Shark take a hit so I didn't

[softop41]

Well, sadly, I am Lee's first Shark failure. But it did exactly what a guard should do - I didn't get the hit!
I was cutting a piece of 2" thick walnut; the offcut was about 2" x 6" x 5/8". It caught by the blade and the next thing I knew, the guard was broken, the offcut was on the floor 6 feet behind me and it didn't hit me!
Oops, I forgot how to attach a pic.
Oh, well, suffice it to say that Lee's Shark Guard is one heck of a good guard. The left side was nearly blown off the guard from the dust port forward and the dust port was partially dislodged!
His customer service is beyond compare! It happened on Friday morning, I e-mailed him asking what I needed to do to repair it, I got a phone response with in an hour or so and I got the replacement parts in the mail this morning(Wednesday).
I am a happy Shark Guard owner; the rest of you can rest assured that your Shark will protect you very nicely!
Jerry

[Ken Massingale]

That had to raise the pucker factor to new heights, Jerry. I'm glad you had it in place and it protected you.

[Thom2]

Thanks for sharing that Jerry,

EXACTLY what I expected from Lee's wonderful creation.

I think you should build a display case for that broken guard and display it proudly as it's probably the best money you've ever spent on the shop.

I'd also like to see the pics of it as I think it'd be a good visual around here as to what the Shark is actually designed to do. The easy on/easy off, excellent DC and mucho cool look are simply side benefits of Lee's excellent design, the true benefit of the shark (which we rarely ever see or hear of) is to prevent injury in an event such as you experienced.

I'm glad to hear that you're okay ('cept maybe your drawers), and Kudos to Lee for what he's done to make this a safer hobby for all of us.

[Stytooner]

Thanks for posting this, Jerry. I thought it was the first, but actually I think now it was the second. The first one was quite awhile back and caused me to install the front part over the top part when welding. The very front part at the top and the dust port had failed then. This is the first that the side was busted. Polycarbonate is some good stuff, but not indestructable. I have to think the same failure might have occured with any guard. I have personally abused sharks in testing and have seen only minor faults.
It's actually useful to see how these things fail.
This one was partially due to the 4" dust port not being formed as narrow as possible and putting too much tension on the sides. I had noted this prior to this and started forming them with this in mind.

I also want to put up a new section on my website that shows these two failures and documents what I did to correct the issues. Faults with the shark as well as saves. I think that would be interesting.
Here are images of both.

[softop41]

Lee,
Thanks for posting the pic; I couldn't remember how to link pics to a post last night and I wanted to get it done then while I was thinking about it.
Thanks again,
Jerry

[IBBugsy]

Thanks for the post!! As a relative newbie, I got the Shark to protect me from my ignorance and I'm glad to hear it works well.

I'd like to understand what happened. Was this a 2x6 board that you were cross-cutting 5/8" off of? And then the cut off piece got tagged by the rear teeth as they came up out of the table and sent the piece flying up and forward (therefore ripping out the front side of the Shark?? That's what makes sense to me????

[softop41]

IB....,
Yep, that's what happened. It was a small piece of walnut, about 5-5/8" by 6+" and I was cutting the extra off to make it fairly square to make a bowl blank.
It was just one of those things that can happen at any time when we do short off-cuts.
I'm thankful for Lee's excellent design and construction!
Jerry