BobL
4th July 2006, 12:36 AM
Because I often cut rebates etc and operate quite a bit without the standard TS blade guard I've been thinking for a while about a more flexible guard. I've thought about making one of those scissor action drop down from the ceiling guards/units but also thought there must be a simpler way. So, after purchasing a dust picker on special from timbecom, and finding a sheet of 1mm polycarbonate sheet smeared with silicone rubber at work that no one looked like they wanted, I came up with the following (photo 1).
The polycarbonate is thin enough that it will bend fairly nice and squarely provide you apply significant force (you really have to over bend it) but it's so tough that it does not snap or break. I basically cut and folded the poly into a cowl in such a way that it fits over the top of black plastic dust picker cowl. Then I pop rivetted the poly to itself and bolted the poly cowl to the dust picker. As you can see, the blade visibility is very high even with the guard fully lowered.
The dust picker arm is bolted to a wall stud and I also inserted a large polyethylene washer into the first dust picker's serrated joint so that the picker can turn more freely (but not loosely) in the horizontal plane. (see photo 4)
Photo 3 shows the guard pulled up out of the way. It will go up a little more than what I have shown there.
The guard can be raised and lowered above the saw bench using a nylon rope and a spring clamp which holds the rope to a Z beam on the ceiling (see photo 4). NB: This is only a temporary setup until I get some stainless steel cable and a couple of pulleys and something more positively locking than a spring clamp.
So far it works as expected and certainly makes me feel a bit safer around that blade. The hardest parts were getting the silicone off the poly and marking and cutting the poly cowl shape out in one piece. Had to recall all my high school geometry out for that one!
Oh yeah and one more thing, it has enough extension left in it's joints etc to swing out over the bench and still act as a regular dust picker.
The polycarbonate is thin enough that it will bend fairly nice and squarely provide you apply significant force (you really have to over bend it) but it's so tough that it does not snap or break. I basically cut and folded the poly into a cowl in such a way that it fits over the top of black plastic dust picker cowl. Then I pop rivetted the poly to itself and bolted the poly cowl to the dust picker. As you can see, the blade visibility is very high even with the guard fully lowered.
The dust picker arm is bolted to a wall stud and I also inserted a large polyethylene washer into the first dust picker's serrated joint so that the picker can turn more freely (but not loosely) in the horizontal plane. (see photo 4)
Photo 3 shows the guard pulled up out of the way. It will go up a little more than what I have shown there.
The guard can be raised and lowered above the saw bench using a nylon rope and a spring clamp which holds the rope to a Z beam on the ceiling (see photo 4). NB: This is only a temporary setup until I get some stainless steel cable and a couple of pulleys and something more positively locking than a spring clamp.
So far it works as expected and certainly makes me feel a bit safer around that blade. The hardest parts were getting the silicone off the poly and marking and cutting the poly cowl shape out in one piece. Had to recall all my high school geometry out for that one!
Oh yeah and one more thing, it has enough extension left in it's joints etc to swing out over the bench and still act as a regular dust picker.