How to determine your splitter/riving knife thickness.
These are my typical recommendations on which thicknesses to choose when ordering.
The thicknesses I offer are actually just standard steel gages. 13, 12 and 11. The smaller the number, the thicker the stock. Here is a link to standard steel sheet gages. Steel Gages. Most factory supplied guards use 14 gage and even less in some cases. Very few use thicker, but there are some. These are the thicknesses I start out with. Then when I powder coat them, it adds 3 or 4 mils of coating to each side. It has been my experience that getting a splitter very close to the blade thickness is bad. It can often result in sticking and pinching on nearly every cut. This is also not safe. It will cause you to want to apply more pressure to feed and that is undesirable. You may have seen guys cut lumber the exact thickness of the kerf and use this as a splitter mounted into the throat plate. I think the reason that works is because the splitters are so small, they don't have enough area to cause much friction. The larger area of bigger splitters will cause issues if they are too thick. I only sell just a few of the thickest versions. They would be ideal on a saw in a cabinet shop that was dedicated for sheet goods. They also work on saws that have an easily adjusted splitter mounting bracket. Some are easy and some can be a bear. I sell the thin kerf the most. .090 inch thickness. I recommend these for guys that use both type blades. Thin kerf and standard kerf. It actually works well for both because of the area of the splitter surface. Guys that don't own any thin kerf blades usually order the .105". These are just a little thicker and may even support the guard just a bit better because of it. I would say that a good splitter should be just a bit less than the thickness of your kerf. Safety should be easy and trying to use a splitter that is too thick is a step in the wrong direction.
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