Riving knife thickness

[paarker]

I picked up a practically new saw today and would like to retro fit my shark guard to it. According to Lee all I need is a new riving knife for my saw. I got a thin kerf and regular kerf blade with the saw. Can I use a thin kerf riving knife with a think kerf blade or does it defeat the purpose of using a riving knife? 
I could always buy a new blade or 2 riving knives just thought I would ask the opinion of you folks here. 
Thanks,
Don

[Stytooner]

No need to spend any extra cash. The thin kerf knife will work fine with both blades. There is no conformity or consistency from manufacturers about how much thicker a blade must be than the riving knife. Something like a .090" kerf blade will work with what we label as .090" thick RK's.
The material generally comes in a bit under sized and after finishing is well below .090" thick. More like .087" or so. That is plenty of variance for the thin kerf and still substantial enough to work with standard blades.
Of course, optimally you would run one thickness blade and match the knife to it, but it isn't worth the extra cost to buy two knives.

Where some guys run into trouble is by not measuring the actual slot thickness a blade cuts.
Do a stop cut and then measure the slot width.
There are also Ultra thin kerf blades and while we can make knives for those as well, I recommend never even buying blades that thin. If they are too thin to run with the original safety equipment, how smart can they be to use?


I have not used any of those myself, but I have seen blades bind and warp that were thicker than those. All in my younger pre-Shark Guard days.

[paarker]

Thank you for the heads up Lee, my order is on the way.