Table Saw Guard Mount

My table saw's guard attaches to the riving knife. I'm guessing this is common, but it seems like a really bad idea and right pain in the proverbial posterior. The saw isn't very powerful and I often find it better to do cuts in multiple passes, gradually raising the blade and taking repeated cuts. The riving knife has to be at its lowest setting without the guard attached for all the partial cuts; to attach the guard for the final cut, you have to remove the insert (which is impossible if the fence is over the top of it), undo a clip, raise the riving knife, tighten the clip and then replace the insert. Suffice to say the guard doesn't often make it into place.

I liked the look of Steve Maskery's magnetic guard, but this isn't viable with an aluminium top surface, so I set about constructing an alternative more suited to my use.

It's made out of odds and ends I had lying around; a bit of 3 mm plate left over from the bar clamps I recently made; some 10 mm and 12 mm round EN1A bar that I always keep loads of in stock and a bit of 16 mm square EN1A bar that was in the drawer. The coupling thing at the top came off an old magnetic base; all the other bits of said base have since been harvested for other purposes: this was the last bit left. The only other components are a few M6 cap screws.

The guard that came with the saw attaches to the mount, so I didn't have to think about making anything custom.

It's clamped on with a method akin to a toolmaker's clamp: two bits of 16 mm square bar and two screws, one pulling and one pushing. The screw on the side stops the vertical 12 mm round bar from rotating (there's a flat filed on the side of the round bar).

Due to the way it mounts, I can also use the guard with the cross-cut sled.

It obviously has to be mounted high enough that it'll clear the fence, but it still gives a certain amount of protection, so that seems good to me.

When not in use, cross-bar pivots to point vertically and it can be left attached but out of the way when the table saw is spun round, wheeled under the bench and covered with the cross-cut sled and the portable workbench (sorry for the cluttered photo).

Hopefully this will mean I use the guard a lot more than I previously have done.

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