LENOX SPEED SLOT Carbide Tipped Hole Saws Review - PTR

Nov 01, 2024

LENOX SPEED SLOT Carbide Hole Saws easily cut through a variety of common jobsite materials. With the addition of carbide teeth, this hole saw should last up to 50x longer than LENOX Bi-Metal hole saws. We tested them in our shop to see how well they held up in 2X material, steel, and more.

Bimetal hole saws tackle wood-cutting pretty well—but those teeth wear down very quickly over time. It doesn’t take long before a new saw starts to drag and holes take twice as long to get through. Even clean wood wears down the teeth after just a dozen cuts or so.

To improve cutting performance and durability, LENOX welded carbide to the cutting edge of the teeth. This ups the durability of the hole saw, preventing tooth loss and handling heat much better than bi-metal. As a point of comparison, LENOX claims that the SPEED SLOT Carbide Hole Saws will last up to 50 times longer than the bi-metal models when cutting in cast iron.

LENOX has employed an aggressive cutting tooth that works quickly to saw through a variety of multiple materials. The LENOX Carbide Hole Saw tackles cuts in wood, nail-embedded wood, cast iron, stainless steel, fiber cement boards, PVC, and more.

LENOX maintained some nice ease-of-use features in these Carbide Hole Saws. The tall body of the saws let it drill through 2X lumber in a single pass. While not an unusual design, we still come across hole saws that bottom out on 2X material.

We drove it through 2X lumber as well as pressure-treated 2×6. For rough-in, these hole saws do great work. LENOX makes them in sizes from 11/16″ all the way to 6″. Of course, for those larger sizes you’d use a maximum torque right-angle drill to complete the cut.

Removing plugs can really slow you down if the hole saw lacks a way to do this easily. This really gets even more significant when working at height, overhead, or in an attic. The SPEED SLOT design has been around for a while—and we love it. It gives you fast and easy plug removal with a standard slotted screwdriver. Speed Slot features a 3-step staircase design that gives you three solid leverage points to work the plug out with a screwdriver. The slot lives on both sides of the tool, so you just work the plug from both sides, one step at a time, and it pops out as easily as you’d hope.

We also got. chance to use these holes saws to cut in composite layers of steel and nail-embedded lumber. This is where the carbide teeth really show their mettle. The saw steadily worked its way past the steel, then into the 2X before encountering the nails. When it did, the saw made quick work of those and completed the cut. We inspected the saw afterward and found anything but a one-hit-wonder. The LENOX carbide-tipped hole saws can tackle many of these cuts on the jobsite before needing to be replaced.

Lastly, these LENOX hole saws are Made in the USA from global components.

You can pick up a LENOX LXAH32 2″ Carbide Hole Saw for around $24.99. They go up or down from there depending upon what sizes you need. All of the LENOX saws employ the same design and features. Based on what we’ve seen so far, and our experience with LENOX Lazer CT carbide reciprocating saw blades we can highly recommend these for professionals looking for something that takes the heat better than standard bi-metal.