Comment by bluGill
3 days ago
I don't know - I've never had the budget for a nice saw. I've come close a few times, but something else comes up.
If you are spending $2000 on a saw spending $300 on a third party guard to go with it isn't such big deal. The cheap saws often are not even strong enough to attach the nice guard if you would spend the money.
The guard on my table saw mostly serves as a reminder to keep my fingers away from it. I don't expect it would actually prevent any sort of injury.
A good guard will prevent kickback and thus save you from injury. Fingers are an obvious risk of a say (and such accidents happen all the time), but kickback is the larger danger and the right guards will prevent that.
On my consumer grade Dewalt, the blade guard, riving knife, and kickback guard are all separate components, so I guess I was considering them separately. I still don't trust the kickback guard fully either, so attempt to stand off to the side if possible if I'm worried about kickback.