shop built overarm guards?

[rob]

Hi all, I am doing some shop reorg this winter and my biggest dust problem seems to be the top of the tablesaw. I have looked around at guards like the brett, exaktor, excalibur, etc. Seems like too much to plonk for a guard, no matter how nice. I saw one site where someone built their own and hopefully if there are some other ones out there you could post ideas/pics/etc. I think the easiest would be one that hangs from the joists, but I'd also like to be able to move the saw into a different location. Any ideas?

Thanks much. Rob

p.s. I have just finished the miter saw station from Popular Woodworking's free plans, and I highly suggest it to anyone looking for a nice portable miter station.

[Mark Jerde]

Don't know if this was the site you saw since you didn't mention it...

-- Mark

[Joe Schmoe]

Excellent! Thanks =========================================================================== Joe

[Dan]

On Thu 18 Dec 2003 02:03:59p, rob [e-mail] (rob) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I started searching for the same sort of thing a little while ago. Still looking, but I've found these so far. The one at ValRose looks like it would fit the bill if you modified it a bit.

[Roy Smith]

I'm coming to the same conclusion. I've got a a 650 CFM dust collector drawing on the 4" port in the back of my saw. If I were to build/buy an overhead guard with dust collection built right in, how would I feed it?

One thought would be a Y w/reducer on one leg. 4" in from the DC, 4" out to the saw base, and 2-1/2" out to the overhead guard. If I did that, would the 650 CFM DC have enough capacity to generate sufficient airflow in both lines? Would the uneven hose split just result in the

4" branch getting all the flow and the 2-1/2" getting nothing?

[rob]

[Tim Carver]

I'm doing exactly this, and it works pretty well.. I have a 4" wye at the blast gate, coming down from the ceiling at the left side/back of the saw. There is about a 3' run of 2 1/2" down to the Biese guard, and a much longer run of 4" (maybe 8' or so) comes around the back of the saw and along the floor, into the left side of the saw (the saw is a JTAS-10 left tilt). I use a wire to suspend the 4" abount 18" above the saw until it llops down a few feet back of the saw so that there's plenty of clearance for large panels. There is a fairly decent draw on both sections. You really need to keep those runs of 2-1/2" short.

Tim Carver [e-mail]