Retrofit better riving knife and blade guard
Watching Stumpy Nubs’ latest ‘cool tools’ (which was TBH too much of advertainment for my taste) I came across an interesting innovation.
He was demonstrating an interesting feature of his new Harvey table saw in which the riving knife could be pulled out and pushed back without tools. Cool.
I use varying sized blades in my saw, but most of the time, it’s the 12 inchers that are on the arbor. It is not that hard to remove or replace the riving knife but it’s one of those irritations on the Hammer K3. I feel a bit like the Mercedes driver who complains about a squeaky wiper, but frankly the riving knife mount sucks. It could however be replaced easily enough as it is simply a lump of metal bolted to the trunion. It works well enough, but is prone to misalignment and on a high end saw is a bit of a disappointment.
Before I go and find a local machine shop to make me a suitable replacement which will enable Harvey like function, is there a commercial option available? Are there any upgrades of this nature for other saws? Do other saws have tool-free above-table riving knife change options?
Would you use such a feature?
If interested, the Harvey saw is featured around 8 minutes on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PXPHiHIEfY
Replies
Is the Harvey mount available as a repair part? Maybe it can be adapted to mount to your Hammer.
You might try sharkguard to see if they have or can fabricate what you have in mind. I used them to update my 30yr. old Unisaw to have a modicum of modern safety features and am quite satisfied. The Sharkguard is a vast improvement over the factory guard/splitter combo which collected dust in the darkest bowels of the shop and now resides in a landfill somewhere.
https://www.thesharkguard.com/product/riving-knives-and-splitters/
Maybe this will help. My Delta table saw has a splitter rather than a riving knife, but maybe my modification will help you. My splitter is mounted below the table with one bolt and it protrudes through a slit in the zci. I made a splitter with a large slot in the bottom. I then made a sleeve that fits the mounting bolt and acts as a spacer to hold two large washers apart so that the splitter can slide between them with a friction fit. The large slot in the bottom of the splitter straddles the spacer as it slides down between the two washers. With this arrangement, I can pull the splitter out and replace it with finger pressure and it stays put when in use.
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