I was lucky enough to have an early Shark Guard (Version 4.0 I believe) on my BT3100 when I bought it, and it worked well enough, except for the lack of anti kickback pawls always left me feeling a bit uneasy, and the dust collection port was 2" instead of 2.5", meaning connection to my dust collector required a reducer, and a more than liberal application of duct tape to make the connection work at all...
The few shortcomings I saw with my early Shark Guard were more than amply addressed with the recently arrived SG 10.4, a Shark Guard version 10 with the 4" "Mega Mouth" dust port upgrade.
The other feature that I didn't care about before it arrived was the "tailhook" which keeps the guard on the pins, and gives it no opportunity of slippage. I thought it was just excessive when I first saw one, but after seeing it up close and personal, I can see where this is a stroke of Genius on Lee's part.
Build quality on this is fantastic, as was my earlier model, Lee really does a nice job on these. Now here is where I have to say he had an oops, and also he stepped up tot he plate and really did right by me. You see my original had a spot where there was epoxy that just looks like it didn't make it into the joint. I wasn't worried about structure, it was plenty obvious this thing was stout, but there was enough of a gap that I was, probably unreasonably concerned about potential dust blow by. I was more than willing to try to inject epoxy into the gap, but instead, Lee got right on it and shipped out a replacement, which I must say as far as I can tell is a close to perfect as ANY hand made item can be...
I gave the value a rating of 5, yes it is expensive, but when you consider what it does for you, and that it is not an item that is mass produced in China, the fact that these are as inexpensive as they are is astonishing.
Likewise the 5 star rating for the documentation isn't exactly because he ships great docs with it, but instead Lee provides good info on his web site, and makes himself available for questions on setup and usage. I couldn't ask any more!
No these are not cheap guards, instead they are exceptionally well build, and so easy to use that maybe those of you that hate using guards might actually use them, and with any luck, stay part of the 10 finger crowd!
The few shortcomings I saw with my early Shark Guard were more than amply addressed with the recently arrived SG 10.4, a Shark Guard version 10 with the 4" "Mega Mouth" dust port upgrade.
The other feature that I didn't care about before it arrived was the "tailhook" which keeps the guard on the pins, and gives it no opportunity of slippage. I thought it was just excessive when I first saw one, but after seeing it up close and personal, I can see where this is a stroke of Genius on Lee's part.
Build quality on this is fantastic, as was my earlier model, Lee really does a nice job on these. Now here is where I have to say he had an oops, and also he stepped up tot he plate and really did right by me. You see my original had a spot where there was epoxy that just looks like it didn't make it into the joint. I wasn't worried about structure, it was plenty obvious this thing was stout, but there was enough of a gap that I was, probably unreasonably concerned about potential dust blow by. I was more than willing to try to inject epoxy into the gap, but instead, Lee got right on it and shipped out a replacement, which I must say as far as I can tell is a close to perfect as ANY hand made item can be...
I gave the value a rating of 5, yes it is expensive, but when you consider what it does for you, and that it is not an item that is mass produced in China, the fact that these are as inexpensive as they are is astonishing.
Likewise the 5 star rating for the documentation isn't exactly because he ships great docs with it, but instead Lee provides good info on his web site, and makes himself available for questions on setup and usage. I couldn't ask any more!
No these are not cheap guards, instead they are exceptionally well build, and so easy to use that maybe those of you that hate using guards might actually use them, and with any luck, stay part of the 10 finger crowd!