Questions and requests for advice as I'm starting out

[Cruiser]

there are plenty of thin-kerf 10" blades on the market that are actually about 1/2 the thickness of a skilsaw blade, and give a much cleaner cut because they're generally used in fine woodworking, I even have a couple that are 3/64" and about 180TPI. the larger blades mean far les tearout, an important consideration with fibrous woods like WRC or EWC

The 7.5" thin kerf are much thinner than the 10" thin kerf blades. I have both and use both. Typically you aren't cutting very thick material for strips, so putting the 7.5" blade on a 10" tool is common and saves wood.
For "cross cutting" operations, the larger blade and more teeth is going to give you a finer/better cut, however, cutting strips is almost an exclusively "ripping" operation and the last thing you need is more teeth, you want thin kerf to remove less wood (requires less power) and far fewer teeth (i.e. 24 on a 7.5" blade) designed for ripping. The fewer teeth give bigger gullets between teeth to let the courser fibers get clear of the cut. If you try and use a cross cut blade (i.e. 180 teeth) for ripping then you get a lot of burned wood and possibly ruined blade.

 

[scoutergriz]

The 7.5" thin kerf are much thinner than the 10" thin kerf blades. I have both and use both. Typically you aren't cutting very thick material for strips, so putting the 7.5" blade on a 10" tool is common and saves wood.
For "cross cutting" operations, the larger blade and more teeth is going to give you a finer/better cut, however, cutting strips is almost an exclusively "ripping" operation and the last thing you need is more teeth, you want thin kerf to remove less wood (requires less power) and far fewer teeth (i.e. 24 on a 7.5" blade) designed for ripping. The fewer teeth give bigger gullets between teeth to let the courser fibers get clear of the cut. If you try and use a cross cut blade (i.e. 180 teeth) for ripping then you get a lot of burned wood and possibly ruined blade.

as a contractor and woodworker for over 45 years, I can definitely tell you that there are far thinner "cabinet maker's" blades than any you can find for a skilsaw because of the simple fact that you can use blade stabilizers with them and vibration is far less of an issue because the motor vibrations do not get transmitted to the arbour. Lower teeth counts open up far more chance of ripping the fibers as opposed to cutting them cleanly especially if the higher tooth blades have gullets for clearing sawdust, their only disadvantage is they require you to cut slower. My cleanest ripping blades have 72 teeth and a gullet every 12 teeth and are 0.05" thick, the thinnest available circular saw blade is 0.0625 and only available in 6 1/2"

 

[Cruiser]

Just so I make sure we are both talking about the same thing SG ... I am only talking about ripping strips ... there are a whole variety of wood working operations that use a large variety of different blades ... so I am keeping this focused on strips for canoes, which means generally we are ripping softwoods.

Whether I check Wood Magazine blade selection guide or the Frued blade selection guides, they say the same thing, lower tooth count and bigger gullets to remove waste for ripping operations and thin kerf for less waste and lower load on the saw.

For strips I use a 7.25" 24 tooth carbide blade with a .059" kerf ... this blade is not really anything special, just a Diablo brand from Home Depot, the Diablo 10" version for my radial is almost double that thickness. I couldn't find any 10" ripping blades currently available, that are even close to that thickness for ripping strips.