Safety poll: Do you use the guard on your tablesaw?

[David Nelson1]

I didn't get in on this @ the start, I'm going to chose option 4. Most all the cuts on the TS up until now have been rip cuts for flooring. I tried using the guard that came with the saw and elected to dis-guard it in lieu of board buddies. For the boards that showed signs of inner tension I turned to the BS for these cuts. Then I got a unifeeder which bolts directly to the fence. I have had small cut offs whiz past me, enough that I always figure out a way to place myself so if this happens I'm not the back stop. Well this weekend I got hurt, if I had used the guard (and I use that term loosely) I may have only had shards of plastic in my left hand. I'll do a lessons learned in a few days in a different thread.

[Bill Ryall]

#1.

Extensive use of push sticks and feather boards. And yes, I have had an "accident"- I'm missing the tip of my left thumb due to my carelessness when working extremely tired. However, it wasn't enough to put the guards back on the saw. I'm just not comfortable with them. I understand why they are there, but my level of discomfort is high enough to not use them. Instead, I am (now) extremely careful and wont use the sharp spinny stuff when tired.

[Larry Edgerton]

I'm pretty much #1, but I do drop in a riving knife when its called for. My work is almost never repetitious and I am changing setups often.

I have been hurt a couple of times, and both times it was someone coming up behind me and scaring me at the wrong time. I now lock the shop when I am working and my friends know to wait till the tool shuts off to knock. So...... Idiots are the most dangerous thing in the shop!

Bill, ditto on the tired thing. I have come close to making bad mistakes a few times about 12 hours in..... Time to go home.

Larry

[Erik Christensen]

#2 when i got the saw (robland) as the factory guard sux swamp-water but the euro riving knife has been OK - then I got a new riving knife/guard (shark guard) and that is used all the time (except for narrow rips)

shark guard rules - if you have patience - small operation and they can have long lead times which does not always play well with those of us who "want it now"

[Stan Calow]

#3 for me always

[Jim Becker]

My MiniMax slider utilizes a riving knife. I rarely use the "guard" head because I do a lot of non-through cutting and the riving knife that the guard/collection head attaches to is a different one than I use with my 10" Forrest blades...I cannot lower that one enough to be just below the top of the blade since it was designed for a 12" blade. So I have a second one that's ground down specifically for the 10" blades and that's what stays on my saw pretty much all the time. Between the slider action including the miter fence as well as the use of proper push blocks/sticks and taking advantage of the versatile fence, I am comfortable with the level of safety I have while working.

[Clarence Martin]

1 No guard or splitter. Board always jammed up on me when using the guard and splitter

[Bob Carreiro]

No guards, no riving knives.
Have worked in 9 ot 10 shops during my "working years" and have only seen a RK in use on a slider - nothing, ever, on a cab saw. Competence recognizes dangers and controls outcomes.
On my own shop TS, the guard & knife never got unwrapped.

[Noel Poore]

Number 3 - I also have a Shark guard with overhead dust collection, which I love. I only remove the guard for non-through cuts or really narrow rips, when i use a Grripper.

[Kevin Jenness]

"Competence" has almost as hard a time as inexperience predicting which workpiece will bend in the middle of a rip and invite kickback. Splitters and riving knives are safety devices that actually work to prevent unexpected kickback without interfering with control of the workpiece or visibility. What is the downside to using a well designed splitter?

[John Coloccia]

What is the downside to using a well designed splitter?

If my memory serves me, before SawStop popularized riving knives and intelligent blade guards on western table saws, the stock setups where more or less, across the board, garbage. I think I tossed the whole setup from my Delta in the trash about 10 minutes after buying my first tablesaw. It was unusable, and perhaps even a little dangerous. Taking it on and off for non-through cuts was an ordeal, at best. Fast forward to today, and the blade guard is on the saw most of the time, and when I can't use it, at least a riving knife is in.

So to your question, there's nothing wrong with a well designed riving knife, but I can't think of any older style splitter/guards that were well designed and there are a lot of older saws out there.

I could say the same about the pork chop guard on jointers vs European style guards. Now that I have a European style guard, I'd simply never go back to using a jointer with a pork chop. I'm not even sure what, exactly, it's protecting me against. The European style actually offers real protection from the blades.

[Thomas Hotchkin]

#3: Guard and riving knife whenever it is possible

[Kevin Jenness]

"So to your question, there's nothing wrong with a well designed riving knife, but I can't think of any older style splitter/guards that were well designed and there are a lot of older saws out there."

Agreed. Many if not most people afflicted with the old guard/splitters threw them away and never looked back, but I think they would benefit from retrofitting something like a Biesemeyer snap-in splitter. Too bad those are not available for all old saws. Almost any cabinet saw, though, can be fitted with a wooden throat plate with a glued in splitter to good effect.

[Brian Henderson]

#3 for sure, I made my own overhead guard that is both easy to use and easy to get out of the way when it gets in the way of a cut. Every sled I make has a guard built in and I use push sticks and feather boards to keep my fingers far away from the blade.

[Thomas Wilson]

3

I have a Delta overarm guard that is 2-piece. Even with narrow rips, the left half can be kept in place. The right half rests on top of the fence. The only cut that the guard cannot be used with is a really wide cross cut.

The splitter is retractable and easy to push down for non-through cuts. I use it all the time.

I use a feather board for most rip cuts. I have a Board Buddy system that works well with plywood boards. The Buddy wheels get in the way with narrow boards.

I push with homemade plywood pushers of various designs that go under the overarm guard's bar.

No injuries in more than 40 years from a table saw.

TW