Universal saws

The image above shows the 3 types of blade available for cutting timber. A crosscut saw is designed for cutting across the grain of the timber, will be OK on slant cuts and will struggle with rip cuts. A ripsaw is great for cutting with the grain, but very poor in the other directions. Universal blades are designed to cope with all 3 types of cut, but do not do quite as well as the specialist blades.

Z-Saw make a wide range of universal saws, so let's have a look at these. We will start with 3 screw-fitting blades:

S-175 universal

This is the second blade which comes packaged with the saw guide Best, and a very nice little saw it is.

S-265 universal

This is the saw which comes packaged with the saw guides, but is an extremely useful saw in its own right.

S-225 universal

This is a dual-purpose saw. In addition to its use with wood it has been designed to cut plastic pipes, a task that a lot of saws struggle with.

We now move on to Group D Fitting hook-type blades. Here we find:

H-200 handy

Available with either a short straight fixed handle or a lovely solid folding handle, this is a great multi-purpose saw.

H-250 universal

A relatively fine-cutting saw with 16TPI.

H-265 universal

Slightly coarser and faster at 14TPI.

VIII H-265 universal

A lovely carpentry saw with 14TPI for a smooth but fast cut, and the advantage of being able to fold the blade into the handle for protection. There is a video here showing this saw in use.

And finally a couple of heavy-duty universal blades with a different set of handles.

H-300 universal

With 11TPI this is a rather fast-cutting saw.

H-333 framing

The longest Z-Saw blade and with 9TPI a seriously fast-cutting saw.