Uses for Reciprocating Saws

Consisting of a D-shaped handle attached to a long body with a blade that protrudes from the other end, reciprocating saws bear a passing resemblance to a rifle. The motor is housed in the body and moves the blade back and forth, cutting in much the same way as a standard hand saw.
Blades for a reciprocating saw are usually around 1/16-inch thick and 1/2- to 1-inch wide including the teeth, and range from 4 to 12 inches in length with a row of teeth along one edge of the blade, similar to a hand saw. Blades are rated according to the type of material or materials they are designed to cut as well as teeth-per-inch or TPI. Blades with higher TPI counts are designed for finer cuts in wood or for cutting metal or plastics. Lower TPI counts indicate a blade designed for fast, rough cutting of wood or for demolition or pruning purposes.

Demolition

Reciprocating saws excel in demolition. The wide range of available blades makes it easy to find one to handle any demolition project. Many blades are capable of cutting both metal and wood, which is important in demolition since nail-fastened wooden boards are commonly occurring construction materials.
Because reciprocating saw blades are long and narrow and cut by moving back and forth in the same line as the body of the saw instead of in a circular motion or cutting perpendicular to the body of the saw, it is the ideal tool to get into restricted spaces as well as cut the nails or screws between two pieces of wood fastened together to remove one of the pieces. This would be dangerous to impossible with a circular saw or jig saw, but is a relatively easy project with a reciprocating saw.
The long lengths of some blades make it possible to cut through material up to 1 foot in thickness, which is impossible to do with a circular saw or jig saw, which have maximum depths of cut of around 3 inches. Another advantage of the long blades is the ability to bend the blade to one side to provide better access to a hard-to-reach place.

Irregular Cuts

Many times a cut will need to be curved or made in a surface that is already attached to something and cannot easily be placed on a saw bench. Due to the shape of the reciprocating saw blade, long and relatively narrow, it is able to make curved or zig-zag cuts that a circular saw blade cannot. This ability makes it a good choice to cut patterns in lumber and plywood.

Metal Cutting

When used in conjunction with a blade designed specifically for cutting metal, a reciprocating saw can cut through metal ranging from thin sheet metal up to metal 1/4-inch thick without the sparks and heat generated from a metal-cutting saw or grinder.
Its portability allows it to cut metal in places a grinder cannot reach, and its back-and-forth cutting motion makes it safer to use than a grinder, which utilizes a high-speed rotary grinding disk that throws a cloud of sparks out to one side of the wheel and is prone to jerk out of the groove created by the cut due to the speed at which the grinding wheel rotates.

Pruning

Outfitted with a pruning blade, which is a blade that has large, aggressive teeth, reciprocating saws make short work of pruning larger limbs and branches, and can even cut down smaller diameter trees and shrubs.

Thick Cuts

Similar to the use of long blades in demolition to cut through thick items, long blades can be used to make cuts through items up to 1 foot in thickness. This commonly occurs when people need to cut items such as posts or railroad ties. Another use is to stack several boards on top of each other and cut them at one time, such as when cutting rafter tails or other patterned cuts.