How Do I Know If It's a Riving Knife or a Splitter?
George VondriskaDescription
Riving knives are the talk of the table saw industry. If you’re a table saw user, or considering buying a table saw, you need to know the difference between a riving knife and simple splitter. This video explains it all.
When you talk about table saws, it's pretty common that people start asking about riving knives versus splitters. So that's what I want to talk about here. The question being, how do I know what I have or what's the deal with a riving knife? So here we go. On this particular side, I've got it unplugged so we can do some of this and I've got the blade as high out of the saw as it'll go.
Now at this point, if this is a splitter or this is a riving knife it's going to look pretty much the same. Here's where things change. As I start to lower the blade, the blade's going down into the table, the distance between the back of the blade and the front of this splitter is not changing not changing, not changing, not changing. And of course, as I come back up, that continues to be true. If this were a splitter, and it's not it's a riving knife, what would happen is that when we were at this maximum height position, and we started to lower the blade, the distance from the back of the blade to the front of this chunk of metal would increase.
Part of the danger in this is that, if you imagine having the blade way down here, where it's going to be when you're cutting your three-quarter inch stock, if the splitter is still up at that maximum position there's quite a gap between the back of the blade and the front of the splitter. And if things start to go badly on you, it's possible for stuff to get caught between the front of the splitter and the back of the blade. If it gets grabbed here, it's gonna uplift off the table and you're going to get kick back. So if you're looking at a saw, maybe you're out saw shopping and you want to know what is it I'm buying, if you do a raise and lower on the blade and this and this go together, so that gap never changes, You've got the riving knife. It really is the best way to go to be as safe as possible on your table saw.
Never knew the difference! Turns out my 40 year old Craftsman saw, which still works quite well, has a riving knife.
I didn't know there was a difference?
Won't play
Thanks good explanation.
Good explanation and info.