Thread: Where to get new riving knife made in Melbourne?

Hi 419

Can't help you with someone to fabricate a new riving knife... but the riving knife should be thinner than the kerf of the blade you are using otherwise the riving knife will bind in the timber (or other material) that you are cutting and cause all sorts of nasty issues.

If you do wish to make a thicker riving knife, I cut a new one from an old saw blade using a 4" angle grinder, filed it to match with a half round bastard file, smoothed the rough edges with a mill file and drilled the mounting holes on a drill press. Took about 2 hours including removing the existing riving knife from the saw to use as a template and mounting the new riving knife into the tablesaw. It was pretty simple and if I can do it then anyone can. I used an old blade from a 9 1/4" circular saw as my material which was the same thickness as my old riving knife (which I wished to modify to allow me to cut tenons).

Hope this helps a bit

Regards
Twosheds

PS Post edited as I misread the original post.

Originally Posted by twosheds

but the riving knife should be thinner than the kerf of the blade you are using otherwise the riving knife will bind in the timber (or other material) that you are cutting and cause all sorts of nasty issues.

Correct, but 419 said his riving knife is thinner than the saw blade's plate, not its kerf. That's a no-no.

419,
Leuco Saw Sharpening in Braeside can make new riving knives. They use the saw plate from old saw blades. I can't remember how much they quoted me. I ended up finding a blade to match my riving knife.

You're right jack620. It would have helped if I had read the original post correctly and not gone off on a tangent like a dill. I've amended my reply.

Twosheds

There are other options - Riving Knives and Splitters – Shark Guard (thesharkguard.com)

How to Determine Splitter or Riving Knife Thickness – Shark Guard (thesharkguard.com)

#D19 RIVING KNIFE - Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse

Laguna Thin-Kerf Riving Knife | Carbatec

For what it's worth, I feel that machinery (table saw) suppliers in Australia are pretty tardy in not offering a selection of riving knives for their table saws to suit the common saw plate / blade kerf thickness for blades now commonly available. The suppliers may also be exposed to personal injury litigation as many of the supplied manuals do not address or warn of the potential hazards of not matching riving knife to blade plate thickness nor do they offer optional accessory riving knifes to suit thin kerf blades.

The one size fits all riving knife to suit 1/8" plate thickness blades isn't acceptable imho.

Originally Posted by twosheds

Hi 419

If you do wish to make a thicker riving knife, I cut a new one from an old saw blade ...

Thank you for that suggestion. Unfortunately all my old saw blades are too thin.

Originally Posted by jack620

Leuco Saw Sharpening in Braeside can make new riving knives. They use the saw plate from old saw blades. I can't remember how much they quoted me. I ended up finding a blade to match my riving knife.

Brilliant! I was thinking I'd need a small engineering workshop. Turns out my sharpening service (Northern Sharpening in Coburg) can do it and it'll be ready in a couple of days. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

For what it's worth, I feel that machinery (table saw) suppliers in Australia are pretty tardy in not offering a selection of riving knives for their table saws to suit the common saw plate / blade kerf thickness for blades now commonly available. The suppliers may also be exposed to personal injury litigation as many of the supplied manuals do not address or warn of the potential hazards of not matching riving knife to blade plate thickness nor do they offer optional accessory riving knifes to suit thin kerf blades.

The one size fits all riving knife to suit 1/8" plate thickness blades isn't acceptable imho.

I agree.

I haven't bought a new saw table for years so I don't know what info is in the manuals now, but given the amount of often bleeding obvious (do not submerge tool in water while operating) safety information in other power tool manuals I'd expect table saw manuals to cover the obvious and potentially very serious personal injury risks from incompatible blade and riving knife thicknesses. The same should apply to saw blades, but I've bought two different types of Freud table saw ripping blades in recent months and I don't recall anything coming with them.

Originally Posted by 419

I agree.

... I'd expect table saw manuals to cover the obvious and potentially very serious personal injury risks from incompatible blade and riving knife thicknesses.

Your expectations need to be lowered somewhat.

After posting I had a quick look at a couple of the offerings from our major suppliers - sweet buggar all is mentioned. One manual didn't even contain the words "riving knife."

Perhaps the personal injury litigation firms haven't tapped that sector of the market yet.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Your expectations need to be lowered somewhat.

Alas, after many years on the planet I have some unwanted experience in that endeavour, in too many aspects of life.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Perhaps the personal injury litigation firms haven't tapped that sector of the market yet.

Probably a consequence of:

1. A relatively small number of potential plaintiffs seeking legal advice on something they're unaware isn't their fault, not least because the manuals apparently don't address the issue so how would the average novice to intermediate, and maybe even some experienced, woodworkers and certainly occasional table saw users know?

2. A vast and possibly universal number of plaintiff lawyers having no idea what a riving knife is or does, so the absence or inadequacy of one wouldn't occur to them as a ground of claim even if they were consulted by an injured woodworker.

3. Too many potential defendants making and selling table saws. Not as simple as asbestos diseases with James Hardie being the ultimate defendant in most Australian claims.

4. Workers' compensation insurers dealing with most if not all claims in industry. Their primary aim is to pay the injured worker as little as possible and, like all insurers, exploit any opportunity to avoid liability entirely.

5. Problems in proving than an injury was due to the absence or inadequacy of a riving knife rather than some other failure in using the saw table. Most injuries related to absent or inadequate riving knives are going to arise from kickback and even with an absent or inadequate riving knife there could be unrelated causes, such as not feeding timber straight into the blade.

6. Litigation funders being unwilling to fund plaintiff lawyers to run cases with the above problems.

FWIW, I still have a riving knife which came with my 9 1/4" 1750W Hitachi circular saw bought in the late 1970s. Given the grunt in that old machine, a riving knife wasn't a bad idea. The riving knife's still pristine condition says I didn't use it, largely because at the time I didn't know what a riving knife did. Or what kickback could do. Anyway, I didn't need a riving knife working in clouds of dust cutting into asbestos cement sheet with a masonry wheel on the Hitachi to create my first workshop in an old fibro garage and on later fibro adventures. I didn't know about asbestos diseases either.

Originally Posted by 419

Anyway, I didn't need a riving knife working in clouds of dust cutting into asbestos cement sheet with a masonry wheel on the Hitachi to create my first workshop in an old fibro garage and on later fibro adventures. I didn't know about asbestos diseases either.

Sadly, you are not alone on that front. In my preteens & teens I worked alongside my Dad as often as I could. Like most back then we cut "super compressed fibro" sheets for patio decking & bathroom underlay (in high-sets) with a friction disc / cut-off wheel on a large Skill power saw.

Thankfully times have changed, we now have more information, but I really don't think industry is more enlightened to the hazards or takes adequate precautions (engineered stone).

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Thankfully times have changed, we now have more information, but I really don't think industry is more enlightened to the hazards or takes adequate precautions (engineered stone).

Like asbestos, engineered stone risks seem not be so much a failure of low level and not well informed small employers protecting their workers but the failure of major suppliers of the material to provide adequate warnings or, better still, just not supply the stuff in its current dangerous form.

And, of course, the usual lack of effectiveness of workers' compensation and OH&S authorities despite the massive increases in premiums which common sense would suggest would be better spent in prevention rather than compensation. But common sense generally seems not to be well regarded, nor particularly prominent, in the public service, statutory authorities and municipal councils.

As evidenced by a major renovation I did a couple of years ago when I wanted to remove AC sheet cladding from a 1940s home to avoid buyer resistance to asbestos but was informed by the idiot heritage officer that the council preferred to replace like with like. I refrained from asking if she expected me to find an asbestos remover to get a load of old AC sheet to replace the AC sheet I removed and which he could take away in accordance with strict regulations before dropping off the old AC sheet he had removed from somewhere else so I could install it to replace the AC sheet I had just removed, and whether this seemed like a pointless economic and environmental exercise, particularly as AC sheet had been outlawed for many years?

Originally Posted by 419

I refrained from asking

But had you done so, the response would have been memorable. Must have been new on the job, or hadn't been listening to you.

Originally Posted by ErrolFlynn

But had you done so, the response would have been memorable.

Yeah, very memorable, but in retaliation my planning permit would have been ignored for five or six or more times the statutory limit, rather than just double it in accordance with that council's usual incompetence and or arrogance in routinely ignoring the statutory limit, for me daring to challenge the planning oracle. Unlike council wage employees, time was money for me in those situations.

Originally Posted by ErrolFlynn

Must have been new on the job, or hadn't been listening to you.

Alas, not new on the job.

She had an established reputation for being petty, difficult, obstructive and vindictive. Which in my experience seems often to be the traits most highly valued in local government regulators in particular.

Life has taught me that challenging people like this with their desire and power to frustrate people who pay their wages usually ends in them screwing us, because they can block what we want to achieve. Better to submit to their inflated sense of themselves and frequent ignorance of what they're employed to do, and work with that to get the desired result.

Worked fine for a major developer I was involved with many years ago, who sent generous Christmas hampers (with a fair bit of cash hidden in the hampers of the more useful recipients, notably planning approval managers and building inspectors) to various council and state government officers. The developer came out poorly in a royal commission into naughty stuff but wore only a few minor criminal charges, the fines for which in total were less than some of the cash bundles in the hampers of low level building inspectors, never mind planning approval managers and state government bureaucrats.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the aim is to get the result I want rather than engage in the protracted power contests these clowns seem to enjoy. Just roll over on your back and acknowledge their snarling superiority and try to co-operate with their idiotic requirements and you'll generally get what you want much more quickly and easily than by doing something stupid like requiring them to comply with their often misunderstood legal obligations and, far worse, going to court to show that they have no idea what they're doing.

The difference between what I'm doing and what local and other government clowns do is that I'm using my money to challenge them, and they're using my money and yours and everyone else's, but none of their own money, to resist me.