YouTube - SAWSTOP in TimeWarp

This person will make a fortune 

I need a new table saw and was seriously looking at the SS until I started doing some research on the Hammer B3 slider.  You don't need a brake if you are sliding a table with the work piece clamped to it rather than moving the material itself.  Hand's never get close to the blade.  Just like the TS's.  It appears to be a lot more accurate as well.  It's a big bite cost wise but should be worth it in the long run.

Hi,
I also liked the Saw stop idea before I have bought Hammer B3 Winner Comfort. I can say this combo saw has just one fault - that I did't buy it sooner

Josef

I'm not weighing into the whole bit about them trying to mandate.... but will offer this.

Volvo developed seat belts for autos.  Is it a good or bad thing that all autos have seat belts?

And factories should hope that only industrial-grade machinery is available, so that the small contractors out there would not have a job anymore. And, no, I'm not a hack - I'm a hobbyst who can afford a variety of tools, but is not snobbish or stupid enough to look down on people because of how much they spend or don't spend on tools. There is a whole lot of "hacks" producing incredible work with very cheap tools and a lot of talentless hacks pretending to be something because they spent a small fortune on their tools. The truly big, professional guys do NOT hang out at forums, unless they stand to profit from their participation...

I'm ambivalent about the whole thing but I would like to make an observation...
 
I've worked in a lot of different environments where the risk of injury was real - from construction sites & garages to chemical plants, to offshore rigs, to unloading/loading of ships, and engineering labs. I would have to guess that of all the injuries I've seen or sustained, about half of them were someone else's fault other than the injured.

There's nothing scientific about my method for drawing this conclusion but rather I've tried to add about 35 years of stuff up in my head and that's my recollection - that it's about 50/50 whether the fault was primarily with the injured.

If that observation is even half accurate, it lends some credence to greater safety requirements.

I don't think you can ever make something foolproof. There are too many fools that invent too many clever ways to be themselves.

I just think that for personal safety, one needs to watch out for the other actor as much as they watch out for themselves.


Tom

We have had sawstops at the school I go to for a couple of years now.  There have been a couple of incidents.  In one a finger was clearly saved.  Personally, I'm glad they are there.  Even skilled craftsmen get tired at the end of the day and do things they know they shouldn't.  I have a buddy with 20 years in the cabinetmaking trade.  Tripped over an offcut and fell into the saw.  Put out his hand to break the fall and lost most of the hand.  Now he has five years in the liquor store clerk trade.

I don't think the sawstop technology should be required, but hopefully someday it will be cheap enough that more of us can afford it. 

We just starting getting saws with riving knives in the US a couple of years ago.  I guess it added a little cost to the saws, but somehow the sky hasn't fallen yet.  Sure beats the splitter.

Love the Saw Stop idea as much as I despise the thought of making it mandatory (or lesser humans using it as a foundation for litigation to cover their own stupidity).

For me, safety features are important, if the SS was $50 extra, sure (a riving knife would cost a few dollars) but for hundreds of dollars, mandatory should not even come into it.

Given the woodworking/carpentry interest of FOG, everyone on here "knows a guy" who might have benefitted from something like the SawStop but I'd say everyone else knows another 99 guys who would never need it. Yes, accidents happen, but thats why they are called accidents.

What seems to be in short supply with those that seek to mandate anything is a sense of personal responsibility. That usually the part of most SawStop discussions that saddens me the most.

So it has a safety system that you can turn off? That seems a dumb idea, and kinda defeats the object of the exercise. He's a lawyer & I'm not, but it seems to me that if a guy can successfully sue Ryobi 'cos he cut himself using one of their saws in a stupid way, then someone could turn the SS sensor off & say "I didn't realise it was turned off, and when I stuck my hand in my fingers fell off - give me $250k..."

What happens if you have an 'oops' whilst cutting conductive material?

Baddum-tsh.....

The bypass is pretty deliberate.  You have to turn a spring loaded key and hold it for 1-2 seconds then powerup the saw while still holding the key.  It isn't as awkward as it sounds, but it also isn't something you could unconsciously do.  The bypass is activated for just that power-cycle.  At the end of the cut under bypass mode, the lights will tell you if the brake would have fired.

As for being stupid because in this case you could get injured cutting aluminum, I'd say this scenario happens much less frequently than the countless saws around here with their guard tossed aside because it was a klunky after-thought or because it needed to be removed for a non-through cut.

I have one and like it; fantastic saw.  While much ink is spilled about how this is just for people who don't pay attention, I think it should be remembered that you can be very very careful and pay a lot of attention, but you can't tell if a board has some nasty reaction wood in it that will pinch it to the fence (yes, that causes kickback not a hand-to-the-blade, but many accidents are due to trying to quickly push down a board about to kickback).  A friend of mine lost 1.5 fingers to that.  A second acquaintance lost 3 when a board with reaction wood suddenly split further ahead of the cut allowing his hand to advance to the blade.  Yes, in hindsight we can say a hundred things that could have been done differently, but in the end, we all push in-line with the blade from time to time by "carelessness" or necessity.

I just bought one and its a great saw - I really like it.   I'll take my chances with a few $200 (new brake and new blade) false fire incidents over taking my chances with a few $15K+ oops I lost 3 fingers incidents.   Personally I wouldn't care if the saw was completely trashed if it saved my fingers.  $2-3K for a new saw is far less than the medical costs would be.   As it is, I view the $200 cost of the brake firing similar to buying insurance - hopefully I pay my money and never need it, but if I do need it, it will be worth every penny it cost me.

All the rest of the BS about not being careful, working safe, etc is just meaningless noise.   Rule #1 is stuff happens, Rule #2 is you can't change rule #1 by being careful.

Just my opinion and obviously YMMV.

Fred