So the motivation to be safe around the saw isn't negated, it's just driven by different factors. Instead of motivation coming from the fear of losing a part of your hand, it's coming from fear of getting nicked AND having to replace expensive parts of your saw AND the time loss from having to stop working.
Having a case and screen protector on your phone don't magically make it impervious and you don't suddenly starting handling it recklessly. Having seat belts and airbags in your car doesn't suddenly make you open to ramming your car into that asshole driving like a jerk in front of you. So why would no longer fearing losing your hand if you screw up make you more open to touching the spinning blade on your saw?
My flying club's annual safety meeting always puts heavy emphasis on the time and money cost of breaking our equipment for this reason. It seems to work well.
For me, I don't want a tool to be "safe" unless all my tools are safe. Working in my shop there are so many places where something can go wrong. I don't just do woodworking, I've got a metal lathe, I do a ton of mechanic stuff so things like forget to put a jackstand under the tractor and the floorjack gives out, I run chainsaws, a chipper, tractors, an excavator, there are just a zillion ways things can go wrong. So I feel like it is my job to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I'm not a fan of one or two or twenty things that save me, I've got 200 ways where something is going to screw me.
Your situation is very likely different. I'm rural, on 15 acres, all of this stuff is to support living here. I can't afford to get lazy or complacent, I'd be dead real quick.
I totally get where you're coming from and agree with you to an extent and I don't disabled the safeties on my guns or tools. I personally wouldn't spring for a stopsaw because the price is several orders of magnitude more than I'd spend on a saw however if given one I'd welcome it gladly and find comfort in knowing that I or a family member wouldn't accidentally be losing any limbs to it.
And cash registers that make change, we can't do math.
On the sawstop, I still feel that having that in my shop doesn't make my shop safe, wouldn't let my kids in there.
> I find the complacency argument to be flat. The Sawstop technology doesn't prevent injury, you still get nicked by the blade, it just dramatically reduces the severity of injury incurred. Additionally when the mechanism trips the break and blade are spend and must be replaced.
>>But why not have an even safer tablesaw? Because I don't want to get complacent around one tool and have that feeling linger when I go use the next tool. They are all dangerous and all need to be treated with respect. Unless there is a way to make them all safe (there isn't), it doesn't make sense to me to have one safe one.
First, every tool that is safer reduces your total risk. Saying that unless all tools are safe, none are, is nonsense.
Second, I know somebody that got caught in a drill press, and I can say from experience that you are very lucky that you only lost some hair. I find it odd that you argue against safety measures in the same paragraph where you note how you took a risk that could literally have lobotomized you.
Finally, safety measures aren't only about you. Does your wife ever use your tools? Is she OK with those risks? Do you have kids (I know a dude locally who got his hand into a planer when he was a _young_ child. He's surprisingly dextrous after being amputated around the first knuckle on every finger on his right hand). Not everybody understands the risks like you do, and it's hard for them to make an informed decisions when they learn to use those tools without some kind of industry guidance.
Irresponsible? Really? That seems like a crappy thing to say. How was it irresponsible?
And yes, I know that you also wear a seatbelt to remove potential injury from only you driving (think if you lose control, etc). You do the same in woodworking; you use clamps to prevent things from moving, you use push blocks to keep your hands from the blade, etc.
You need to be fully awake when running tools, same goes for driving. They are both defensive activities.
Maybe people are beating on me because I didn't say "for me...." but whatever. I stand behind my reasoning, it works for me. And I think the sawstop is just silly. Tablesaws, used properly, are just fine. If you are losing fingers can I introduce you to this magic development called push sticks?
My tablesaw rules are simple:
- use wood or plastic push sticks to move the material
- don't stand behind the work (sawstop still has this problem)
- don't reach behind the blade until it is stopped
- don't use the fence as a stop for cutoff work (unless it's a unifence and you pulled it back)
A lathe will screw you good, so will a bandsaw (ever freehand work on a bandsaw? Sketchy as heck but useful). A chopsaw can jump the work and come right over your thumb. Shapers, oh, my, the ways that shapers can eat you.
If you need what sawstop offers then there is no way I'd let you in my shop. If you like it in your shop, have the big fun, anyone who depended on that is just an accident waiting to happen on the next piece of equipment.
What's next? Chainsaw-stop?
They've been default on new chainsaws since the mid 90s. That hand guard at the front is linked to a powerful brake so that if it catches and kicks back, it's very likely to engage that brake and save you a life-altering injury. They have centripetal clutches to disengage automatically and most require two points of contact and a disengaged brake for the throttle to work (common to many outdoor tools). Chainsaws still aren't safe —you'd be an idiot to use one without steel-laced trousers— but they are much safer than they were.
As I said in another comment, nobody needs this stuff until it saves their fingers, their hand, their face, their leg and their livelihood.
And that's what these arguments come down to. You (and some others here) think you'll never make a mistake or forget to move a hand or misplace their feet, or ever cut too deep in a bit of stock that was cutting fine last week. These are pretty stupid mistakes on their on their own but people aren't robots; they happen all the time.
Conversely I'm happy to say that I've been safe so far, but I respect how quickly that can change.
That's not the stop I was talking about, I was talking about the same sort of stop as the sawstop has. Sorry if I was unclear.
Do you consider somebody who demands they put their chainsaw trousers on first inept and unsafe? What about people who don't disable/remove their chainsaw brakes?
Trained operators are the ultimate safety feature, right? And these features actually weigh you down.
These innovations were obviously warmly welcomed by arboriculturalists. Why do so many woodworkers think they're beyond the need of similar precautions? Hell, half of you seem to think riving knives and guards were sent by the devil.
And a chainsaw voltage loop could work but you'd need to make the loop through the operator, not to earth. You'd need to make conductive gloves and generate a voltage and trigger the brake. All possible, isn't it... but more weight.
What I was saying was what works for me. If you want to approach things differently, be my guest, I wasn't trying to convince to be a clone of me, I was just saying this is what works for me. Not sure why that is such a controversial thing.
Shrug.
> If you need what sawstop offers then there is no way I'd let you in my shop.
I just wondered if your feelings towards table saw safety equipment were transferable to other dangerous machinery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5F9TiHF2tc
I said if you "need" what that sawstop has. I was specific in my choice words. I didn't say "want", I said "need" because that implies you are careless enough that the sawstop is a necessity.
Let me try it this way: if you are unable to run a tablesaw without getting your fingers in the blade, of course I don't want you in my shop.
I'm not against safety equipment, I'm against people leaning on it, to me that's a crutch that's going to let you down at some point.
And just to be clear, this is the system that works for me. This is part of how I stay alert and don't let myself get complacent. You want to use a different system, great, in your shop do whatever you want. In my shop, all equipment is dangerous, that's the rule, people who don't like that rule aren't welcome to use my equipment. Pretty much the same rule that my shop instructor taught me 40 years ago and it has worked so far for me.
The people saying they "need" this stuff are just saying they see avoidable risk and recognise their bodies are a finite resource worth the expense, even inconvenience of a few extra safety features. We're not talking about using sawstops in isolation.
But anyway, we clearly differ in our approach to risk, or perhaps how we balance our own skills against it. Whatever it is, I don't think I'm going to change your opinion here.
Stay lucky, dude.
By that logic I should just get rid of my 3 wood lathes, metal lathe, 2 bandsaws, drillpress, chop saw, shaper, horizontal boring machine, metal bandsaw, sawzall, circle saws, etc, because none of those have the sawstop feature.
And, by the same logic, loose the 5 chainsaws, the industrial chipper, the excavator, the two tractors, the rhino, because none of those are safe either.
Which is just silly. This whole discussion is silly. I've got a system that's been working for me for 40 years yet you feel like you want to tell me I'm gonna lose a finger. Maybe I will but it won't be on the tablesaw, I use push sticks. Religiously. Which is why I still have all my fingers. Sam Maloof pushed his stuff through with his hand and never lost a finger.
I just don't like the sawstop. It doesn't remove all of the risks, it's expensive when you forget to turn it off when you are cutting green wood, it's easy to forget to turn it back on when you switch back to dry wood, and I have never, in 40 years of using tablesaws, had any sort of fear of the tablesaw. Respect, absolutely, but a tablesaw, properly used, isn't high up on the risk scale. Free handing on the bandsaw is way way more risky yet people do it all the time.
I'm not telling you to do what I do, you can do whatever you want. I do resent, a bit, your view that I'll lose a finger. That implies you think I don't know what I'm doing and I resent that. Or maybe it is just like you said, it has been 40 years of getting lucky. Or maybe not.
That's fair enough. I'm sorry. I truly believe you are knowledgeable in your tools and what you do with them. I think if that weren't the case, 40 years using them would have left you unable to type these comments.
But I would also put some of the other 40-80 thousand people hospitalised by table saws in the last year in your category.
And over 90% of those were hand in blade injuries. The sort of thing that is vastly eradicated by a blade that can detect a hand and deactivate.
So yes, I take your points, but epidemiologically, doing nothing and hoping people just do it better next time is more harmful to all of us than demanding better safety equipment as standard.
Perhaps that opinion is my Britishness coming through; we're paying the medical costs of our woodworkers' injuries directly.
I'm starting to wonder if there are just a lot of stupid people using tablesaws. Which wouldn't surprise me, there are an amazing number of untrained people doing all sorts of stuff.
Whatever, I'm perfectly happy to say that sawstop is a fine idea for stupid people. I just don't need one, I don't put my fingers anywhere near any blade, that's stupid. And we have all sorts of data that says when you do stupid stuff you lose your fingers.
In my case, knock on wood, I believe I don't need that technology because I have a lot of respect for that spinning blade and don't get close to it. And what I've been trying, and apparently failing, to say is that my respect for the tablesaw is part of my mental state when I'm in the shop. I actually don't want a safer saw, it's still dangerous, it can still throw stuff at you hard enough to really hurt you, I'm fine with the protocol I have to not hurt myself.
I realize that winds people up, they think I'm Mr Cuts Corners or something, I'm not. I live on a 15 acre property, I use chainsaws, tractors, excavators, mowers, all sorts of stuff that can kill me. I do that stuff every day so I have to have a mental state of carefulness. On all the equipment. None of it is safe.
So for me, sawstop doesn't add any value, I'd use it the same way I use my current saw, with push sticks. Which is how everyone should use their saw. That's not saying I'm against sawstop or other safety equipment, it's just saying that I've got a safety protocol that works. And I won't let anyone into my shop who doesn't follow that protocol.
YMMV.
Anyway safety feature that can be implemented without getting in my way, or any safety feature that forces me to work more safely is very welcome.
Just the other day someone nearly lost their fingers due to inattentiveness.
Admittedly my views are biased by years of experience designing and setting up manufacturing equipment, which is different than an individual having their own wood shop. I don't even know if tools like manual lathes and tablesaws are still in widespread commercial use. I've never seen one at a construction site. Most work seems to be moving towards assembling prefab components.
There are plenty of things outside of your control, even if only you are involved. For instance, you could suddenly have a seizure or an involuntary muscle spasm while using one of your dangerous tools. I frankly don't see any meaningful difference between the seatbelt and power tool scenarios, just a continuous risk gradient.
You don't want to go from driving a vehicle where the consequences of a collision is "a $100 part replacement" to driving a vehicle where the cost of a collision is "possible death or serious bodily injury for 1 or more people".
However, I'll also say that de-risking tools is a good idea. If you want to avoid complacency, then avoid it. If you can't take the vigilance you have around a lathe or a shaper and apply it to a tablesaw, just because the tablesaw is safe, I'd say you should probably reconsider your safety practices. There is a difference between good process and complete paranoia.
At present, I have a standard delta saw, because it's what I have. It is "dangerous" and also kind of lousy. Because of the way the trunion mounts the blade carriage, it is not possible to adjust the blade to 45° without a few thousandth of pinch.
I know my next saw will be a saw stop. They are safer, yes, but they are also incredibly nice saws. Compared to the powermatic I used to have, they are even better. When I move next, my Delta won't be coming with me, and I'll be ordering a saw stop.
Regarding cold, dead hands, is that before or after amputation by tablesaw? /s
The sawstop is sort of like making left hand turns safer but nothing else. That's weird to me, all the other stuff is still dangerous but this one thing is safer. That doesn't seem to be a win to me. Maybe it is to you, for me, I think it would make me less careful in the cases where I don't have protection.
I don't disagree with your wider point about respect, but even seasoned pros make genuine mistakes. A lapse in concentration or material behaving abnormally. That's all it takes and you've lost a finger.
It would be great to see similar things implemented in other tools but for the moment, what's wrong with making sure new models are safer by default? I mentioned airbags in another comment and I think it's a good comparison. Why would you NOT want this?
And yes, why isn't somebody doing the exact same thing in bandsaws and routers? The same premise would work with little adaptation.
The thing that made freehanding remotely possible was getting a carbide tipped blade. The normal blades have set to each tooth, the carbide tipped blade has no set, the tips are slightly wider than the blade. What that does is make the blade way less "grabby". I tried freehanding with the old blades and it grabbed stuff out of my hands like crazy, just (short) matter of time before something would go wrong there.
The carbide tip blade has almost zero unpredictable grab.
All this probably makes me sound better than I am. I'm an ok woodworker. Some examples (from ~20 years ago) are here: http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/wood/ - the bench is a pretty decent chunk of work. Other than the section over by the vice the top is flat and square to about 1/1000th of an inch. Hand flattened with planes.
The "sounds better" point that I'm trying to make is about the whole freehand thing. I'm not Sam Maloof good, not remotely close. I just need to freehand once in a while and the minimax plus the carbide tipped blade made that possible.
For this reason manufacturers tend to warn against the use of gloves in the user manual (while strongly recommending goggles, respirator, and ear protection).
Don't google image search for "power tool glove accident"
I have no intention of getting a sawstop saw. Why? Because my shop is full of dangerous tools. My 1930's drillpress ripped some of my hair out, my 1940's metal lathe can take your arm off, my bandsaw is way more dangerous than a table saw, don't get me started about my shaper, etc. Tablesaws, treated with respect, are very safe.
But why not have an even safer tablesaw? Because I don't want to get complacent around one tool and have that feeling linger when I go use the next tool. They are all dangerous and all need to be treated with respect. Unless there is a way to make them all safe (there isn't), it doesn't make sense to me to have one safe one.