I've owned radial arm saws continuously for 44 years, and had grown to accept the problem of the saw trying to climb the workpiece and jump back at the user when crosscutting. I read the recent discussions regarding hook angle for RAS blades, and said damn, where have I been not to know this? I dug out the owners manual(yellowed with age but still intact) for my Craftsman RAS and it discussed "climb" and recommended a stiffarm technique for pulling the saw back thrugh a workpiece. No mention anywhere of negative hook angles, but but this is an old saw and an old manual and I figured maybe the relatively recent advent of the chop saws led to the development of the negative hook tooth design.
So, I've put up with the awkwardness of pulling the saw back through the work while at the same time trying to keep it from taking the initiative from me for all these years and was hot to buy a negative hook blade. I visited both the Freud and Forrest web sites for blade recommendations.
The Freud website logic chain for blade selection led to a recommendation of a thin kerf 15 degree positive hook angle, and the Forrest website recommends the WW1, with a 5 degree positive hook, for RAS's. So I decided I might be better off to go with recommendations from users.
What specific blades would you other users recommend for smooth crosscuts and no climbing? and are they standard or thin kerf? And for the Forrest users, are the stabilizers necessary or a ripoff?