Help with Jig Saw decision.

[Steve Rowe]

Ken,

I have a PC fixed base jig saw. If it were to die today, I would replace with the Festool but given the price limitation, I would go for the Bosch.

[Corey Hallagan]

Congrats on the new saw and the new clamps(love those). The dewalt and new bosch's tied in the Wood Magazine review( Ithink it was Wood) they actually leaned to the Dewalt because of it's ability to cut up flush to the front. I am sure it will be a great saw! Enjoy!

Corey

[Ken Kimbrell]

I'd love to hear your thoughts (ie:review) on the Dewalt. With the ability to cut flush with the end of the shoe I may have to add a Dewalt to my jigsaw collection if this feature works as well as Dewalt claims it does.

Todd, the blade that you see in the saw is a new design to me, (don't know if they have been around for a while, or not?) so I wanted to give it a try just to see what it will do.

After my last post I went out to the shop and did some test cuts on some 1”x6” soft white pine (from the sawmill, unfinished), some ¾” construction grade plywood and some 1”x4” white oak.
I used first the wide blade and then a regular wood blade that came with the saw and here is how it went:

General cutting:
The DT2074 (wide blade) cut really fast in the three samples, it was very easy to maintain a straight line and the cut was very clean, the oak looked good enough to glue up, the plywood did as well, the pine was good, just not quite as good as the other two. There was almost no tear-out or splintering in any of the cuts. The 116-2 HCS blade also cut very well, just not as fast as the DT2074 and while the cuts were very clean and smooth, they were of slightly less quality as compared the DT2074 blade.

Flush cutting:
The DT2074 blade was a little difficult to control at the start of a cut because the blade is directly to the front edge of the shoe, it needs to be that way of course in order to be able to do a flush cut. To test the flush cutting feature a piece of 3/4” ply was attached to edge of my workbench top using drywall screws (not to worry, its just an old door). On the first try it went OK, leaving a small scuff on the table edge at the end of the cut. The second try was even better because I slowed the blade speed and my feed rate and that gave much better overall control, making for a cleaner end to the cut, producing an even smaller scuff on the table edge. With some practice and with a steady hand I could see someone making this cut and leaving almost no mark (or, maybe none) on the ‘other’ piece at the end of a cut.

Vibration & other stuff:
In some of the previous posts one of the concerns mentioned was vibration, and while there was very little vibration in the DW331K, there was a bit more vibration with the wider blade, the 116-2 had almost no vibration in the three types of wood.
The Dust Blower feature works very good making it a lot easier to follow your line.
As you can see by the wide design the DT2074 blade is straight line only… out of curiosity I tried a slight turn just to see what it would do, it didn’t work too well.

No doubt someone with more experience than me would get better results than mine and they would likely be able to do a better test, but this saw and the flush cutting DT2074 blade seem to work very well for me.

Time will tell of course, but for now I am a happy boy.<O</O

[Charles McKinley]

Hi All,

Unless DeWalt blades have come a long way in the last couple of years Bosch blades are head and shoulders above the DeWalt blades.

I have a Dewalt 18v jigsaw that I almost sold until I put a bosch blade in it. The blade holding power of the DeWalt is weak also.

I love my corded Bosch.