: I won't argue but I will make a suggestion to everone. I do a lot of
: woodworking, mostly furniture. I have a well equipped shop and all 8
: fingers! Two thumbs too. My table saw is a 1946 Unisaw I restored. When it
: got it had no guards either. Which was fine because they are a pain the
: rear too. Most all of them are.

: But they have one feature you should keep. Thats the splitter behind the
: blade. Reason is, while it is not common I have had it happen a few times.
: I never had a kick back only because I saw it happening.

: Your ripping a piece of wood and you release the tension in the board. It
: starts closing up the kerf you just cut. The wood tightens up on the
: blade. The rear of the blade lifts the wood and suddenly it is on top of
: the blade, the teeth grab the board and launch it with great force at you.
: The splitter will in most cases keep this from happening by not allowing
: the wood to close up on the blade. Plus I rarely the splitter in the way.
: Except for cutting dados I keep a splitter on mine all the time.

: I made my splitter from an old guard off a Craftsman. I scrapped everything
: but the splitter. Cut all the mounts and stuff off. Before that I made
: wood throat plates and just mounted a wood splitter in there. It worked
: fine but I would break them when I hit them with a board. So I started
: looking for some metal to make one from.

Personally I don't like any guards, I won't though suggest that anyone else do it my way

Bill H.