Milwaukee is releasing the next evolution of their Ax SawZall wood blade. The newest blade is their 7-3/8″ long Rough-in SawZall blade. The new blade is very much based on the Ax, but is considerably thinner and made for cutting tighter radius’s. They claim (and we verified) that it can cut a hole of just 2-1/8″ in diameter. Since it’s got the same Nail Guard tooth design and the Fang Tip, it can also handle fast plunge cuts and nails.
Now, after using the Rough-in, we would probably still reach for the trusty hole saw when doing smaller plumbing application drilling, however using this blade for overhead can lighting and larger diameter applications would still be far easier than using a traditional blade. Demoing it with smaller holes just reinforced how much easier it is to turn on larger jobs, so it was an excellent demo nonetheless.
They also did a side-by-side demo to show the speed difference of the Ax over a standard blade. They cut through ply, framing nails, and a pressure-treated 4×4 and the Ax won by a healthy 12.2 seconds – nearly twice as fast. On top of that, the competition lost 5 teeth and the Ax still looked to be in good shape.
The next demo involved a scenario whereby we were cutting out an OSB-covered window frame-in. While Milwaukee outlined am overly-complex methodology for the typical cutting out of the window, it was still a great demo for their Flush-cut blade. The blade tracks along the stud, allowing you to easily cut out a window without having to worry about overcutting the frame. The Flush-cut blade definitely have a straighter cut and it seemed somewhat faster as well.
Cutting out a footer 2×4 for a door was a much more impressive demo. The flush cut blade allows you to get right down flush and the twin floor guards which sit lower than the teeth stop the blade from eating through into the floor and damaging the teeth on concrete, etc.
Milwaukee also showed off a couple of new accessories. One was a new 30 degree knuckle adapter for its cordless impact drivers. This was a great little tool that is especially designed to work with impact driver tools to facilitate tighter spots where the body of the drill simply won’t go. It’s the kind of tool you won’t need all the time, but you’ll be happy to have around when the job demands it. We tested it out quite a bit while we were in the demo area and it had a very slick gearing mechanism that allowed it to power through driving applications in impact mode without losing connectivity to the fastener. It was a nice accessory that didn’t get a lot of attention, so we wanted to show it to you here.
The other accessory was a smaller bit case that held a bunch of their Shockwave bits – including their new patent-pending ECX electrical screw bit (which we spotted in the case). The ECX bit is now our favorite and should really start gaining some traction in the industry. The case also doubled as an emergency manual screwdriver in the event that a tool you were using ran out of juice during a fastening job. It’s not the primary purpose of the case, but it was a nice thought to tack on.
