Saw blades tend to get gummed up with pitch and glue from all the various woods you saw. I have been doing a lot of hard wood and noticed some burning in my maple cuts. The blade was looking pretty gunky. I always blew off cleaning saw blades as not being that important, but decided to give it a shot. My table saw blade is pretty new and is starting to perform poorly.

There are various products out there for blade cleaning, but Internet searches suggested simple green or laundry detergent. I always keep simple green around so I started with that.

30 or so minutes of soaking later and a scrub with a stiff plastic brush and the blade looked practically brand new!

No more pitch or burned in junk. I was starting to think the carbide had some thermal damage, but no, it looks great. It worked out so well I went ahead and tried it on my big miter saw blade.

A simple green soak plus a little scrubbing puts you back on top. I was thinking I needed to replace this blade, but after the cleaning it cuts like new. Carbide wears out eventually, but not cleaning makes it seem worse than it actually is.