New Splitter from old circular saw blade
#11
   
Bought my Jet table saw way back in 2001, and back then they didn't have riving knives.  It did come with a combination splitter/blade guard that would tilt with the saw blade, but trust me, that POS made it almost impossible to use the saw and created its own safety problems.  Feel free to disagree, FWIW, but I recently tried to reinstall and use it, took the thing off and threw it in the trash for good.  Anyway, I've never had a problem with kick back or kick up, never got injured, but I'm getting older now and starting to think that yeah, it might be nice to have a splitter.  So I made the one you see here, from a circular saw blade.  The blade I used is a tiny bit thinner than a thin kerf blade (you it can be thinner, you just don't want it thicker) and works perfectly.  I think I'll make another one out of an old 1/8" blade to use after I get my general purpose 1/8" blade back from being sharpened, there's just one easily accessible bolt holding it on so it's easy enough to change out.  Anyway, I thought I'd also share a pic of the leftover pieces from when I was trying to get my design just right, I guess you could call it an iterative design process.  I'm planning on making some marking knives or scrapers or something out of the leftovers.  Let me know what you think!

   
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#12
Great idea!

Is it attached where the old splitter/blade guard was?
Dave Arbuckle was kind enough to create a Sketchup model of my WorkMate benchtop: http://www.arbolloco.com/sketchup/MauleSkinnerBenchtop.skp
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#13
Nice. How are you cutting those?
Gary

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#14
(07-04-2020, 01:55 PM)MauleSkinner Wrote: Great idea!

Is it attached where the old splitter/blade guard was?

Yes, there's a bracket that's part of the tilting arbor assembly, it's just one bolt.  Nice thing about that is it'll tilt with the saw blade, like a riving knife (it just won't go up and down like a riving knife).
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." Andy Weir (in his book The Martian)
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#15
(07-04-2020, 02:19 PM)Gary G™ Wrote: Nice. How are you cutting those?

I finally invested in a nice angle grinder, and bought a pack of cutting blades from Horrible Freight for next to nothing.  I just draw a line, score it with the angle grinder, then make a couple of light passes, and finally just dig in and cut it much like you would with a circular saw.  I thought that the circular saw blades would be extremely hard to cut, but the opposite was true, it was actually fairly easy.
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." Andy Weir (in his book The Martian)
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#16
How long does it take to change over when you have to do a dado?
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#17
(07-06-2020, 11:51 AM)Cooler Wrote: How long does it take to change over when you have to do a dado?

I'm not the OP, but when I had a similar setup, I think I timed swapping out splitters of different sizes.  It took about 15 seconds, including unpluggin and replugging the saw, and hanging up the wrench.  If you are changing to a dado set, it would add about 5 seconds to the process, because much is in common. 

Make sure you use a slot rather than a hole in the splitter, so you can loosen the bolt and slide on the splitter without removing the whole bolt.  A cam lever would be even quicker, if it fit.
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#18
Nice splitter.  All of those left over pieces would make a great wind chime.
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#19
(07-06-2020, 11:51 AM)Cooler Wrote: How long does it take to change over when you have to do a dado?

Actually just did that yesterday, just grabbed a 12mm wrench and it took just a matter of seconds to take it off.  Okay, it wasn't actually a dado stack, rather table saw molding head, but basically the same thing as a dado stack.
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." Andy Weir (in his book The Martian)
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#20
(07-06-2020, 10:48 PM)Alan S Wrote: I'm not the OP, but when I had a similar setup, I think I timed swapping out splitters of different sizes.  It took about 15 seconds, including unpluggin and replugging the saw, and hanging up the wrench.  If you are changing to a dado set, it would add about 5 seconds to the process, because much is in common. 

Make sure you use a slot rather than a hole in the splitter, so you can loosen the bolt and slide on the splitter without removing the whole bolt.  A cam lever would be even quicker, if it fit.

I made the first one with a slot, but my final design after I drilled my hole I installed it to see if it would fit.  After bolting it in place, I figured "why not just always take the bolt out?" So that's what I'm doing, I can't say it's a bad idea to make it a slot rather than a hole, but I do like the hole better.
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." Andy Weir (in his book The Martian)
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