Trend Professional Pack Saw Blade Set

One sure thing about today’s saw blades is they are so much better than those of just a few years ago. I was in the market for a set of blades because I hate to use a combination blade for everything, so I spoke about this with our friends at Trend. I learned they had just released a new set of blades for the US market. This set is meant to give the buyer a great blade at a great price. They also said I would get three of them for the price of one premium blade and that I would not be disappointed. The set includes one 24T Rip Blade, one 48T Combination Blade, and one 80T Crosscut/Fine Trim Blade, in a nice three blade carrying case. I carefully inspected the blades and compared them to some of the premium blades I have in the shop. I found the carbide tips to be large and securely silverbraze bonded to the body. The blade’s precision ground high grade alloy steel plate bodies were very flat.

I have been in the middle of a big bench building project, so I put the new 24T Rip Blade in the saw and fired it up. I began ripping 8/4 silver maple boards to width, ripping down some 400 board feet of lumber with the blade. The blade was as clean as a new. One thing I was unhappy about was that the writing on the side of the blade body wore off, so if the blade were to go the sharpening shop identification may take a little longer if I sent off several rip blades at once to be sharpened. I then mounted the 80T Crosscut Blade and cut several boards to lengh. I actually prefer to cut boards to length at the miter saw however I used a crosscut sled on the table saw to test the blades. I cut the boards for both benches to rough length and then to final length after planning them to a finished size. Again the blade did not disappoint. The edges were smooth and the cuts had no tear out. I also used same 80T Crosscut/Fine Trim blade to rip plywood and the edges were great. No need to re-visit the edges as they were smooth with no tear out. All three blades performed very well in my testing. Last but not least I placed the combination blade this time in my new tabe saw, a larger 3 HP cabinet saw that I will be doing a story on very soon. I have a love/hate relationship with combination blades. I love that you don’t have to do a blade change when you want to go from rip to crosscut which is ideal, however for many ripping tasks I find the combo blade does not rip as well as a rip blade and its crosscuts aren’t as smooth as a finer toothed crosscut blade. With that being the rule of thumb for even my best combination blades I knew that I was not going to be overwhelmed by a combination blade. I just don’t like them that much. Comparing this to my Vermont American pro blade, the Trend walked all over the VA blade. Next I compared it to my CMT blade and again the cuts were smoother on the Trend. So it was now performing better than blades that cost over 90 dollars each. I then went with the Forrest, comparing it now to my best combination blade. The results were surprising, indicating to me their difference was minor with Trend losing to the Forrest but by a very small margin. I put the Trend 48T Combination blade back on the saw and used it for a set of case work.

The cuts were all smooth and I am happy to say that while these may not be the very best blades in the world they are in fact very good blades, and coming in at just over 100 dollars for the set of three they are tough to beat. I would like them to have a label that was able to last a bit longer with normal use, but this is a minor issue for me as I expect it would be for you. I would be happy to recommend this set to all my readers as I know this is surely the best bang for your buck in a set of blades I have seen. I have been using this set for the past 4 months and they are still sharp, even after getting used on a daily basis. I am constantly testing bits and blades for the website so I can’t say that I will not use other blades, but I can say this. If you are like me preferring a good rip blade and good crosscut, and if they will toss in a combination blade that holds its own, all for under 150 dollars this is a good buy. I am happy to recommend this set to you and I give it 4 stars out of 5, a solid score for a budget product.

Lance Granum