Riving knife for PM 66?

[Charles McKinley]

Hello,

Is there an aftermarket riving knife available forthe Powermatic 66 or will I have to buy the Besemeyer splitter?

TIA

[Jeff DeLashmit]

To the best of my limited knowledge riving knives can't be retrofitted to a saw they weren't originally designed for. It's a shame cause I love the safety of a riving knife but also like to use dado's which are not able to be used on european machines that have the riving knife. I wish there was a good quality table saw that had a riving knive and dado capability combined.

[Dave Arbuckle]

Charles, for a riving knife to be fitted, the sawblade height mechanism has to rise straight up and down, so the riving knife doesn't change attitude with respect to the blade. This isn't the case on your Powermatic, unfortunately.

Jeff, Rojek tablesaws sold in the United States have a riving knife and will accept stacked dado sets. You have to make your own decision on quality, cost and such. ;)

Dave

[Wendell Wilkerson]

The SawStop group is offering an American style cabinet saw with a euro style riving knife plus their cool blade stopping technology. Here's their web site : SawStop Home (http://www.sawstop.com/home.htm)

They have really neat high speed footage of their blade stopping gear at work on the site.

Laguna also offers a table saw with a riving knife and dado capabilties so there are some options out there.

Wendell

[Steven Wilson]

Originally posted by Jeff DeLashmit
To the best of my limited knowledge riving knives can't be retrofitted to a saw they weren't originally designed for. It's a shame cause I love the safety of a riving knife but also like to use dado's which are not able to be used on european machines that have the riving knife. I wish there was a good quality table saw that had a riving knive and dado capability combined.

Both MiniMax and now Felder offer high quality table saws (ok, combination machines too) that have riving knife's and dado capability.