#7 scroll reverse is my blade of choice an sometimes #9 reverse.Your having a lot of blade slippage it sounds like .Hardwoods will pull your blade loose pushing to hard.I use alot of 3/4" plywood an push hard.I keep everything touching the blade clean &scratchy and don't touch the ends of the blade.I have good luck.I listen to the sound of the saw and can tell when the blade starts to loosen up.dw788's are very quiet.The cheap saws vi could never hear anything but the noise of the inferior machine ,which is way to loud to notice a difference when the blade loosens up.My compound cutting i use white pine ,very soft to cut,try the cutting discs dremil has .I did a lot of scroll saw modification so i could fit my hand in it to change the blade it was a craftsman18"i used a dremil to do this.Take the table off the saw so you can rill the hole to the size you want.Later you can tape a playing card over the hole when cutting fragile thin fretwork.