nobotch

Hi Steve, In my opinion you're not really off-topic with your questions. Actually, each blade needs its appropriate riving knife or splitter. As a rule of thumb they say that it has to be thicker than the blade body but thinner than the kerf. There may be some blades that can share the same riving knife, but there is no such thing as an universal thickness that fits all or almost all blades, the margins are quite narrow. There is at least one product that can be retrofitted to some table saws, but I guess not to all. The one I read of is called "Bolt on Ripping Knife" or BORK. If it turns out it would fit your saw make sure you get the stainless steel version and not the (older, obsolete) aluminum one which can get grabbed by the blade and thrown against the operator if it gets loose. It seems that this can not happen with the steel version, also because its slot is now closed (iirc it was an opened slot on the aluminum version, and there was at least one reported accident [1], [2] which easily could have turned out worse than it did). I have no idea in which thicknesses the BORK is available.

Gaetan, I don't have the proble you have. For lengths of that size I have a Dozuki or Kataba (Japanese saws) that do the "rough" cutting of timber of this cross section in half a stroke, and even small panels are done in a few seconds. Of course, everybody has his own procedures, but taking off the guard for having to loosen only one instead of two screws (in case one still want tho take off the fence) is definitely not in my book! Edit: I have to admit though that the replacement of the allen key screw (red circle in picture) is very nice! Bravo! There are way too many srews on this that need an allen key quite often, Key for locking the blade height being in my personal opinion the most awkward one.

I'm pleased that you found my modificatoins interesting, Nemco. He took off the blade guard because "it was in the way". As I understand it, the other part of that modification consists in making it possible to move the fence to the other side without lowering the blade. I'm not able though to figure out the practical advantage over lowering the blade. Mark, I like your mod of the high fence of your MM saw. Very simple and effective, congrats!. Actually, this weekend Im working on a short fence for my saw, I'll show it when it's finished.

No, you want take all known measures against kickback and other kinds of accidents. Believing that just doing things correctly wil prevent accidents is a wrong assumption. Nobody in the real world is free from committing mistakes. If someone (most of us!) didn't have a severe woodworking accident in the last 20 or 50 years of woodworking, this does not mean he has been on the safe side - he just has been lucky, as Kelly Mehler said. Looks interesting!

Its purpose is to prevent kickback. Kickback can happen when the wood gets in contact with the rising teeth of the blade, which then will grab the wood and throw it back to the operator, most likely hitting him in the chest, shoulder or face. The splitter sits at a fixed spot on the table respectively in the insert plade and has the disadvantage that as you lower the blade the distance between it and the splitter widens, so that the splitter can not do its job until the wood has overcome this distance. As the height of the splitter is fixed it does not allow cuts shallower that the wood thickness. Whereas a riving knife always keeps the same distance and height in relation to the blade. When using a guard that is not attached to the riving knife the latter one even allows cuts shallower than the wood thickness. In the video on this page the whole thing gets explained pretty well (with the exception that he apparently is not aware of the fact that a piece of wood that has gotten caught by the blade's teeth does not travel horizontally but rises up at about a 30° - 45° angle. Only long pieces of wood that got caught between the fence and the blade get ejected horizontally). Edit: Another thing the guy in the video gets wrong is when he says that the riving knife without the guard simply gets used to "offer a better view to the blade". That's a bit a weird statement indeed! Why would someone want to look at the blade? Of course, the blade is beautiful, but once the fence is set or the wood is positioned on the miter gauge the cut gets made, no need to watch the blade! If one needs to watch the running blade to make a cut it means that the setup has not been done properly!

That's absolutely amazing! There's nothing like a sharp pencil. Thanks for sharing the link to that website, Michael!

Thank you Brian and Anthony for your encouraging comments! Common safety recommendations say that the splitter or riving knife sould be thicker then the blade plate and thinner than the kerf. I'm inclined to think that, if the splitter is perfectly aligned it is better if its thickness is as close as possible to the kerf, but of course not even a hair thicker. For my taste, my splitter is a bit on the thin side, maybe I'll glue on a thin piece of paper on each of its sides. I agree that theoretically it is not necessary if feeding the timber straight. Unfortunately reality has shown countless times that we (all of us) don't always feed it straight, sometimes with disastrous consequences. This is why I am convinced that a splitter, or much better a riving knife is an absolute must for a table saw. Of course, the teeth's linear speed of a 10 inch saw is much higher (assuming 3500 rpm it would be ca. 165 km/h or ca. 100 mph) than on the 4" Byrnes saw (110 V 60 Hz version 3450 rpm -> 65 km/h or 40 mph; 230 V 50 Hz version 2850 rpm -> 53 Km/h or 33 mph). But still, getting hit by a piece of wood at that speed can lead to more or less serious injuries, and I think it is a good idea to minimise the risk. It's a bit like wearing a helmet when riding a push bike.

My "Jim Saw" it arrived this week a mere 19 days after having placed the order! Although this little beauty would work out of the box I have scheduled some task-specific add-ons of which I have completed three so far. The first one is a provisional splitter (permanently integrated in a zero clearance insert) which in the first place served to figure out the dimensions of its parts but also is fully functional: The splitter itself is made of "1 mm" birch plywood which in reality is 1.2 mm thick. This is the perfect thickness for the 36 teeth blade whose disk is a bit over 0.9 mm and which leaves a kerf of about 1.5 mm. As plywood is not really stiff I did not want to make it too big. I hope it will do its job until I'll have made a better one. Even if noise is on the low side with the Byrnes saw, the next modification I made reduces noise . The belt guard is made of a sheet of aluminium which acts as a resonator. So I lined it inside with some cardboard (glued on with epoxy). This was my standard procedure for silencing the tower case of all computers I ever owned. In the following pictures you also can see how the belt guard can be slid off and on after only loosening four screws through dedicated holes, without completely removing them - a feature I almost always missed on computer cases... You can further see that the more expensive of my two Phillips N°1 screwdrivers did not fit through the holes, I had to use the cheaper one which obviously complies better with international standards! I don't like spinning parts that theoretically could be touched by accident, even if it is very unlikely to happen. This is why my third modification was covering the opend side of the belt guard, leaving open only a slot big enough to grab the axle with a wrench when changing the blade. The cover fits snugly but gets secured with a single screw which only has to be removed (3 full turns) when changing the belt - that is, almost never. I thought the following picture might be an interesting view for those technically inclined who are lusting for a Byrnes Saw Well, I think that's it for today. No, wait! I forgot to say that after having made a few cuts it really looks like this saw will meet my high expectations I had. A couple of long and thin rip cuts were all within half a tenth of a millimeter tolerance, without having used any more sophisticated add-ons than a to the "fence extension" clamped short fence, and the zero clearance insert with splitter. Cheers, Markus

I don't have it, but I know several musical instrument builders who are happy with the "opti visor" of which stewmac.com offers several versions, including their apparently own development of one with integrated lighting.

I can feel with you Boyd. Three weeks ago I asked myself the same question and my answer was "yes I can live without a Byrnes saw, but I don't want to". The parcel tracking system says that it should arrive today - the door bell could ring at any moment now. Of course there are other saws that can serve the same purpose, but in the end it comes down to what makes you feel good. My take on this issue is not so much if I probably would not use that saw so often that it would "pay off" but rather if my budget still will allow me to buy things that actually are more important but not so "sexy" like this nifty tool. Cheers, Markus P.S. Now, 57 minutes later: door bell rang, it's here!

Meanwhile I have found a very useful hint about the power of kick back on small table saw - by first conicidence a Byrnes saw, and be second coincidence posted on this forum, here: So far so good. But there is more to kick back than just a piece of wood making its uncontrolled way through the shed. Kickback can even lead to make one's hand make contact with the blade. I don't know if the following link to a "safety-video" already has been posted somewhere on modelshipworld.com, but as it may be an eye-opener to some I believe it would not hurt being posted more than once. The guy who made the video missed a trip to the hospital only by a few millimeters, and admits unreservedly he was an idiot doing such an experiment: All this makes me think that a riving knife is not only mandatory for full size table saws but also on small ones. Even if an custom addition carried out by a precision metal working shop will cost a grand it will still be cheaper than a chewed up or cut off digit. Hospital bills are expensive.

Put it on and turn the wheels by hand. If it runs true just use it until it breaks the next time. Not dangerous at all! I braze my bandsaw blades when they break. It is a bit tricky the get the joint well aligned, but if it is the blade does its job like before. If it is not the saw will run that noisy that you will stop using it just because of the noise and also because the cuts will be really awful. But again, a blade that breaks or jumps off the wheels presents no danger at all to the saw operator if all guards are in place and the fingers are in a reasonable distance to the running blade.

That's what I use even on my drill press, and also on my router table. When sometings starts to turn out differently than I imagined it is a huge relief to not have to take off one hando of the worlikng piece in order to turn off the machine!

Obviously, these are common practices but they apparently were recognised as potentionally more dangerous than achieving the same result by the use of other tools. I believe that rather than calling official safety recommendations "a bit of bunk", it would be a good idea to think about why commonly applied techniques are considered by the HSE as, what I would translate as "at least more dangerous than necessary". Of course, there may be workarounds which to the "avarage" woodworker are too complicated and time consuming, and of course it may be that using smaller machines than those safety sheets actually are addressing to, is less dangerous (or not). But deducing that some techniques were safety-wise just fine by saying "everybody does it" seems to be a bit strange to me. By the way, I had cut off the fingertip I mentioned in this post by applying a technique that almost everybody uses to do the same task, and which I had applied without a single incident since 40 years - until the day I got distracted a bit. Markus

I'm not sure if I am understanding well your description. If you are thinking of a "covering layer" thicker than the blade's height over the table, this would mean you would cut a groove in the assembly. Although this gets done with dado blades, I think it is a dangerous practice (maybe unless the working piece would be secured to a sliding table). I'm not an expert, but again, this is what the HSE recommends here: "Rebating and grooving A circular saw should not be used for cutting a rebate or groove unless the blade is effectively guarded. This is because the normal saw guard cannot be used. Suitable alternative guards and fixtures are necessary. [...] "

Thank you for your hints Mark. Also, that's an excellent text you linked to! Actually, this is a bit similar to what the HSE recommends here and here: "To prevent kickback, the front of the fence must be no further than the base of the gullet at table level." I believe that this recommendation works best in comination with a riving knife. Good to know that I am obviously not alone with my thinking. I'm glad you had no serious accident. Hearing you have spilled blood from every power tool sounds scary. Although I have to admit that I even managed to cut off one of my fingertips (luckily re-attached by the doctor) ...with a hand tool! Oh well, I think I went a bit off-topic with that. Bottom line: I will have a serious look at how (if) I will be able to incorporate a reliable riving knife to the Byrnes saw or, should this not be possible for me, at least add a splitter. Markus

I have been searching information about kickback with small tablesaws and how serious it can be. Not having found reports of kickback acidents with 4" tablesaws of course does not mean such accidents did not happen, so I am still a bit concerned because I am going to own one of those Rolls Royce Byrnes saws, which I believe have no riving knife. Of course I will stick with push sticks, feather boards and the like, but I am unsure if I should consider modifying the saw (= add a splitter, adjustable or not, etc.) once it will have arrived, or if I am concerned about something that can not get really dangerous on small table saws. I'll appreciate any suggestion. Meanwhile I'll have a chamomile tea to calm my nerves. Cheers, Markus