what it might be.Is the jigsaw a very basic version,rather than one that is made for serious professional use?Was the blade correctly selected for such thick material?Is there a detent to hold the base square to the blade?Was a fence being used?

 

[sunnybob]

No fence, just a pencil line to follow. I can follow pencil lines fine. Its a makita, couldnt tell you the number off hand, but it has had very little use because of the poor performance of the blades.
The upper line was pretty close, once the wood was turned over, the bottom of the cut took a turn to one side.

I had a black and decker jigsaw many many years ago. It did the same.
Thats why I looked really hard at the mafell, but that thing with the tilt base is more expensive than any other single piece of equipment I own

 

[worn thumbs]

Unless the saw is very badly worn,it simply shouldn't do that.If the base is fixed one variable is eliminated.The blade I would choose for 4cm thick timber would be a Bosch T101D and I would use a fair amount of the oscillation of the thrust rollers.If the saw doesn't have variable oscillation,you are probably asking it to work beyond it's limits as that type are for light DIY jobs only.My £85 Hitachi would do it easily and I still regret not spending the extra £20 for an equivalent Bosch.I have used a couple of slightly older Mafells and while not bad they are not worth two and a half times the cost of a top line Bosch.

 

[sunnybob]

food for thought. With a 100% poor performance from my jigsaws, I assumed that was what all of them were like.
I shall try a better blade first to see if there is any improvement.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

When I bought my 18v Dewalt I was surprised to see the stated capacity was so great, so I gave it a try. The thickest wood I had was 4" softwood (and the longest blade I had was adequate for that) and I thought that was a bit extreme for a jigsaw, but it did a perfectly clean curved cut over eight or nine inches - at a perfect right angle on entry, right the way through and on exit.