"Morgans" wrote in
:

You know, I found that guards on a table saw are not usually much of a
problem. It took me a year or so to come to that realization.

I like all the others, never used a guard on my table saw. Then I
took a job teaching carpentry at a high school. A special point was
made by my bosses, that I was to always use guards and all other safe
equipment on my shop machines. I hated it for a while. Now I don't
give a guard a second though.

-- Jim in NC


One of the things I remember about the shop table saw was that the guard
wasn't bad. It didn't seem to get in the way, and didn't take much
pressure to get it to lift so the board can slide under. However, that
was many years ago and I only had a little experience with it.

Home shop tools seem to suffer from "good enough for the money" design.
I've noticed with my Ridgid saw blade guard that the plastic is heavy, it
tends to get in the way of my view of the fence, the kickback pawls are
too far away from the blade for safe trimming rip cuts (cutting a wavy
edge off to square up the board), the guard has to be aligned behind the
blade perfectly or it'll put pressure on the piece, and a few other
issues.

The table saw industry has redesigned the guard and it does address many
of the issues I've noted above. I haven't used the new guard to say if
it really works or not, but I suspect it's a step up.

The best safety features are transparent until they have to be activated.
If you can forget they're there, they'll work well.

Puckdropper
--
Make it to fit, don't make it fit.