And now a rambling opinion that you are free to skip
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To further define the term "kickback", this is something that many people take with a grain of salt or fail to give adequate credit to because they have never had it happen. In a best case scenario, you are cutting something and then, just like magic, the material is gone as if it vanished (this was my fortunate experience and a gift from the shop-gods as far as I'm concerned) . . . it happens that quick. Your eye cannot follow it, you cannot stop it and you cannot get out of the way. As you stand there baffled, you will hear a clunk or a bang or a crash as the piece lands somewhere in the shop.
Worse cases involve you meeting the blade or the kickback projectile meeting you. The stories of lessor kickbacks spawn from folks using small tabletop saws where one can actually overpower the saw when things go south. Once you get to the level of a decent jobsite saw up through contractor saw, cab saw and so forth, our mighty muscles become useless against this phenomena.
The gentleman below was good enough to share his mistake (cutting a small end off of a longer blank which kicked back in his face) with others as a warning in taking safety too casually. Remember that thing you read about staying out of line with the blade? He posted again about a year later and now bears a scar in the shape of a letter "L" on his forehead which he good-naturedly says stands for "loser". Kudos to him for keeping his sense of humor (sorry for the kind of gross picture, don't scroll down if it will bother you):
At any rate, this is not intended as a fear-tactic. We all drive cars everyday and lots more accidents happen on the road than in the shop. Put your tools in proper working order and follow your safety procedures and all will be well.
A splitter of some kind is not an option in my opinion. A poorly functioning fence or miter gauge is just asking for trouble. A tablesaw sled should be one of your first jig projects; they add safety and can make up for a poor miter gauge if that's all you have.
As mentioned, you can measure between the fence you have and the front of the blade and the rear of the blade each time you lock it down to assure it is parallel. Having had one of those fences I can pretty much tell you it will not lock down correctly by itself unless by rare accident. Double check each time, this is a safety concern.
Blade guards are another discussion as a poor one is more dangerous than not having one (this is not true of fences and guages; NEVER make a cut without a fence or a gauge/sled on the tablesaw, NEVER free hand). There is a ton of material out there on how to safely use our tools. There is a ton of experience and willingness to hole on this forum. Take advantage of it and us
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Sorry for the long rambling tirade
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P.s. here's a pic of my 1970's Craftsman back when I had it.
That's an Align-a-Rip fence, an Incra miter gauge (ignore the shop made miter gauge fence position, you would never use one like that, it was for the pic), a PSI overarm guard/dust collection hood, a Rockler router table bolted on as an extension, etc. You can see the little plywood paddle I built over the power switch to allow me to turn the saw off with my hip. You can also see the bag of Ready-crete that I wrapped in plastic and set in the base to add mass for stability. It also has the usual suspects; machined pulleys, link belt, ZCI with splitter and so forth. Just an example of what you can do with the saw you show but, you should add the safety items first IMHO. Most of all, have fun!