SawStop, stops on contact with skin is coming to Europe soon!

[Kevlar123]

In addition to woodworking I also climb, in climbing there are a subset of climbers that feel that using ropes means you don't climb at your best and don't maintain the same level of concentration. These guys are called free solo climbers, you can find a pretty comphensive list of the most famous free soloers if you head to the free solo wiki page and then drop down to the Climber fatalities section.

Statistically these guy are absolutely the best in terms of not falling, a regular climber will fall many times in their careers but on average free solo climbers only ever fall once.

For climbers rudimentary safety involves using safety equipment that is available and a culture of encouraging safety in other climbers, especially new and inexperienced climbers. This attitude makes climbing a safe sport. Now if you went to a climbing forum and discouraged people from using ropes you would be banned pretty instantly.

Discouraging the use of safety equipment that can save lives because it will make people less safe is a logical fallacy. The tablesaw is objectivly the most dangerous woodworking powertool and injuries are devastating and sometimes fatal, no amount of rudimental safety changes the fact you are moving your hands towards a spinning blade or human nature and the capacity for error and neither does survivorship bias or situations can occur that are out of our control.

Rudiemental woodworking safety that discourages the use of objectively safer equipment is out of touch and out of date.

 

[Chris West]

Why though? Asking because I have a strong negative connotation with that sort of idiocy.

Because I live in a rural area with lots of ancient narrow winding roads. In order safely pass a bicyclist, I can wait a mile or more to insure there is no risk of anyone getting hurt. On a few occasions, a cyclist has waved me to pass them only to discover there was a car coming the other way on a curve or hill the cyclist could not see around. Worse yet, when there is a whole gaggle of them, one may have to wait for several miles to find a safe place to overtake. Irritating.

 

[Jacob]

Because I live in a rural area with lots of ancient narrow winding roads. In order safely pass a bicyclist, I can wait a mile or more to insure there is no risk of anyone getting hurt. On a few occasions, a cyclist has waved me to pass them only to discover there was a car coming the other way on a curve or hill the cyclist could not see around. Worse yet, when there is a whole gaggle of them, one may have to wait for several miles to find a safe place to overtake. Irritating.

Oh dear that's sounds very distressing!
Maybe you should stop trying to drive on ancient narrow winding roads, or perhaps have some more driving lessons?
One thing you would learn is that it's quicker and more convenient to wait until safe to pass a group of cyclists, rather than having to pass them one by one stretched out down the road.

 

[Doug71]

And I was just typing we have an ongoing thread about sharpening and one about SawStop/push sticks and then someone goes and mentions cyclists........................

 

[Jacob]

I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?
I was going to add that the highway code has been amended recently and drivers nees to catch up.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/safer-highway-code-cyclists

 

[Jacob]

I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?
I was going to add that the highway code has been amended recently and drivers nees to catch up.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/safer-highway-code-cyclists

not nees - I meant need!
I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?

 

[Jacob]

In addition to woodworking I also climb, in climbing there are a subset of climbers that feel that using ropes means you don't climb at your best and don't maintain the same level of concentration. These guys are called free solo climbers, you can find a pretty comphensive list of the most famous free soloers if you head to the free solo wiki page and then drop down to the Climber fatalities section.

Statistically these guy are absolutely the best in terms of not falling, a regular climber will fall many times in their careers but on average free solo climbers only ever fall once.

For climbers rudimentary safety involves using safety equipment that is available and a culture of encouraging safety in other climbers, especially new and inexperienced climbers. This attitude makes climbing a safe sport. Now if you went to a climbing forum and discouraged people from using ropes you would be banned pretty instantly.

Discouraging the use of safety equipment that can save lives because it will make people less safe is a logical fallacy. The tablesaw is objectivly the most dangerous woodworking powertool and injuries are devastating and sometimes fatal, no amount of rudimental safety changes the fact you are moving your hands towards a spinning blade or human nature and the capacity for error and neither does survivorship bias or situations can occur that are out of our control.

Rudiemental woodworking safety that discourages the use of objectively safer equipment is out of touch and out of date.

But the conversation should be about how to avoid accidents, rather than promoting the purchase of a somewhat ill considered protective device, which offers nothing to the users of the millions of other machines in use.

 

[Kevlar123]

It's not either/or, best practise and safer equipment don't conflict.

 

[Jacob]

It's not either/or, best practise and safer equipment don't conflict.

But this particular safer equipment is not applicable to existing users of millions of existing machines.
They are not equivalent to free climbers as most of them have and use perfectly adequate safety procedures: they know not to put their hands too close, to use crown guards, to use push sticks, power feeds, and risk is vanishingly small.
Also free climbers have freely chosen to risk life and limb, as a particular challenge/achievement, woodworkers are not in the same game!

 

[Chris West]

Oh dear that's sounds very distressing!
Maybe you should stop trying to drive on ancient narrow winding roads, or perhaps have some more driving lessons?
One thing you would learn is that it's quicker and more convenient to wait until safe to pass a group of cyclists, rather than having to pass them one by one stretched out down the road.

Judge much? The only access to and from my home are narrow roads.

 

[Kevlar123]

Safety in woodworking is evolvolutary rather than revolutionary, those millions of tablesaws will continue to cut wood and most new tablesaw purchases won't have saw stop. I'm not sure why this would be a problem with people buying a safer saw though. Most people won't have sawstop so lets discourage people buying it?

Moving towards a jagged edge at speed is risky whether its climbing or woodworking, climbers will feel the tug on their harness in a fractions of a second and anchor themselves again, woodworkers can hear the sound of crunching of metal against metal and look at their hand in relief. Choosing to use ropes or sawstop is now a choice people can make. In both of these incidences the safety equipment makes the persuit safer.

No free climber thinks they will fall just like no woodworker thinks they will lose a thumb. Free climbers have years and year experience and have normally mastered the sport and have incredible technical climbing ability, they plan routes in more detail, follow weather reports and never attempt moves beyond their ability, their proceedures are the best. They won't have made a mistake for 100s of climbs but then a massive rock hits them on the head or their knife slips out of their hand and they try and catch it. Gravity and spinning metal don't have considerations for our capacity to make errors. You can reduce your risk of error substationally but you can never eliminate it and on a long enough time scale your chance of having an error always approaches 100%.

 

[deema]

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting the European Managing Director for SawStop, Michael who was demonstrating the saws at the Toolfair in Bolton. This was the first time I have had the opportunity to actually see and get my hands in / on the Compact and Site saws they have in their range at the moment within the UK.

The Compact and Site saw are not the usual type of saw that @Sideways and I usually get involved with, we have focused on larger table saws and generally the industrial quality equipment. So to begin with when seeing the saws I did not try to compare them with say a Wadkin or a SCM, Altendorf type of machine as they fit into a category where both size and weight are key characteristics for the typical user of the machine.

I thought the tilt mechanism was a very interesting innovation allowing very fast rough setting whilst retaining the ability to ‘micro’ adjust.
The ability to adjust the alignment of the fence to the blade also looked to be a very interesting innovation effective solution.
The Site saw folding system for transport was both simple and extremely quick to operate, literally less than a minute to both fold and unfold the saw.
I liked the fact that they had designed effective tool storage into the Site saw for the mitre fence, push stick and riving knife / Crown guard in the form of a ‘drawer’ with a lift up lid.
Changing the blade didn’t seem to be either difficult or take much time with a simple latch mechanism to release the table insert (tool assisted removal of the table insert is now mandatory for new saws in Europe)

Every hour they were demonstrating the SawStop mechanism by inserting the ‘sausage’ which is very impressive to see first hand. Removal of the cartridge and saw blade after activation was again very simple and only took a two or three minutes. I think if I had one I would carry a spare blade and cartridge along with a change of underwear in the van!

It would be very interesting to understand how accurate and repeatable the saw is and how it would stand up to the rigours of site work.

I would love to see a tear down of the saw and a comparison of how’s it built compared to the alternatives in the market segment.
I would also like to see a review of the stiffness, accuracy and reliability of cut again compared to other saws in this category.
I’m not sure how effective the dust collection is when compared to other products in this category.

 

[Bingy man]

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting the European Managing Director for SawStop, Michael who was demonstrating the saws at the Toolfair in Bolton. This was the first time I have had the opportunity to actually see and get my hands in / on the Compact and Site saws they have in their range at the moment within the UK.

The Compact and Site saw are not the usual type of saw that @Sideways and I usually get involved with, we have focused on larger table saws and generally the industrial quality equipment. So to begin with when seeing the saws I did not try to compare them with say a Wadkin or a SCM, Altendorf type of machine as they fit into a category where both size and weight are key characteristics for the typical user of the machine.

I thought the tilt mechanism was a very interesting innovation allowing very fast rough setting whilst retaining the ability to ‘micro’ adjust.
The ability to adjust the alignment of the fence to the blade also looked to be a very interesting innovation effective solution.
The Site saw folding system for transport was both simple and extremely quick to operate, literally less than a minute to both fold and unfold the saw.
I liked the fact that they had designed effective tool storage into the Site saw for the mitre fence, push stick and riving knife / Crown guard in the form of a ‘drawer’ with a lift up lid.
Changing the blade didn’t seem to be either difficult or take much time with a simple latch mechanism to release the table insert (tool assisted removal of the table insert is now mandatory for new saws in Europe)

Every hour they were demonstrating the SawStop mechanism by inserting the ‘sausage’ which is very impressive to see first hand. Removal of the cartridge and saw blade after activation was again very simple and only took a two or three minutes. I think if I had one I would carry a spare blade and cartridge along with a change of underwear in the van!

It would be very interesting to understand how accurate and repeatable the saw is and how it would stand up to the rigours of site work.

I would love to see a tear down of the saw and a comparison of how’s it built compared to the alternatives in the market segment.
I would also like to see a review of the stiffness, accuracy and reliability of cut again compared to other saws in this category.
I’m not sure how effective the dust collection is when compared to other products in this category.

Were they much quieter than say my dewalt brush motor .if I lived next door to you would using this saw be a problem in terms of noise ..there is also a noticeable difference between the 2 saws - in your probably limited time around these saws is the additional cost worth it . As yet I’ve not had the chance to see them in person - glad for any help you may be able to give ..

 

[deema]

@Bingy man, I think @Sideways will be best to give you a more definitive answer on noise, he’s far more sensitive to it than I am.

For me, and it’s a personal view, if the SawStop met my requirements for a saw, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it in preference to a similar saw that equally met my requirements without the safety feature. I would definitely pay the extra. For me, anything I can do to make things safer is a good investment.

Michael, in response to a question from the audience didn’t gingerly push the sausage into the real, brand new, sharp blade he really went for it and pushed it in at speed with his bare hands which ended up extremely close to the blade! A man very confident in the product!! The sausage had a very tiny nick in its skin, a tiny scratch really.

We know it was a ‘real’ and very sharp blade as @Sideways was given the blade embedded into the stop cartridge, which we still have. There is no way I would have been brave enough to have done the presentation with my fingers that close to a spinning toothed blade!

When I watched in person the Altendorf system, they used a metal disc for the saw, no teeth for the demo. That is also a superb system which achieves the same very impressive result with the advantage that the blade isn’t damaged and a new cartridge isn’t required. However, there is a series price difference between the two saws with different applications.

 

[deema]

Should have said, the blade was fully raised to its maximum projection for the demo.

 

[Bingy man]

@Bingy man, I think @Sideways will be best to give you a more definitive answer on noise, he’s far more sensitive to it than I am.

For me, and it’s a personal view, if the SawStop met my requirements for a saw, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it in preference to a similar saw that equally met my requirements without the safety feature. I would definitely pay the extra. For me, anything I can do to make things safer is a good investment.

Michael, in response to a question from the audience didn’t gingerly push the sausage into the real, brand new, sharp blade he really went for it and pushed it in at speed with his bare hands which ended up extremely close to the blade! A man very confident in the product!! The sausage had a very tiny nick in its skin, a tiny scratch really.

We know it was a ‘real’ and very sharp blade as @Sideways was given the blade embedded into the stop cartridge, which we still have. There is no way I would have been brave enough to have done the presentation with my fingers that close to a spinning toothed blade!

When I watched in person the Altendorf system, they used a metal disc for the saw, no teeth for the demo. That is also a superb system which achieves the same very impressive result with the advantage that the blade isn’t damaged and a new cartridge isn’t required. However, there is a series price difference between the two saws with different applications.

sev years ago I was reviewing table saws and ended up finding the saw stop , as I was new to using a table saw I decided to buy it . Only thing was they wouldn’t ship to the uk from the states . I was disappointed to say the least as such I ended up with the dewalt which serves me well but it’s noisey and although I have no intention of losing any digits but as you say any extra safety device is welcome as long as it can fulfil its function as a saw .

 

[OrangeFive]

I too was there yesterday at Bolton and I agree, it was a very impressive demonstration. I did a quick video which I will try to post with this but as said above anything that can make the industry safer can only be a good thing.

 

[Jacob]

If trying the sausage experiment I would suggest doing it with two push sticks. A half sausage length is much too close to the blade for the fingers.

 

[Jacob]

Or a long sausage https://www.guinnessworldrecords.co...sausage measures 62.75,and was created by S.C.

 

[Eshmiel]

I too was there yesterday at Bolton and I agree, it was a very impressive demonstration. I did a quick video which I will try to post with this but as said above anything that can make the industry safer can only be a good thing.

ANYthing?

Did you know that other saws also have flesh-sensing and blade-dropping facilities to cater to the careless? The difference is that they don't destroy the blade with a spurious blade "brake" of expensive-to-replace soft metal.

Bosch have a system that uses a small cartridge to lower the blade in an instant if a finger is detected. The cartridge has to be replaced but it costs far less than a Sawstop cartridge; and the blade is undamaged.

Altendorf and others have a system that detects finger-to-blade contact earlier than via a touch, doesn't over-react to damp wood and similar not-a-finger things and does no damage to the blade. It doesn't seem to require a new brake, cartridge or anything else. The user just raises the blade again and resumes operating.

**********
The design of the Sawstop seems to luxuriate in the need for lots of expensive new stuff if their brake goes off. That brake also goes off in all sorts of non-dangerous circumstances, from damp wood to random firings, each one costing a hundred or so dollars to fix. To me it looks like something designed primarily to make money, with safety a necessary but not sufficient condition for making and selling it.

*****************

There is also the matter of risk compensation. Those with "failsafe" devices protecting them from their own incompetence will tend to become more incompetent because something else compensates for their lack. The alternative is the "spiked steering wheel" kind of device. The more dangerous the effects of incompetence with a device, the more careful most users of it will be.

Sadly, there is the not-most-users group of dafties who need failsafe devices for everything no matter how obviously dangerous otherwise. But the rise of failsafe things tends to increase the portion of users who remain incompetent at keeping themselves safe. Consider the apprentice who moves from a Sawstop shop to one with machines lacking the flesh sensor et al. The risks and outcomes of blade-bite may not be as prevalent in their consciousness as they should be ....... .