Greetings Bob,
A friend at work gave me a piece of butyl rubber left over from his new fish pond liner. I cut it to size and clamped it with a length of 10mm aluminium angle to the saddle against the left hand side of the cross slide on my ML7 using the tapped hole for the travelling steady.
With the saddle in the position shown in Chris J's photo the rubber just overhangs the shears at the chuck end. It is very strong and pliable and extends forward to just cover the leadscrew. When the saddle gets close to the chuck, it is heavy and soft enough to drop into the bed gap.
So far, after nearly 3 years of abuse from oils and hot swarf, it is slightly wrinkled but still doing the job of keeping the shears clean.
Gordon.