Usually I’ll have at least one section of the cut with kerf marks and depending on the wood, some burning, but the cut edge on the test piece was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Second the cut I got was as clean as if it had been made on a jointer. First I no longer had to try to push the piece forward and against the fence, once the piece hits the riving knife, the knife keeps it against the fence - one less thing to distract you from the spinning blade. When I finally fired the saw up and cut a test piece, it was like I was using a new saw. This made it easier to position and I figured I would get a cleaner cut on the keeper side (for me usually the piece between the blade and the fence) on the work piece. Since the knife is slightly narrower than the blade, rather than trying to center the knife, I decided to bias the knife position towards the fence side. By varying the number of shims between the trunnion arbor assembly and the knife it centers the knife on the blade.
UNISAW RIVING KNIFE SERIES
Between the plate and the trunnion arbor assembly are a series of thin shims. The knife is held in place by a plate with two bolts. Then I concentrated on getting the knife aligned with the blade. Once I was satisfied with the fit of the riving knife, I removed it once more and gave it a coat of paste wax to protect the metal and make the knife slippery. I didn’t want it to get to close to the blade at any one point even if one of the two bolts that hold the knife loosen and allow it to rock towards the blade. I spent a lot of time going between the sander and my table saw checking the fit of the knife. When that didn’t work to my satisfaction, I discovered that my oscillating sander was the best tool for the job. The jig saw left a really ragged cut line, so I tried using my bench grinder to shape the metal. I decided not to cut the guard mounting slots on top of the knife, because I did such a poor job on the simpler slots. I messed this part up pretty badly, still I got the riving knife to work. For the mounting slots, I drilled a hole at the top and cut the rest of the slot with the jig saw. As I cut around the outline with my jigsaw, I shredded the pattern, but somehow I still managed to cut out the right shape. This was probably a mistake, I should have traced the pattern with a Sharpe instead. Once I got the steel in the mail a few days later, I printed out the pattern, verified that the dimensions were correct, then glued the pattern onto the steel. I know this was a little expensive for a piece of hot rolled steel, but it beat driving to a steel yard in Minneapolis and trying to find a small piece that wasn’t rusted to hell. None of the local hardware stores carried steel this thick, so I ended up ordering a 12″ square piece on Amazon for $15.
UNISAW RIVING KNIFE FULL
I decided to make my riving knife out of 12ga steel because I only use full kerf blades, I could have gone thinner, but I’m glad I didn’t. I could have just copied the factory guard and cut off the top, but since I had a simple pattern to follow it wasn’t worth the effort to duplicate it. After looking at that pattern and examining my factory guard, I thought I could make my own, using this pattern.
UNISAW RIVING KNIFE PDF
After reading the entire site, I found PDF of the riving knife pattern.
There was one problem, right on the home page it said lead times were 8 to 10 weeks. They also sold just the riving knife for my saw.
makers of the Shark Guard blade guard and dust collection system. After seeing this video though, I started looking for a way to retrofit my DeWalt 744 with a riving knife.Īfter searching, I only found one company that makes custom riving knives, splitters, and guards for my table saw: Leeway Workshop LLC. I perform many different operations on my table saw and I really don’t want to spend 10 minutes monkeying with the poorly designed guard. This really got my attention, I’ve been using my table saw without the factory guard since I got it because the guard is cumbersome and wasn’t designed to be removed and replaced easily. The board and push block flew out of his hands and his hand almost kissed the saw blade. In the video he pushed a board through his table saw without a riving knife and twisted it at the end of the cut. In February Tom Hintz of posted an article with a video about kickback that got the woodworking community talking.