My Favorite Table Saw Blade

I received this question in episode 3 of the Ask Brian Boggs Show:

What’s your favorite tool … Like what’s your favorite table saw blade, and why?

This is a tricky one because I bought my first table saw two years ago. I really haven’t gotten that far into exploring blades. I used to think a lot of Forest City Tools, but the last blade I had from them was not performing well at all. The company didn’t really help me out with that. Tenryu seems to be performing the best of all that we’ve tried. We’ve tried Freud and some other low-end blades from Home Depot, and Lowe’s. We’ve tried some others, but hands down the ones we tried from Tenryu are the best. It seems to be a perfect blade. I don’t think any blade is do all. You need a cross-cut blade for miters, and cross-cuts. You need a rip blade for rips. Like any other thing that has a blade on it, you’ve got to tune the rest of tool up not just the blade. I really haven’t done that with our saw.
I bought a Saw Stop, an industrial version of Saw Stop’s machine. It’s pretty good, but I think it could use some tuning up. We just haven’t ripped it a part to rebuild it, and tune it up like I think it needs to be done. We get pretty good results from Tenryu. I will say though we have not yet gotten the level of precision from our table saw that we get from our band saws. That’s a backward story from most shops. I’m saying that because my band saws have gotten a lot of my attention. I’ve spent a lot of time tuning them up. I have not done that with the table saws. The results I’m getting from the blade are not solid.