DeWalt 744BT With a Riving Knife!

I've had my DeWalt 744 BT for some time now, I very much like it, it has been a great saw for me.

One thing that was NOT very good on the saw, from the very beginning, was the guard/splitter.


Here is a stock shot of the saw, the guard was not easy to use, and you could very easily bend the metal holding it on to the saw, which would then bind on the wood as it came past the saw.


I soon ditched the plastic guard part, and cut the splitter down to just a splitter with the anti-kickback palls, this worked OK, but it would have to be removed for cuts that did not go all the way through the wood, and I found that the palls did sometimes make the wood twist as it went by, and improvement, but still not a great thing.

To be honest, I'd not really heard of a "Riving Knife" much before, but once I'd seen one, I thought, boy, that is a good idea


I removed the spring and palls......


and put the piece back on the saw, to mark it so I could cut it down..


With the blade lowered all the way, I just simply marked the piece of steel with a marker.....


Once I had the top marked, I did a bit of drawing to get a nice curve to cut....


Five minutes with the angle grinder and I have a riving knife!


Here it is in place, I think that looks fairly good.


As you can see, it tilts with the blade, and........


When the blade is lowered all the way, it too goes under the table,
no need to remove it now, except whenI put the dado stack on the saw!

I'd say that was well worth the 30 minutes or so that it took

Very very nice!

EXCELLENT, Stu!!

I saw that saw this weekend at the local candy store and was bummed that they stuck it so dang high up in the air. Very good mod!

As usual Stu, thats a really good job there.
You should manufacture those for different saws and sell them.

DT

Well done Stu!

I am a BIG fan if riving knives. I have one on my circular saw (Festool) but not on my table saw (General). If I were buying a table saw now, a riving knife would be a requirement.

Hi Stu,

I asked for some help a while back about the cross hair on this saw, which was off too much to adjust. Your suggestions helped and I am now spot on with the marking for width of a rip cut.

Since I have the same model, would you mind, the next time you do take the riving knife off, making a tracing of it?

Thanks guys, it is much better to use the saw with the splitter, but the facts of life are that my tablesaw gets used as bench space most of the time, and the splitter sticking out of the saw, made that hard to do, thus, more often than not, the splitter was NOT on the saw, which was not good.

Bill, I'll do a tracing tomorrow, but really it is dead easy to figure out yourself, it does not have to be exact.

I would not mind making one out of some stiffer metal, this metal is VERY soft, and bends easily, I'd rather have some stiffer steel to make one out of, maybe version 1.1

Cheers!

Bill, sorry, I did not get around to this until tonight.


A linky pic
This pic is taken on some graph paper, the squares are 5mm




Traces with the dimensions added.

Hope that helps!

Stu, the part you attached the splitter to moves up and down as well? Hmm, I was thinking the part my splitter attached to stayed stationary except for tilting. I have a Bies splitter on my Delta saw but don't use it much since I use the Micro Jig splitters, still not sure my pieces move up and down like yours does.

Hi Stu,

Just got a chance to check my email. Thanks for the info.

This brings up an interesting point. I was working on a mortising router jig and got involved with some math with 16th because of the flat sided diameter of the Dewalt router I have and thought about doing it metric instead for the easier math. This may just push me over the edge, now!

Thanks again, Stu. (And I bet SOMEONE else will appreciate the dimensions even if they don't admit it!

Aaron Beaver said:

Stu, the part you attached the splitter to moves up and down as well? Hmm, I was thinking the part my splitter attached to stayed stationary except for tilting. I have a Bies splitter on my Delta saw but don't use it much since I use the Micro Jig splitters, still not sure my pieces move up and down like yours does.

Click to expand...

Yep, on that saw the part that the splitter attaches to (now riving knife ) moves up and down with the blade and tilts as well, sure made it an easy mod to do!

Bill, I'm happy to help, and yeah, metric has it's advantages