Table Saw Blade Tooth Count Chart: Which Blade for Which Cut
Rip solid stock with 24 teeth, crosscut with 60 to 80, and run a 40-tooth ATB if only one blade lives on the arbor. Grind geometry decides finish quality more than tooth count does, and kerf width decides whether your motor can actually pull the blade through 8/4 hardwood at full depth.
Rip with 24 teeth. Crosscut with 60 to 80. If only one blade is ever going to live on the arbor, make it a 40-tooth ATB in a thin kerf and accept that it does neither job perfectly.
That is the whole answer for most home shops. The rest of this page exists because the number stamped on the blade is only one of four variables, and the other three — grind geometry, kerf width and the horsepower your saw genuinely delivers under load — are what decide whether a cut comes off clean or comes off scorched.
The horsepower column below is the one nobody publishes. Blade makers print a tooth count and a material list. They do not print the fact that an 80-tooth triple-chip in full-thickness melamine will drag a 1.5 HP contractor saw down to a groan, or that the same saw pulls a 24-tooth thin kerf through 8/4 white oak without complaint. Those are the numbers that matter on a real floor.
The chart: tooth count against grind, kerf, material and real motor demand
Every row below assumes a 10in blade at roughly 3,450 RPM on the arbor, which is where a direct-drive or single-belt saw sits. Rim speed at that spindle rate is about 9,000 surface feet per minute — high enough that carbide tips are the only sensible option and hand feed rates stay modest.
Teeth Grind Kerf What it is for Hand feed rate Edge left behind Real motor demand at full depth 24 FTG (flat top grind) 0.125in full or 0.094in thin Ripping solid stock, 3/4in through 8/4, soft or hard 10-16 ft/min Coarse and scored; needs a jointer pass before glue-up 1.5 HP thin kerf, 3 HP full kerf in 8/4 hardwood 30 FTG with rakers, or a shallow ATB rip Full or thin Mixed work in construction lumber; rip-dominant with the odd crosscut 8-14 ft/min Slightly cleaner than 24T, still visibly marked 1.5 HP thin, 2 HP full 40 ATB, 15-20 degree bevel Full or thin General purpose: rips to 1in, crosscuts hardwood, handles softwood ply 6-10 ft/min Clean enough to glue straight off the saw; light cross-grain fuzz 1.75 HP thin, 3 HP full in 8/4 50 ATB+R combination, four bevels to one raker Almost always 0.125in full The single-blade compromise for a saw that never gets changed 6-9 ft/min Respectable both directions, outstanding in neither 2 HP thin, 3 HP full 60 ATB, 20-25 degree bevel Full or thin Crosscutting hardwood, mitres, hardwood-faced plywood 4-8 ft/min Crisp, near tear-out free with a zero-clearance insert 1.5 HP — chip load per tooth is tiny 80 Hi-ATB, 30-40 degree bevel Usually 0.094in thin Veneered ply, pre-finished sheet goods, delicate cross-grain 3-6 ft/min Effectively chip-free on the top face; dulls quickly in solid wood 1.75 HP, and it will burn if you crawl 80 TCG (triple chip grind) 0.125in full Melamine, MDF, laminate, solid surface, aluminium extrusion 3-6 ft/min Clean on both faces; will never produce a glue-ready rip 3 HP — TCG loads a motor harder than any other grind Find your material in column four, read left for the blade and right for the power the cut actually needs. If that last figure is more than your saw delivers, drop to a thin kerf before you drop tooth count. Notice that tooth count and power demand do not move together. An 80-tooth Hi-ATB asks less of the motor than a 24-tooth rip blade, because each tooth is removing a sliver rather than a chip. The killer is the TCG, which has flat-top teeth doing the bulk of the work behind chamfered leaders — great for brittle material, brutal on a small induction motor.
What the four grinds are actually doing to the fibre
Tooth count tells you how many cuts per revolution. Grind tells you what shape those cuts are.
- FTG — a flat chisel across the full kerf. It ploughs. Fastest material removal per horsepower, worst surface. This is why rip blades feel effortless and leave a ribbed face.
- ATB — alternate top bevel, teeth leaning left and right in turn. Each tooth acts as a knife point that severs cross-grain fibre before the body of the tooth clears it. Bevel angle is the variable: 15 degrees is durable and general, 40 degrees is a razor that goes blunt looking at solid oak.
- ATB+R — four ATB teeth then a flat raker, repeating. The rakers clear the gullet and flatten the kerf bottom, which is why combination blades cut a usable groove where a pure ATB leaves a V.
- TCG — a chamfered tooth leading a flat tooth. The chamfer takes the centre, the flat takes the corners. Nothing else survives melamine or aluminium as long, and nothing else demands more from the motor.
Hook angle is the fifth variable and rarely printed on the box. Positive hook (15 to 20 degrees) pulls the stock into the blade and suits ripping on a table saw. Low or negative hook (minus 5 to plus 5) resists self-feeding, which is why mitre saw blades and sliding table blades run it. Fitting a negative-hook blade to a table saw makes for a safe but sluggish cut; fitting a 20-degree positive-hook blade to a mitre saw is genuinely dangerous.
Nameplate horsepower is a marketing number
A jobsite saw sold as 5 peak HP runs on a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit. That circuit can deliver 1,800 watts. One mechanical horsepower is 746 watts, so even at a fantasy 100 percent efficiency the absolute ceiling is 2.4 HP, and a real universal motor throws away a third of it as heat and noise.
The word doing the work is peak. Peak horsepower is measured at the instant of stall on a locked rotor, for a fraction of a second, at a current draw that would trip the breaker if it lasted. It is not a number you can cut wood with.
Saw and its badge claim Supply Maximum electrical input Realistic continuous output Kerf that suits it Jobsite saw, 15 amp motor, often marketed as 4-5 peak HP 120V / 15A 1,800 W 1.5-1.8 HP for a moment, less sustained Thin kerf only, and mean it Contractor saw, 1.5 HP induction 120V / 15A 1,800 W 1.3-1.5 HP continuous Thin kerf; full kerf only in 3/4in stock Hybrid saw, 1.75 HP 120V / 20A or 240V 2,400 W at 120V/20A 1.6-1.75 HP continuous Thin preferred, full kerf fine to 5/4 Cabinet saw, 3 HP induction 240V / 15A 3,600 W 2.8-3.0 HP continuous Full kerf, any tooth count Cabinet saw, 5 HP induction 240V / 20-30A 4,800-7,200 W 4.5-5.0 HP continuous Full kerf, and it pulls an 80T TCG through 3/4in melamine without noticing Any of the above with a slipping or glazed drive belt As above As above Subtract 10-20 percent and add heat Whatever it was, one step lighter Read your own supply first, then the output column. That output figure, not the badge, is what you compare against the last column of the tooth-count chart. Induction motors are honest. The 3 HP on a cabinet saw badge is continuous rated output and it will hold it all day. Universal motors, the loud ones in portable saws, are where peak ratings live. If a saw plugs into a normal socket and screams rather than hums, treat its stated horsepower as a number from a different universe.
Thin kerf or full kerf
Full kerf is 0.125in, an eighth of an inch. Thin kerf is 0.094in, three thirty-seconds. That difference is 25 percent less material turned into dust on every cut, and power demand tracks material removed almost exactly.
Under 2 HP, use thin kerf. There is no debate worth having. The saw will feed faster, run cooler and finish the cut at the same pitch it started.
Above 3 HP, use full kerf. The plate is thicker, deflects less in a long rip, and holds a straighter line through figured stock where a thin plate wanders. You have the power to spare, so spend it on stiffness.
The awkward middle is 1.75 to 2 HP. Run thin kerf for ripping and full kerf for crosscutting, where the load is momentary. And remember the arithmetic on stock: at 25 saw cuts across a sheet of expensive veneered ply, thin kerf saves you close to an inch of material. Nobody buys a blade for that reason, but it is real.
Reading a bad cut back to its cause
Most blade complaints are not blade faults. Work down this table before you spend money.
What you are seeing Most likely cause Fix Burnished brown streaks down a rip cut Too many teeth for the cut, or feed rate too slow Drop to 24T or 40T and push harder — burning is usually under-feeding Chipped top veneer on plywood crosscuts ATB bevel too shallow, no zero-clearance support 80T Hi-ATB plus a zero-clearance throat plate; the insert matters as much as the blade Chipping on the underside only Blade set too high, or tips gone dull Lower to roughly one tooth plus a gullet above the stock Motor pitch drops mid-rip and recovers Kerf too wide for the horsepower, or a glazed drive belt slipping Thin kerf, or split the cut into two depth passes Cut wanders and the board tightens near the end Fence out of parallel with the mitre slot, not a blade problem Measure fence-to-slot at the front and rear of the table before touching the blade Pitch building back up within an hour of cleaning Feeding too slowly through resinous softwood Increase feed rate; clean with a dedicated pitch remover, never oven cleaner — the caustic attacks the braze A clean cut on one side of the blade and a scored one on the other Arbor runout, or a warped plate Dial-indicate the arbor flange; anything past 0.002in TIR is the machine, not the blade Work top to bottom. The last two rows are machine faults that get blamed on blades constantly, and buying a better blade will not touch either. Feed rate is a specification, not a feeling
Feed rate is the variable most home shops never think about, and it causes more burning than every other factor combined. Push a 60-tooth blade through cherry too slowly and each tooth rubs rather than cuts. Rubbing is friction. Friction is heat. Heat is a black stripe you then have to sand out.
The chart above gives hand-feed ranges in feet per minute. To calibrate yourself: 10 ft/min is a 4ft board taking 24 seconds. Most people ripping pine are slower than that and do not realise it.
There is a chip-load formula underneath this — feed in inches per minute equals arbor RPM times tooth count times chip load per tooth — and carbide saw teeth want somewhere around 0.005 to 0.015in of chip per tooth. Run the numbers for a 24-tooth blade at 3,450 RPM and you get a theoretical feed far faster than any human hand-feeds. That gap is why power feeders exist, and why almost every hand-fed cut in a home shop is running under-loaded rather than over-loaded.
Where the Trueness Index looks on a table saw
Blade choice sits on top of machine condition, and machine condition is what the Trueness Index measures — how closely a saw holds its own published figures once it is on a real floor rather than a spec sheet.
Four checks account for nearly all of it. Arbor runout measured at the flange with a dial indicator, where anything over 0.002in total indicated runout will show as a scored face no blade can fix. Fence parallelism front to back, checked against the mitre slot and not the blade. Blade-to-slot alignment, ideally within 0.003in over the blade diameter. And rated depth of cut, which is quoted at 90 degrees on a fresh arbor and shrinks as soon as a thin kerf blade with a smaller usable radius goes on.
A saw that fails the runout check will make a premium 80-tooth blade cut like a builder's blade. Spend the money on the machine first.
What to actually keep on the wall
Three blades cover 95 percent of home-shop work: a 24T FTG rip, a 40T ATB general purpose, and a 60T or 80T ATB crosscut. Add a TCG only when sheet goods with a plastic face are regular work, because it is a specialist and a poor generalist.
The single upgrade most people underrate is a second general-purpose blade rather than a finer one. Blades come back from sharpening in a week, and a shop with one good 40T and no spare stops working the day it goes dull.
Two things not worth paying for: dampening slots cut as decoration rather than laser-cut expansion slots, and any blade sold with a stated tooth count but no stated grind. If the box will not say ATB or TCG, the manufacturer is not confident enough in the geometry to name it.