Sawsall blades

Hi is it just me or do DeWalt blades seem to break and bend easily?. I like the Diablo and Irwin alot better I have not broken or bent a Diablo blade yet and im pretty hard on blades. What about spyder blades? How do those fair?. Anyone ever use a sawsall to cut open a ac compressor does it work if you use one with tiny teeth like a hack saw has or should I start with small teeth then use one with big teeth?. Speed wise is small many teeth better or fewer teeth and bigger ?. Thanks.

I've been buying five blade packs of Ace Hardware brand sawzall blades lately. They seem to work allright. The mistakes i make are using the blades for cutting material that's too hard ... and ... pushing the blade into tight spaces where the end hits and bends the blade up.

There are three kinds of blades.

1: There is the blade for cutting thin metal. That's 24 TPI. That means there are 24 little cutting teeth for every inch of blade. It's good for cutting sheet metal and copper pipe. It will buzz right along without shaking the piece you're cutting to death.

2: There's the blade for cutting thick metal. That's got about 18 teeth per inch. ( 18 TPI ) That will go right along through thicker wall brass and steel pipe without shaking it to much.

3: There's the general purpose blade with 10 TPI. That's a coarse blade with big teeth that rips through but shakes like crazy sometimes. It's good for cutting softer materials like nail embedded wood and really thick pieces of brass.

It's mostly trial and error to figure out which blades work best for different situations.

I find i use the 4 1/2" ankle grinder with a 1/16" cutoff wheel for a lot of my scrapping jobs these days. That's what i would use for cutting open a sealed unit. The sawzall blade would keep poking into whatever is inside and bend up once you poked through the outer steel shell. You can control depth of cut a lot better with a grinder.

I tried using a steel cutting circular saw blade for cutting open 275 gallon fuel barrels a few weeks ago. It was nothing short of amazing. Awesome blade for that particular task. Saved loads of time.

https://www.harborfreight.com/search...%20saw%20blade

I have a few of the older all metal circular saws I have picked up in the last few years that I have thought about trying the metal cutting blades in for cutting sheet type items and wood with nails.

The nice older saws are mostly 6 1/2" and 7". Just have to have the proper center hole on a blade to fit.

Might just try and see what I can find for blades that will fit.

Last time I was in town I bought a interesting drill looking tool that is a all metal skill made in Chicago that seems from research is a sheetrock screw driver. It has a toggle switch on it for switching direction. It uses the little screw bits that fit in the hole on the end. The outside of the end is solid and the inside socket for bits spins.

I've still got the Milwaukee 7 1/4" circular saw that i bought as a young apprentice in the trades over 35 years ago. It still cuts true enough that i can use it for cabinet work or cutting oil barrels in half. They don't make em' like that anymore. It's from an age where their lifetime guarantee meant something.

The last Milwaukee sawzall i bought fell apart within a year or two. They ain't much nowadays.