lw3957

Another question comes to mind: "Why would anybody be peening using two hammers?" Seems to me that both should be hung up if you can't peen a reasonably straight line down the middle of a 5/8 strip. If desperate to bruise indirectly make up a punch, and get it off the table. The man needs slapin' for having no respect.

Seems that a lot of old timers were called idiot, and lived longer than those by some other name.
Case in point, when I was much younger one of my friends walked into a sawmill as the saw grabbed the flitch and removed his head from eyebrows up. Granted it was not a 10 inch blade that threw it, but the principle still applies if you don't want pieces of timber bouncing around the room, with or without riving knife and short or long fence. The cutting force of a high blade is nearly perpendicular to the direction of the travel, this makes it difficult to throw the timber but may lift the rear of the board.
If the contact area of the carbide on a shallow blade is compared with that of one set high, it is fairly obvious that the carbide contacts for a much shorter time, hence less heat build up. Unfortunately a rougher cut results as is to be expected.
On friendly timber, that behaves nicely, I keep the blade with bottom of gullet clear for waste clearance. On our dense hardwoods the blade goes to near full height unless it is under 3/4" thick using a 12" saw.
Every piece of timber is different, therefore no one position is right for all.
If you don't use saw a guard where ever possible, I recommend Russian roulette, you won't bleed as long that way, unless you have your U-Beaut saw stop.