Saw Guard - Brett or Exaktor???

[Kenneth D. Stein]

Having watched a safety demo given by a surgeon I am ready to upgrade my shope in two ways: an air horn to summon help and a table saw guard.

Which one? Brett Guard or Exaktor? I'd be obliged for comments and recommendations. Price is not an object. My saw is used principally for ripping and dado (limited).

Thanks.

Ken

[Matt Meiser]

I have neither, but I'll give general advise based on owning the Biesemeyer for several years now. I'll also say that I've never seen either of these in person, and have only seen a couple pictures of the Brett Guard.

- I like being able to quickly move the guard out of the way for operations where it won't work--for example work where I've got a very tall workpiece like cutting a tenon. On my Bies. I made this possible by removing the crank and screw from the end so that I can just loosen the locking knob and slide the arm out of the way. It is useful for most operations, but not all and I think this would be true of all of them.
- Don't overlook the dust collection features. The dust collection considerably reduces the dust put out by the saw. I have mine connected to a small dedicated shop vac which I wired to turn on automatically with my saw. (I also have a 6" drop going to the bottom of the saw.)
- On mine, I like that I can lift the guard and have it lock in the up position for setup.
- The arm makes a convenient place to mount a shelf for frequently used items like pushblocks and the hex driver to adjust my Incra miter gauge.
- The arm somewhat gets in the way of the router I recently installed in my extension table. Not a huge problem. Worst would be that I'd have to remove the whole guard if I wanted to use a vertical raised bit on a very large door panel, which I don't plan to do, but you never know. It also meant that my fence needed to go to the right of the router with work feeding from the front of the saw to the back. This is the less-common way of doing it, but it works fine.
- The easier it is to use the guard, the more you will use it. If it is hard to use, blocks your view too much, etc, you probably won't use it.
- At some point, chances are the blade is going to be introduced to the guard if that is even remotely possible. On mine, the sides, where that is most likely to happen, are just flat clear plastic. Making replacements from Plexiglas or Lexan will be easy when they get too scarred up. This has happened for two reasons--I've had the guard adjusted too close to the blade and I've tipped the blade for a bevel cut which made the blade hit the guard even though it was fine for a regular cut.

Hope that gives you some ideas of things to look at.

[Jim Becker]

The splitter you use is more important than the overarm guard you choose, IMHO. Outside of that, Matt has some very good comments.

[Ed Falis]

I've had the Brett-Guard for 5 years. I like it and use it for most operations. It comes with a small splitter - you can ask for regular or thin kerf. They'll probably toss both in if you aske them to (it's just a small metal tab). I actually just use the microjig splitter most of the time with it because it's faster to change or remove.

It's not very usable once you're ripping strips less than a few inches. I use a pair of GRR-Rippers for that.

The guard itself is on a hinge mechanism with a lock down cam ending in a hand-knob. If it takes 5 seconds to move it out of the way, I'd be surprised.

Be carefull when setting it so you don't hit it (especially its anti-kickback parts) with your blade.