Milwaukee Tool just announced a new Nitrus Carbide circular saw blade for framing and demolition applications, and they’re making some bold claims about it.
The new 24-tooth 7-1/4″ blade is designed for circular saws and miter saws, with launch pricing of around $25 per blade.
Milwaukee says, with bold emphasis my own:
Our 7-1/4″ 24T NITRUS Carbide Framing & Demolition Circular Saw Blade offers the Fastest Cutting and Longest Life in Framing and Demolition Applications.
delivers the best-in-class cutting solution for framing and demolition applications offering the fastest cuts and longest life
The NITRUS Carbide blade provides unmatched durability, delivering the fastest cuts after encountering nails.
It’s designed for use in a range of materials which can basically be summed down to wood, engineered wood, wood with nails or screws, and roof shingles.
Here’s a look at the new Milwaukee Nitrus Carbide circular saw blade.
I recently had a call with a Milwaukee Tool product manager about the new blade, during which they showed me impressive competitive testing results. I just received a test sample today, and so it’ll take me some time to test and vet the performance claims for myself.
In the meantime, let’s talk about what goes into the new blade that Milwaukee says makes it so good at demo and framing applications.
First, the venting keeps the blade cooler, which reduces heat buildup, and that contributes to straighter cuts. This is important – we’ll talk about this again below.
But perhaps most importantly, let’s talk about the carbide teeth.
Milwaukee is using induction welding to secure the carbide teeth to the blade, and they optimized the size, shape, and composition for greater durability.
I asked them to explain this, and they said it basically comes down to what happens when a tooth hits a nail.
Milwaukee said that when blades constructed with brazed tips and other traditional methods are damaged, this often results in large chunks of the carbide teeth breaking off, if not an entire tip or more.
With how they are designed and induction welded in place, the tips of the Nitrus Carbide blade will chip rather than break off, with less impact to cutting performance.
Milwaukee didn’t go into engineering-level details about the carbide tip geometry or composition, but we talked a bit more about how they’ve achieved a stronger connection between the tip and blade.
The way I understand it, this is like when you have a strong glue joint in wood where the glue joint is stronger than the wood. I have seen this before, where wood will fail at high loads well before the glue joint fails.
It seems Milwaukee did something similar here with the new demo and framing saw blade.
So, you might still have damage when a hard carbide saw blade tooth tip hits a hard metal nail or screw. But, because of how the carbide tip is designed, supported, and welded, it holds up better.
A circular saw blade with a chipped tooth tip will perform better than one with large chunks of carbide tips missing, if not entire tips. Milwaukee’s claim of these blade shaving the sharpest and longest-lasting carbide teeth among framing and demo blades seems believable to me.
On top of all of that, Milwaukee says that the blade lasts longer in framing applications as well, compared to competing framing and demolition blades.
It probably wasn’t conveyed to me for sharing, but the product manager said they had a bit of a hard time getting samples back from field testers because the blades kept going and going. Normally worn or damaged accessories are returned to Milwaukee for analysis, but that was hard to do with the blades lasting so long.
Milwaukee says their Nitrus Carbide blade “outperforms competitive solutions” and that you can “use one blade [for] demo to frame.”
They also say it can be used for aggressive demolition applications and back to clean wood cutting. Not having to change blades between such cutting tasks is described as a significant productivity benefit, and I can definitely see that.
Milwaukee says their new blade cuts faster and lasts considerably longer.
Price: $25
Model no. 48-41-0750
Not Doing Demo Work or Cutting Nails?
Price-wise other demo and framing blades are priced at around $15 each, sometimes more or less depending on the brand.
If you’re not cutting through roofing materials or nail and screw-embedded wood, Milwaukee’s 48-40-0740 7-1/4″ framing blade features 24 teeth and a thick kerf. They say it delivers the straightest cuts and longer life.
They also have a thinner kerf framing blade as well for users that don’t have a higher powered brushless saw or high output battery to run it with.
Shown here is the thin kerf 24T framing blade, model 48-40-0720. They’ve changed the styling as well, but the big takeaway is the diamond-shaped cutout pattern.
It seems that Milwaukee saw enough cooling improvements that they’re updating older SKUs. The thick kerf blade shown above has similar cutouts.
I was told that the “M” pattern of the diamond-shaped cutouts is merely coincidental, but I’m not sure I buy that.
Which Milwaukee 7-1/4″ 24T Circular Saw Blade to Buy?
Here’s a quick summary.
Framing Blade (48-40-0720): long life, ~$10 (or ~$17 for 2)
Thick Kerf Framing Blade (48-40-0740): straightest cuts, long life, ~$10-12
Nitrus Carbide Demo and Framing Blade (48-41-0750): fastest cutting, longest life, $25
Question for Readers
For those of you that use 7-1/4″ 24 demo and framing circular saw blades, how often do you typically go through a blade before having to replace it? What’s everyone’s take on this one?
