Thanks for the vid. Was looking for exactly this comparison. I have the Euro one, and I never understood while it's left covering the whole piece of wood, having to jump your hand over the piece right where it actually needs some pressure. If it is for safety, I then don't understand why the American type would slide back allowing you to have the hands on the piece while it's over the blades. Why not then just slide the Euro just enough to cover the unused part of the blade? Anyhow... that's how I use it, so don't understand the hopping over the Euro guard thing. Thanks again and cheers from Spain.
Why does minimax (FS41) ship with such a crappy plastic guard? For this reason alone I just ordered the euro guard, although euro does seem like the safer option.
Hi, the interesting part is, that the American version is not allowed to use in Germany, by law. The guard opens to early, if you have a wide piece of wood. It’s the same for closing, when you have passed the knife shaft. The standard in Germany for professionals is called Suvamatic. It’s expensive, but the most effective guard system, from my point of view.
Yes the Suvamatic is very nice, and crazy expensive. The one I tried seemed to have limited range for the side spring, and needed to be operated more like the standard Euroguard, albeit with the up/down spring action, though it was still not convenient to use a push block like I prefer to use. And, again, had a height limit, thus times when the guard would be useless. Perhaps the perfect guard will be a robot operating the jointer!
Now I know. American guard all the way. Euro guard will just slow productivity big time. When I did this work, sometimes you had surface long, thick heavy wood. It was pointless to make full passes when starting, so I would work one end at a time until you could remove materiel in an entire pass. You just can't do that with a euro guard because you need to teeter slide the board on the leading or end edge of the machine.
I did not make it, although I modified it a little so it would work on my machine. It is the guard from the SCM F410 Nova jointer. I had access to the warehouse and a machine was totaled in shipping. I asked for the guard and got it. I had to drill and tap my machine to receive it, and I also added an aluminum edge (file bar repurposed) so the boards wouldn't dent the plywood as they banged into it when starting a pass. It is definitely more heavy duty than the plastic guard that came with my machine, though I still have that and it works fine, but this was an opportunity that presented itself, I got an idea, and it worked out. Anyone could probably order that part from SCM parts if they wanted to.
I don't know where this "European" guard system is coming from since there are many countries with there own laws and restrictions in Europe. I'm Dutch and never worked with either cumbersome systems you are referring to in your video. Watch this video, at 3:40 min he is showing how he is using it. This type of guard can move unlimited in vertical and horizontal direction. The way I've been thought is you push the wood over the blades until your fingertips of your right hand touches the guard. You lift only your fingertips over the guard while keep on pushing the wood with the palm of your hand. When your palm reached the guard, your fingertips are already passed the guard so you can transfer the pressure and keep full control during the full pass. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EQeIDiya5gY.html
