This may just be my experience but the Sawstop with the thinner kerf blade has a riving knife that is slightly thicker than the blade and I’ve noticed it occasionally binding when cutting thicker wood (usually anything over 1").
Is it practical/possible to get a riving knife that matches the thinner kerf blade?
I second this! I’ve run into that problem many times, but it always slips my mind to suggest this haha. We’d need to make sure that the thinner riving knife never gets used with a full-kerf blade, as that could be dangerous. But I think it’s worth having if we’re gonna stick with a thin kerf blade.
I didn’t even know what it was called or that it was a problem that was solvable, but there have been times when things I was cutting on the SawStop that got stuck and I just thought it was my ineptitude.
Same!
(My ineptitude, Brian, not yours.)
Such a knife exists! It’s silver and is on the left side of Sawstop 2 to the right of the metal detector and wrenches. I believe the regular knife is .095” and the silver one is .075”
This is only the solution if you’re using a thin kerf blade, not what’s on the machine by default.
Michael is right!
And so are the dangers of using a riving knife sized improperly to the blade. Please take precautions to make sure the knife matches the blade and always return the thin kerf riving knife back to its “home-hook”.
I had no idea a thin kerf riving knife was even available for use.
Thanks for the heads up!
I’ll add to this by saying: every time I change the Sawstop setup I change it back when I’m done.
Assume the next person won’t know that’s a ripping blade vs general purpose blade; assume they won’t know that’s the thinner riving knife.
I’ve been using Sawstop 2 for years and only learned about the thinner knife earlier this month.
That’s a great mindset not only at home but certainly in the shared space. Thank you for leaving things in a consistent state for the next person!
This would be great information to add to the wiki if anyone has ten minutes! The wiki is editable by all active members and we encourage folks to add information they wish they had when starting out at Asmbly! If you don’t know how to contribute to the wiki, there’s a wiki for that too!
There is no such thing as a “thin kerf” riving kife or “thick kerf.” The riving kiifes are different and specific to the model of the machine. The silver thinner one is for models prior to 2010. The black one for newer models. In this instance the silver one plus a spare one is supposed to be in the old Sawstop by the door. The black one goes on the new Sawstop in front of the miter saw. They are not supposed to be interchangeable. The riving knife is supposed to be parallel and centered on the blade so if you put the thinner silver one instead of the black one you may have a false sense of security and eventually something will happen as it is not centered on the blade and since is thinner, it may not be properly secured in the bracket. If the stock gets caught on the knife, more than likely it is bent. You can take it out and set it on a flat surface to check. For some reason the black one is prone to bend, i have straightened out twice but it took a while (about half hour). If the thin kerf blade youre using is less than 3/32" or whatever the thickness of the riving kife, it may not be safe to use with the riving knife. If the riving kife is flat, you have to check the alignment of the bracket. Sawstop has a video for this procedure. Youre not going to find much information about this but if you dont trust me you can go to Sawstop website and under the parts for riving knife it will tell you that none of the riving kifes are interchancgeable with each other, they are model specific.
Our two Sawstops are the same model (ICS).
The ICS manual says the compatible riving knife is part number CB104 094 (2.0mm thick), but if you look up that part number in the Sawstop catalog it says it’s for use only in CB and CNS model saws.
Looks like SawStop made a running change of the standard ICS riving knife from 2.0mm to 2.3mm. ICS saws can be adjusted to accommodate either one. The older CB and CNS model saws still use the old 2.0mm knife (I assume they weren’t as adjustable? Don’t know…)
We should probably pick one riving knife thickness (Sawstop recommends the 2.3mm for both regular and thin-kerf blades), adjust both saws to accommodate that knife, and throw away all the “wrong size” ones. Both the 2.0mm and 2.3mm knifes should work in the ICS, but swapping between them calls for non-trivial machine adjustment and is not recommended by Sawstop.
I suspect we have one machine adjusted for the 2.0mm knife and one adjusted for the 2.3mm knife, and swapping them causes enough of an alignment problem to be noticeable when using a thin-kerf blade.