The Great White Shark of Jig Saw Blades – Spyder Double-Sided Jig Saw Blades

Not too long ago Spyder products introduced a recip saw blade that was perfect for someone doing demolition, particularly if they had Attention Deficit Disorder. Let me explain. The blade featured teeth on the front, back and even tip of the blade. This allowed not only effortless plunge cutting, but it also let you change your mind about the direction the blade was cutting without repositioning the blade. Thus, the ADD reference. You could cut forward, back, forward, back. . . well, you get the idea. Like great white sharks, the team over at Spyder clearly believe you can never really have too many sharp teeth. Case in point, Spyder’s latest release; the double-sided jig saw blade.

That’s right, I said double-sided. Spyder sent over two of their new blades to check out, and we promptly loaded them into our well-loved Milwaukee M12 cordless jig saw. We didn’t want any pesky cords getting in our way as we twisted and turned our way through some test cuts. One thing to note here. . . with most jig saw blades, it’s obvious how to load the blade. Since you cut pushing forward, the blade goes in teeth forward. Duh! With these new-fangled double sided blades it’s easy to accidentally insert the blade the wrong direction. Not that we would ever do something that incredibly careless and stupid. We’re pseudo-professionals! But it’s something to be aware of when you go to load the blade. For clarity, you’ll find the back of the blade to to have a flat section with no teeth on the upper part of the blade. Once we got the blade properly loaded, we went after two different material types.

Blade 300010 – Wood

This blade is designed for extreme radius, fast cuts in hardwoods, softwoods and other wood-based products. One look at the ferocious teeth on this thing and it’s clear, it’s made for speed. We treated this little monster like a scroll blade and went to town twisting and turning the blade relentlessly. As you can see from the scraps of wood here, we had no trouble making turns tighter than a Mini Cooper driven by a Formula 1 racer. We found the maneuverability pretty comparable to narrow scroll jig saw blades. While there’s no doubt those sharp teeth cut fast, we did get some tear-out on the top side of the wood. In fairness, the wood we were using was very soft pine, and the result would likely have been much cleaner in a hardwood. Aside from that, the bottom and body of the cut were extremely smooth.

This got me thinking, the most maneuverable jig saw blade might ultimately be a scroll-style blade that’s extra thick in the front and tapered in back. That wide kerf would then allow the tapered back of the blade to pivot more readily. Blade manufacturers take note, HomeFixated merely asks for a modest 50% of gross sales if you manufacture a blade in this fashion. I digress. Let’s move on to the Multi-Surface blade, designed to handle laminate, fiberboard, plastics and softwood.

Blade 300011 – Multi-Surface
Since this blade was specifically made for stuff like fiberboard, we decided to task it with a circular cutout on a one inch thick Ikea shelf. The less aggressive tooth pattern on this blade made for a very smooth cut. In fact, the cut portion was smoother than the factory cut edge we started from. Sweet! The end-result was a very smooth cut in the very fibrous body of the cut, and no tear-out at the top and bottom.

The build quality of these blades is impressive. The teeth are razor-sharp. In fact, the blades are made in Germany, which means there’s probably a team of several dozen German PHD’s who spent sleepless nights ensuring every spec’ and detail were tended to in the most thorough fashion possible. And, since these blades came out before this month, you can be confident a drunken Oktoberfest didn’t interfere with things in the engineering phase. You can check out the full, glitzy promo of these blades in this youtube clip:

http://youtu.be/j3ZOGLNlJ3g

While we didn’t find the double-sided design to be revolutionary in terms of performance, we did find the blades to perform very well with their intended tasks, and with a very smooth cut. If you’re a fan of the jig saw, at just $6-ish/blade or $10 for a pair, the Spyder Double-Sided Jig Saw Blades are worth adding to your blade arsenal.