This is where you will find the newest offerings from the Leeway Workshop. Over the years, it became apparent to me from customers questions and reading some forums, that the covers that come on aftermarket over arm or overhead mounts where not as good as they could be. I set out to design a replacement cover that is both well made out of polycarbonate and is equiped with a 4" dust port. The "Whale Shark Cover" addresses these and at the same time is designed to work with more efficiency than the OEM cover that your unit came with.
I have some models that are ready for production now. Other models are in the works and will be posted as reviews become available. You will find some photo's and info below. Lead time on these will be the same as for the Shark Guards. While I can build these faster, I still have to abide by my first come, first served policy.
If you are interested in ordering, just drop me an email. You can pre-order and pay when they are ready if you like.
Fire away with any questions you may have and I'll try to answer them.
Here are a couple links to some threads at Woodnet. This is where most of the R&D discussions took place. Thread 1 Thread 2
If you don't see a Whale Shark cover for your particular application and are interested in one,
please contact me.
I would be interested in working with you to develop a mount that would make the Whale Shark compatable.
Comments from Bill Pentz
Lee shared with me early on when he started making the Shark Guard dust collectors. I said this product looked like a great idea because there were no small shop woodworker saw over blade guard hoods that I really liked. All either worked poorly for dust collection and or had safety issues. A saw guard must do the following things:
1. A good blade guard hood needs to provide a reasonable measure of safety. This means it both helps us keep away from our blades, protects us from kickback and is made of something strong enough that if things go flying we are going to get some reasonable protection. Lee makes his Shark Guards from some of the toughest plastic known which is also used in safety glasses, bulletproof windows, etc. He also offers his Shark Guards with a good splitter and anti-kickback pawls to minimize kickback.
2. A good blade guard hood also in my opinion needs to let us see what we are doing. Strangely, some guards are smoky or solid steel like the one that came with my European saw that soon got tossed because taking it on and off to ensure my cuts were aligned correctly was too much trouble. The Shark Guard provides excellent visibility and its design minimizes a buildup of static adhered dust so we don’t have to do a lot of cleaning.
3. A guard hood also must provide good chip collection meaning collect the same sawdust and chips that we would otherwise sweep up with a broom. It is real simple. Our saw blade tips launch dust at over 100 miles an hour and even a powerful cyclone like my design only moves air at about 60 miles an hour. Unless a blade guard blocks that fast moving airflow off the tip of our blades, we lose and are going to have sawdust and chips all over. One of my good friends bought one of the nicest and most expensive over arm guards for his saw. It had an open front on its clear blade guard so spews sawdust and chips all over the front of his saw and area around the front of his saw. The Shark Guard addresses this problem well.
4. For those who want good fine dust collection, a good blade guard hood must also be able to move enough air. If our tools are made from the ground up to totally trap all the sawdust and chips we make then a good shop vacuum will provide excellent dust collection. Because most of us use tools not built from the ground up for good fine dust collection we need to instead block the fast moving streams with good hoods and move enough air to surround the working areas of our tools with air moving fast enough to overcome normal room air currents and pull in the fine dust. Although many vendors would like us to believe this is all brand new and about as complicated as rocket science, the reality is we have decades of air engineering experience that show just what we need in terms of our blade guard hoods and airflow. Lee has made the guard to do a good job controlling the fine dust and with his 4” port enables it to move the airflow above the saw blade that the air engineers say we need to get good enough fine dust collection ample to meet the various air quality standards.
So the bottom line is I not only recommend Lee’s Leeway Shark Guards, I personally use one.
Bill Pentz
If you would like to find out much more about anything dust collection related, visit Bill's site here.
Here are some photo's and plans for overarm mounts from around the web. These are simply links to give you some idea of what might be accomplished by you. I have no affiliation with any of these sites and cannot answer questions pertaining to them. I can answer some questions pertaining to the Whale Shark covers. I do intend to take a stab at designing a system down the road, but that will be some time in the future. There are so many different ways that overarms can be built or adapted for different applications that materals and design possibilities are virtually limitless. The things I think pertinent in any design is ruggedness, stiffness, adjustability and versatility. Consider these things along with your personal application constraints when designing your own system.
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