Hey everyone. This will be my first post on the site.

I am looking for a top of the line blade to cut porcelain tile. I currantly use Pearl abrasive blades. Im not overly happy with the blade life when cutting hard porcelain tiles. I even use a dressing stone! Price is no concern for me. Time is money!

some of the porcelain specific blades use a softer alloy in the rim to expose the diamonds faster. Hence the short blade life. The dressing stone just strips away more metal to expose fresh diamond chips and shortens blade life even more.

I can't recommend a brand, but I've had cheap no name blades outperform Pearl by a long shot and others that last a couple of days. It seems to be a bit hit and miss.

The last three jobs I did were porcelain, and I trashed out a good blade on the first one. I bought a new one for the second job and it worked okay. I'm using it while finishing up the third job and it's starting to track out of line already. It's only six weeks old, and these are the only two jobs I've used it on.

I've been considering adding an additional charge to porcelain jobs (of significant size) to include a new blade. I could get a moderately priced blade for $75 and if it's junk at the end of the job, I'll keep a good one on the side for other jobs.

Right Kman .... especially some of the diagonal cuts with a snap cutter. Some of those porcelain tiles just won't cut right.

Funny you should mention the snap cutter. After the first job, I didn't even bother getting my snap cutter out for the other two jobs. Pretty much a waste of time. One of those jobs I mentioned in another thread where I had so much trouble cutting a hole in the middle of a tile. Those things are tough!

I like the Felker TM 5 Diamond tile saw blade. You can cut porcelain and granite.