Thread: Adding a riving knife to Leda 12"

I've just purchased a used Leda 12" tablesaw, circa 1998 vintage and I'm in the process of servicing it ready for use. All of the important stuff is there with the exception of the splitter/guard assembly, which I want to address before it's put into service.

This saw is of the contractors saw style and has no capacity for a modern riving knife due to a lack of room in the throat behind the blade. The missing splitter/guard was mounted on a rod which is attached to the tilting arbor assembly which protrude past the rear of the table. I still have the two mounting shackles that fit onto the cam's rod, but the rest is long gone.

Now, the tilting arbor assembly has the potential to mount a riving knife that can rise, fall and tilt with the blade, but the lack of room behind the blade means that the base of the riving knife would be around 15mm wide at most. This would also mean compromising the throat plate by expanding the slot.

I consider that the riving knife is most useful when ripping through material, rather than blind ripping or cross-cutting, so mounting a splitter on the cam'd rod probably doesn't present any real problems. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. So a riving knife, while ideal, isn't really neccessary as long as a splitter is present for through ripping.

Or is a narrow riving knife ok? at 3mm think I have a feeling that it should be at least 30mm wide to be rigid enough to be useful.

Any remarks anyone might make to a (relatively) new tablesaw user are most welcome. My old table saw was based on a circular saw built into a bench... which had a riving knife

If there is a better solution, I'm all ears!