On 8/8/2010 2:18 PM, Morgans wrote:
None of these saws have blade guards?

We had two cabinet saws, neither had guards. I have owned two saws myself.
First one, I had the guard on for about two days, then I took it off and
never put it back. The one I have now, I never put the guard on. Didn't
even know that I still had it. Ran across it the other day, still in the
factory sealed bag.

You know, I used to be about like anyone else, in that I never used a guard
on a table saw. That all changed 18 years ago, when I took a job teaching
carpentry at the local high school. It was made very clear to me that any
and all safety devices available were to be used, at all times.

For the first year or so I fussed under my breath, any time I had to run the
table saw with the guard in place. Slowly, I began to realize that they
really were not all that bad, in nearly all cases.

Now, I seldom think a second thought about the guards. The obvious
exception is when using a tenion jig, or dado blade or other or other cuts
that do not go all the way through the workpiece. Even then, there are
guards available for the second class of cuts mentioned above.

So really, if everyone just made up their mind to keep with a guard until
they got used to it, you would find that it is a rare case where the guard
slows them down or prevents accurate cutting.

Most of the cuts I've done in the past month have used a sled of some
kind--for that the guard provided with my saw is not workable--while in
some cases the sled will slide under it various pieces raise the guard
so high that it might as well not be there.

At the same time, on repetitive cuts, I find myself losing focus on the
blade--I know that if I don't put some kind of guard in place I'm going
to hit it eventually. You do 20 or so of the same movement and a
conditioned response starts to form that takes the higher brain
functions out of the loop ("wax on, wax off"). So project for the week
is figuring out how to guard the sled.