Crushing the pins and making the strip sit proud" sounds like a good story but I've run plenty of strip with a blade that was well past its prime and never saw that happen. A dull blade tears up the strip more than anything, it doesn't magically bend the pins. A fresh blade every other room on a 900 sq ft job is a lot of blades for not much payoff. Swapping when it actually starts dragging makes more sense than some fixed schedule.

Shadows are where the real questions live, and nobody ever wants to dig into those either.

A buddy of mine installs cabinets and he told me his rule years ago: no real work until the deposit clears. He said he learned it after losing about three weekends to a "sure thing" remodel gig. I read somewhere that a deposit is really just a test of whether the client is serious at all, and that stuck with me. Trial work with your own money is gambling on a stranger's word. Fonts and stock art cost real money, so make the guy put skin in the game first. If he balks at a deposit, he was never going to pay you anyway.