When I started work on the restoration of my Walker Turner 1165 saws, one of my goals was to use them, obviously. To accomplish that goal I knew I would need to make them safe to use. If it wasn’t going to be safe I wasn’t going to want to use it. In this installment of the restoration, I make some modifications to the table and blade lifting mechanism to add an aftermarket splitter and blade guard.
After making the modifications to the table in the video, I made the necessary modifications to the blade tilt mechanism as well. Below is a write up with some additional pictures of the process.
With the table upside down on some saw horses, I assembled the blade tilt and raise mechanism. I needed to do this to determine where (height wise) my custom bracket needed to be installed.
Once I got everything installed, I clamped the bracket in place with the blade in the fully up location.
With the bracket clamped to the casting, I marked and drilled the holes for the bolts. This steel bracket has 2 threaded holes that will hold a Shark Guard splitter, which in turn holds a blade guard.
In the mockup process, I found a few more modifications that needed to be made to the table I had forgotten about from the other saw (it was a year ago…).
With all of the additional modifications taken care of, I could now see what the actual installation would look like.
The mess of parts on the table not withstanding, this is what it will look like with the actual Shark Guard installed.
I also have an original Walker Turner blade guard and splitter from the 1180 series of saws. My modifications work with that as well. I may end up using this guard on the second saw, since I only have the one Shark Guard.
That is all for this update. With everything modified and ready to go, I painted the parts of the table I cut, and the next step will be starting to reassemble things!
Thanks for checking it out!
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