Is A SawStop Table Saw Worth the Money

On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:20:48 -0500, Frank Boettcher
<[email protected]> wrote:

>So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>"safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>to specify or make something that works?

Well ideally there would be enough pressure for your company to be
going straight to the manufacturer saying your latch doesn't work for
us, on one side of me I've got my guys bitching they get hurt if they
use it and on the other I've got OSHA bitching if I don't use it. Do
something. But yes in reality it's just easier to pay the fine and
nothing changes until somebody gets killed.

>My point is that on very large hooks, no latch is the safest method.
>Nobody got hurt without the latch, many with it (including me). Hard
>to argue that it is appropriate. Maybe you have to be there,
>wrestling one of those super cables onto a hook to fully understand
>the difference and the problems the latches created.

I'm sure Mike Rowe will be along to show us at some point.



-Leuf

On Jun 4, 7:40 pm, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard

I've read some of the reviews on the SawStop, and as others say, its a
good quality saw. You could argue about how much extra the safety
feature is costing compared to the extra quality you are purchasing.
With fence, table, 5 hp motor, you are about $3600. About $1000 or so
more than a similar Powermatic 66. Is that too much to pay?

If I were looking to spend $3600 or so for a table saw, I would not
buy a SawStop. I would look at one of the European sliding tablesaw
models. Might have to pay a bit more than $3600, but I think you get
a far more useful saw with the built in next to the blade sliding
table. And the sliding table adds considerable safety. And the
European saws also come with a riving knife like the SawStop. The
cabinet saw (Unisaw) is a product of the 1930s. I can understand why
SawStop chose to make a cabinet saw with their safety feature since
that is the only kind of saw Americans know and buy. But I think they
missed the boat by not putting their safety feature into a far more
usreful, modern sliding table saw.

On Jun 4, 8:40 pm, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard

I've had 8 1/2 fingers for thirteen yrs now. That experience makes
your question easy for me. Oh and by the way, as far as I can tell,
you can't get around paying at least a $400 s&h fee on top of that
$3600 someone else mentioned. Still worth every penny to me.

On Jun 4, 10:17 pm, "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote:

>This time however I felt the wind coming off of the dado >set.
> Fortunately this time my thumb was too short to come in >contact with the blade.

Damnit Leon... talk about wry and dry. "Fortunately this time my
thumb was too short to come in contact with the blade."

I laughed so hard I almost fell out of the chair!

Thank Gawd you cut half your finger off long before so you were
actually safe. It's a good thing; you coulda been hurt!!!!

Talk about being grateful for small favors...

Take 'em where you can get 'em, eh buddy?

I'm still laughing.

Robert

On Jun 4, 7:40 pm, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?

The cost/risk analysis is certainly weighed heavily in the favor of
prevention by the high cost of a single incident...

My thought is if I were buying for a commercial shop and certainly if
I either were going to have employee(s) or others besides myself using
it I'd consider it almost a given.

For home shop it gets more subjective -- usage typically is way down,
time pressure of production, etc., are generally far less, etc., so
risks _should_ be lower. OTOH, there's the possibility of less
experience/familiarity, may be more likely rather than less to make a
poor choice of operation or how to most safely perform a given
operation, so risk _might_ be as high or even higher...

All in all, if have the budget, from what I've seen of the saw at a
single show and from reviews, seems hard to say you could go wrong
with going that way. The only negative I've ever heard (other than
the diatribe kind of stuff) was one reviewer a couple of years ago
commented that his test machine turned off on its own a couple of
times while using it--not a hard-stop false firing, simply the on/off
switch dropped out. One would presume this was either an isolated
faulty switch or the problem has been resolved by SawStop by now--I've
certainly heard no more about it.

IMO, $0.02, ymmv, etc., etc., ...

- dpb

--

On Jun 5, 11:30 am, Mike Berger <[email protected]> wrote:

...top posting repaired...

> Russ wrote:
> > I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate his
> > device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped up by
> > all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he lobbied to
> > make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a safety device
> > (his being the only one that would meet the requirements) installed.

> We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
> really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
> Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory, maybe it
> was because of his own blood-draining experience and was completely
> altruistic.
>
> Meanwhile, manufacturers of everything we consume lobby AGAINST
> consumer safety, encouraging the government to let them use more
> dangerous components and make more wasteful products. Do you have
> a car or truck? How altruistic do you think the vehicle manufacturers
> are?

I have read a summary by a reviewer of what was reported as a summary
of an hour-long telephone interview w/ the inventor/principal of
SawStop which essentially recounts his/their supreme disappointment w/
the failure to achieve a licensing arrangement w/ any of the existing
vendors. Unfortunately, what wasn't revealed was any of the details
behind the position or requirements of the licensing to allow for any
judgement of greed or any other motive other than to know that no
agreement came to fruition. There was, apparently, an agreement w/
one manufacturer that led to a signed a document but something (also
undisclosed) caused that agreement to also fall through. It is open
record of the petition filed subsequently (still unacted upon but not
rejected as I understand it). One can not, of course, unerringly
abscribe motive to action, but certainly it appears at least
superficially as though a business plan was to try to force
accepatance rather than enter into production independently.

As for the red herring of the automakers, it isn't their job to be
altruistic--they're a business who's objective is to provide a product
attractive enough to find a market and to be able to do so at a
profit. That, of course, is SawStop's objective, too.

--

On Jun 5, 3:22 pm, Brian Henderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
...
> ... lots of people have reported false trips of the mechanism ...

Citation/statistics? I've seen nothing about excessively high Type I
errors...

--

On Jun 5, 8:22 pm, Maxwell Lol <[email protected]> wrote:
> Russ <[email protected]> writes:
> > In April 2003, sawstop filed a petition with the Consumer Product
> > Safety Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all
> > table saws.
> > If adopted by the CPSC, this ruling would carry the weight of law, and
> > make illegal the sale or manufacture of any new table saws without
> > this patented technology.
>
> And if this happened, the cheapest table saw you could buy might sell
> for about $2500.

And I wonder if the recreational woodworker might be better off. In
the good old days people love to talk about, there were basically only
good tools. No cheap imported junk. If you wanted, needed, a tool to
do a job, you paid for it and got a quality tool. The tool had to pay
for itself because it was not cheap, like all the imported junk today
seems to be. You would end up with fewer, but much higher quality
tools. And you might learn to use those fewer tools more. Which is
more productive: four $2500 tools that work, or twenty $500 tools
that don't work?

I have a range of tools. And for the most part the higher priced,
quality tools work well and I am happy to use them. The lower priced,
imported from SE Asia tools don't work as well and I am always
thinking about replacing them. Maybe if the cheap imported tools did
not exist, I would be saved from myself.

On Jun 5, 11:41 pm, Mike Berger <[email protected]> wrote:
> They filed a petition. Do you really think it rationalizes
> your original comment as quoted below? Do you have inside
> information on how much was being asked for royalties?
...

It's pretty clear from the sequence of events and from interviews that
the original business plan did not include manufacturing saws but
licensing the technology and that the prime inventor and his investors
envisioned a much more receptive audience from the major manufacturers
than they received.

That the petition was filed at the time it was and would have had the
effect if enacted upon of legislating the requirement to use their
device (as there was/is no other that would meet the criterion laid
out in the petititon) would have certainly provided them w/
significant leverage to obtain the licensing agreements they hadn't
been able to achieve otherwise.

One does, of course, have to impugn motives, but it's relatively easy
to understand how the conclusions are reached. Whether they're truly
accurate or not isn't so easy. "Greed" perhaps has a stronger
connotation than the true motive force, but it certainly isn't
difficult to conclude that there was a strong interest in gaining a
return on the significant investment which had been made in the
product and the (what must have been almost overwhelming)
disappointment and undoubtedly some anger over not having it accepted
widely.

One has to presume that if the licensing fees were sufficiently low
one of the manufacturers might have bought it simply as a competitive
edge whether they actually chose to incorporate it in a product or
not. That, of course, wouldn't be in the best interest of the
inventor/investors, so one again has to assume the fees were high
enough to at least be part of the decision process in deciding to
reject the technology in toto. Of course, it's likely that the
licensing costs were only a small part of the overall decision -- I
personally expect that the consideration of potential liability issues
was more than likely the overriding factor that ended up being a "deal
breaker" but I'm also sure you'll never get a manufacturer to agree to
that.

So, my take is that "greed" is perhaps too simplistic a total
characterization but I'm almost equally upset of the technique of
trying to use legislation/regulation to force the acceptance of a
product as the poster to whom you're responding. I'm for the
marketplace settling such competitive issues, not the regulators. Now
that they have entered the market on their own I've begun to mellow a
little, but I still fret over what CPSC may eventually do w/ the
petition...

--

On Jun 4, 8:40 pm, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote:

"decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/"

You guys must be swimming in cash! $400 for shipping? Geeze, I paid
that for my saw!

Are you a hobbyist or setting up a professional shop?

My grandfather was the carpenter everyone would wait for, died with
all ten fingers and left solid tools my uncle used till he died at
eighty.

Richard Newell would have said "its a poor workman what blames 'is
tools."

As to fingers, used a high quality carbide tipped blade, It will cut
through flesh, bone and fingernails cleanly and quickly. You shouldn't
feel a thing. Wrap them up in a clean towel with some ice before
leaving for the emergency room and get a decent plastic surgeon or
bone man. If you cut through the knuckle, the result is a stiff
finger. Keep your head about you and drive carefully to the ER cursing
your craftsman all the way - yeah, its the saws' fault!.

If you've $6,700 to blow on a hobby tool, go for the Multi-featured
European tool and be "to careful" with it.

When you wake up the next morning and the Hospital Admin folks come to
have you sign some papers, tell them to come back when you're off the
anesthetics for 24 hours or so. (Lack of capacity to contract!) If
you do sign anything that next day - call, fax and write a notice of
revocation. Th hospital will try and get you to sign over your
insurance to them FIRST and leave you to share the remainder with the
surgical team, etc. Have your Insurance company wait until you have
all the bills at hand and know all the players. Then, have them make
the check out to you and everyone on that list. Then counter-sign the
check and send it to them all c/o the Hospital with a letter offering
it in full settlement.

If its cashed, that's that no more bills its all paid for! And not
dime one out of your pocket.



> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard

On Jun 5, 1:22 pm, Brian Henderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:40:24 GMT, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
Further, lots of people have reported false trips of the
> mechanism and at about $200 per trip, that can add up since you have
> to replace the cartridge and blade. If you don't have an extra on
> hand, you're out work time as well.
>
>

Care to elaborate on where/who all these false trips are happening.
Cartridge $70 (in some cases free from SS) $90 for WWII

On Jun 4, 10:17 pm, "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "RonB" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >news:[email protected]...
>
> >> And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
> >> but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
> >> thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting
> >> wood. ;~)
> > Me too. I put a "to-the-bone" notch in the end of a finger a few years
> > ago with the saw's motor off. I flipped the switch off, started to walk
> > away, and realized I had left a cut-off piece on the table. I carelessly
> > overreached the still spinning blade and "bang"!
>
> > That's a hard hit when bone is involved. Very painful, but an invaluable
> > lesson in safety. I am lucky, and a much more careful woodworker for it.
>
> > RonB
>
> Yeah, the bone being hit is pretty violent. I still remember how my whole
> hand shook as I cut it away from the tip of my thumb between the nail and
> the finger print up to the first joint. I also remember the nurse at the ER
> commenting "Knarly".
>
> Unfortunately I was clueless what happened. I initially thought I had a
> kick back until I opened up my hand that was clutching my left thumb. I
> never could figure out what happened until I almost did it again about 1
> year later. One year later I did the same thing, I finished cutting a
> through dado and turned the saw off. Then I reached with my left hand to
> the far end of the rip fence to lift it up and off the table top. This time
> however I felt the wind coming off of the dado set. Fortunately this time
> my thumb was too short to come in contact with the blade. Now I watch the
> blade come to a complete stop before making any adjustments.

I've always recommended that beginning woodworkers learn to "COUNT THE
TEETH OF THE BLADE" before doing anything anywhere near it. I taught
quite a few women over 6 years on safe power tool use and not one of
us so much as got a scratch. I think this is a dumb kinda rule- but it
works. Donna Menke, www.woodworks-by-donna.com, author: The Ultimate
Band Saw Box Book

Howard,

> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
.....> Thoughts, comments, advice?


Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them. He
gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
teaching
skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.

I agree!

Go for it!

MJ Wallace

Howard Swope wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>
>
Only if you can't seem to keep your fingers away from sharp spinning things.
mahalo,
jo4hn

Leon wrote:
> You are sooooooo naive. You talk about those people that need to
> suffer the consequences and yet you are headed right down that path
> and don't see it coming.
> You know the saying, you don't know enough to know that you don't
> know.

Just curious....as a major (at least here) sawstop supporter as well as
table saw victim why don't you have one? On another note if any table saw
accident is possible is it as well inevitable? Rod

CW wrote:
> I'm surprised that no one hear has realized the solution. The
> expanded foam tablesaw blade. Easily fitable to any saw and would
> render it totally safe. What an idea. I could make millions.
>

Wishful thinking...Your financial windfall and then some would be swallowed
up in lawsuits.......Do you realize what kind of "rug burn" you can get from
a spinning wheel of expanded foam? Rod

Brian Henderson wrote:

> We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
> and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
> place. That's the objection.
>

Are the two mutually exclusive?

Bill


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In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
<[email protected]> wrote:

> [email protected] wrote:
> > Howard,
> >
> >> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much
> >> decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like
> >> a high quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is
> >> about double what I had
> > .....> Thoughts, comments, advice?
> >
> >
> > Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them. He
> > gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
> > teaching
> > skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
> > he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.
>
> In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge of
> the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a cartridge and a
> blade just to disrupt the class.

CAUTION: the parents of any student triggering the safety mechanism
will be charged the cost of the replacement cartridge plus labor. This
will be approximately $200.00.

--
Vince Heuring To email, remove the Vince.

If the sawstop TS was available when I bought my TS I would have spent the
money. Think about it the extra cost over the life of the saw, which is
likely a minimum of twenty years. Take the extra cost and divide by twenty.
Still sound like a lot of money. If you need something to push you over
the edge here it is. "Do you ever have children in the house? " Anyone who
thinks they can keep an eye on a kid all the time is a fool. Accident
prevention is the cheapest when done before the accident. Last but not
least ask someone who has lost a body part in a accident if they would
prefer it never happened. Never meet someone who would say no.

Paul

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>

Tue, Jun 5, 2007, 12:40am (EDT+4) [email protected] (Howard=A0Swope)
doth query:
<snip> Thoughts, comments, advice?

Not worth it. You can't even cut salami without it stopping.



JOAT
If a man does his best, what else is there?
- General George S. Patton

[email protected] (J T) wrote in news:25367-4667BB31-1176
@storefull-3336.bay.webtv.net:

> Tue, Jun 5, 2007, 12:40am (EDT+4) [email protected] (Howard Swope)
> doth query:
> <snip> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Not worth it. You can't even cut salami without it stopping.
>
>

Now you know that's a load of balogna.

Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 09:56:21 -0500, "Leon"
> <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> No, most people know that standing in front of a loaded gun is stupid,

People think that they will not get hurt on a TS are stupid. Equil logic
used here.



>
> It's funny, just about everyone I know who has had an accident has
> said "I should have known better". Yes, they should have.

Which just proves that they too ar human and had a lapse in judgement.


Accidents don't just magically happen, they are a failure on some level of
the
operator or the equipment.

Now you are getting the picture. Call it what you like practicing safety
does not prevent all accidents.

"dpb" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> that they have entered the market on their own I've begun to mellow a
> little, but I still fret over what CPSC may eventually do w/ the
> petition...

Nothing at all. It's entirely obvious that *any* company of merit using
tablesaws in its business will be forced by the insurance industry to adopt
the Sawstop or a competing technology. It's already happening. Considering
the litigiousness of American society, it will happen much sooner than
later. There's just too much liability not to do otherwise. We're not so
quick to head into the courts up here in Canada, but it's happening here
too. Ask Robin Lee if he's replaced his fleet of tablesaws with Sawstops
yet. Last Saturday after seminar with Peter Boeckh at the Toronto flagship
store, I spent a few minutes examining the Sawstop in the next room.

I'm not trying to rationalize. One assumption is that they're doing this
for the greater good. Another assumption is that they're trying to make
a buck. The fact that they attempted to make their invention the 'law of
the land' could be an action spawned by either motivation.
The fact that they were licensing it for $$, not placing it in the
public domain, supports the latter. That they were trying to FORCE the
public to license their product via governmental coercion after their
efforts to market the device failed - that is what ticks me off.

I have no inside information on how much they were asking in royalties.
I do however have Google; in at least one instance they were asking 8%.
Reasonable? I can't say. Apparently the big manufacturers didn't want to
pony up that much, or perhaps it had more to do with liability concerns.

I do still use an unsafe saw. Not to spite them, but to spite the evil
saw. My ever-sore, tingly, disfigured, sawn-to-the-bone left thumb is a
constant, nagging reminder each and every time I turn the saw on to keep
it, and all body parts attached to it, safely away from the spinning
blade. It's a very effective safety device, albeit an expensive one.

I would pay for a sawstop device, but only if I had the ability to
disable it when necessary. It still won't handle wet/green wood without
triggering needlessly.
Besides... what if I WANTED to cut some hot dogs on my Jet? Can't do it
without buying a new Forrest blade and sawstop cartridge every time.

I don't dislike the sawstop device, or any other safety device. I do
dislike, despise even, being strong armed by someone who wants to sell
me something. Call me libertarian, but I believe that letting the market
- AKA peoples spending decisions - determine what products make it into
my garage.
I'll decide for myself what safety devices are right for me. Not some
bureaucrat or snake oil salesman.

And after all that, sawstop found some investors and are now producing a
good quality, safe saw. They'll probably do very well financially. That
should have been the path they took first.

Mike Berger wrote:
> They filed a petition. Do you really think it rationalizes
> your original comment as quoted below? Do you have inside
> information on how much was being asked for royalties?
>
> I'll bet you use an unsafe table saw just to spite them :-)
>
> ***
> > I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate
> this device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped
> up by all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he lobbied
> to make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a safety device
> (his being the only one that would meet the requirements) installed.
>
>
> Russ wrote:
>> Mike Berger wrote:
>>> We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
>>> really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
>>> Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory,
>>
>> In April 2003, sawstop filed a petition with the Consumer Product
>> Safety Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all
>> table saws.
>>

"Mike Marlow" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> I'll tag onto Brian's comment with a bit of reinforcement. I believe he's
> right in that look how often we see posts here about accidents happening
> to folks with all sorts of safety equipment on their tools. Yet, somehow
> the accidents happen. Brian isn't arguing against safety equipment, he's
> arguing in favor of the most fundamental of all safety equipment -
> awareness. Wait long enough and a post will appear about someone who
> whacked off a couple of fingers on a SawStop saw, just like we read about
> kickback and fingers in blades with splitters and push sticks and...


I'll restate that you have to be blind to not be intimidated by a blade
spinning at 100 mph whether you know it is not going to cut you or not.

Brian however started this all off with the statement,,

Lots of us though have been doing this for decades and still have all our
fingers and toes, just because
we know what we're doing.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP.

People that know what they are doing, make mistakes and get hurt.

Slowly Brian has changed his comments that align a bit more with more
sensible comments.

"Leon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> I do not know your arrangement but rather than modify a saw to be lower,
> could you modify or build up the floor around the saw? If you have a
> wooden floor could you cut a hole in it and install a lower surface to set
> the saw into? Or perhaps build up the floor around equipment that is or
is
> marginally too tall?

Yes, raising the floor around the saw is usually a first suggestion, but it
comes with it's own set of unique problems.

It virtually eliminates putting any tools so organized on mobile bases.
That's a big problem unless one has a large shop to play with. Many cabinet
table saws I've looked also have some type of mechanical component like a
dust port near the base of the saw. In all fairness, there could be some
advantages to a raised floor too, such as running dust collector tubing
under a raised floor. Occasionally, I have been on raised wooded floors and
truthfully, it's irritating. I feel the vibrations from rolling on such a
floor whereas I'm infinitely more comfortable rolling on a flat, solid, hard
unforgiving surface. I'm sure I'd feel much different if I was walking on
these surfaces, but I'm not and never will be.

However, these things are not my biggest concern and that is the fact that
I'd be rolling up and down little ramps depending where I was going and what
I was doing. In 1987, I rolled down an 8" ramp with an elevation of 3" and
tipped my wheelchair over. I broke both legs. To this day, I can remember
the pain and months of aggravation from being in a wheelchair with casts on
my legs. Ever since then I've always been terrified of doing the same thing
again. Obviously, it's a personal paranoia that I have to deal with, so I
intend to mitigate it by lowering a table saw rather than raising myself.

That's my explanation and I'm sticking to it. :)

"BillinDetroit" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> Brian Henderson wrote:
>
> > We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
> > and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
> > place. That's the objection.
> >
>
> Are the two mutually exclusive?

For Brian it seems to be. He just can't fully comprehend that "shit" happens
and that it's impossible for it to happen to him. THAT'S arrogance at it's
worst.

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 09:29:26 -0500, "Upscale" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>"dpb" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> that they have entered the market on their own I've begun to mellow a
>> little, but I still fret over what CPSC may eventually do w/ the
>> petition...
>
>Nothing at all. It's entirely obvious that *any* company of merit using
>tablesaws in its business will be forced by the insurance industry to adopt
>the Sawstop or a competing technology. It's already happening. Considering
>the litigiousness of American society, it will happen much sooner than
>later. There's just too much liability not to do otherwise. We're not so
>quick to head into the courts up here in Canada, but it's happening here
>too. Ask Robin Lee if he's replaced his fleet of tablesaws with Sawstops
>yet. Last Saturday after seminar with Peter Boeckh at the Toronto flagship
>store, I spent a few minutes examining the Sawstop in the next room.
>

I think you over estimate insurance companies. If there is an
"industry" where the pressure would be on to use the SawStop or
something similar I would think that high schools and Vo-Tech schools
would be it. The combination of very inexperienced users and low
"worker" to supervisor ratio would seem to me to create an environment
where liability would be high. However I can assure you that none of
the representatives of the 4 insurance companies that quoted on my
district's insurance required, or for that matter had ever heard of,
the sawstop - I asked each and every one of them, and also the
insurance broker that was working with us to obtain this year's
quotes.

Dave Hall

Russ <[email protected]> writes:

> In April 2003, sawstop filed a petition with the Consumer Product
> Safety Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all
> table saws.
> If adopted by the CPSC, this ruling would carry the weight of law, and
> make illegal the sale or manufacture of any new table saws without
> this patented technology.

And if this happened, the cheapest table saw you could buy might sell
for about $2500.

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
Damn, but that's the question of the century!
I thought only an idiot could put their hand into a TS; then I nearly cut my
finger off on a BS last year. Now I am not sure.
(It has healed cosmetically perfectly, but still hurts at times.)

I think that all woodworking tools are dangerous. The solution is to be
really careful using all of them; not to spend $2000 to make one safer. For
instance, I now use push blocks when routing a rabbet on a picture frame,
when a year ago I would have used my hands.

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> The cause of just about every tablesaw injury is user error,
> using it while tired or impaired, not practicing sensible safety
> precautions, making dangerous cuts, not waiting until the saw blade
> has stopped, etc. *ALL* of these are completely avoidable. You'll
> never need the SawStop if you never put your fingers into the blade,
> as an overwhelming majority of woodworkers manage never to do.

Yes, they are all preventable. The real problem is human error. Aside from
you, the rest of us have made errors at times with varying consequences. I
certainly try my best to avoid accidents with tools, but if it does happen,
it would be nice to be able to have a method of making it less serious. We
have a choice available. We have the freedom to decide if we want to buy
that equipment.

Eye protection, hearing protection, its all a choice in a home shop.

Got the money? Get the saw. Maybe a little overpriced till you need that
instant stop!!! It is a very nice saw. Hopefully you'll never need the stop
but it's there for piece of mind.

Tim

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>

On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 13:58:30 -0400, "Mike Marlow"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I'll tag onto Brian's comment with a bit of reinforcement. I believe he's
>right in that look how often we see posts here about accidents happening to
>folks with all sorts of safety equipment on their tools. Yet, somehow the
>accidents happen. Brian isn't arguing against safety equipment, he's
>arguing in favor of the most fundamental of all safety equipment -
>awareness. Wait long enough and a post will appear about someone who
>whacked off a couple of fingers on a SawStop saw, just like we read about
>kickback and fingers in blades with splitters and push sticks and...

That's absolutely true. I've already said that I think the SawStop is
a fine machine, at least from what I've heard and read in reviews, but
it is expensive, simply because it has a piece of technology on it
that doesn't stop accidents (like a blade guard, splitters, etc), it
just stops you, in theory, from getting injured in an accident. I'm
not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but the way to avoid
injury isn't to stick another piece of nanny technology on your saw,
it's to be more careful to begin with.

This isn't even like automotive safety equipment. In a car, you can
still have some other idiot run into you and cause you damage, but a
tablesaw is pretty much a solo piece of equipment. You're not going
to get sideswiped by someone else driving their tablesaw through your
shop. The cause of just about every tablesaw injury is user error,
using it while tired or impaired, not practicing sensible safety
precautions, making dangerous cuts, not waiting until the saw blade
has stopped, etc. *ALL* of these are completely avoidable. You'll
never need the SawStop if you never put your fingers into the blade,
as an overwhelming majority of woodworkers manage never to do.

Got the money? Get the saw. Maybe a little overpriced till you need that
instant stop!!! It is a very nice saw. Hopefully you'll never need the stop
but it's there for piece of mind.

Tim

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>

As many would attest, I would strongly recommend it if you can afford it.
Having lost half of my thumb 18 years ago on a TS that I had turned off,
you can not be too careful.
From most reports, everyone is happy with their purchase of the SawStop and
it appears to be a top quality product.

"Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Yh29i.3763$jW6.287@trnddc01...
>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high
>quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what
>I had originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one
>injury it has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of
>money until you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2
>grand seems like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard

My answer would be that only you can answer that question. The good thing
is, if you decide to spend the money, you're not compromising on the saw
from everything I've read. I'm a Kelly Mehler disciple and believe that a
person cannot be 100% focused on using proper technique 100% of the time
over the course of their working life. And even when using proper
technique, accidents happen. Sometimes it results in a part flying across a
room (done that), sometimes it results in a kickback (see Stoutman's recent
experience), sometime it results in a finger getting nicked, and sometimes
much worse. In my opinion, if I had the money available, I'd spend the
extra $$ to get the SawStop.

todd

J. Clarke, wrote the following at or about 6/13/2007 1:54 PM:

>> Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them. He
>> gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
>> teaching
>> skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
>> he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.
>
> In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge of
> the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a cartridge and a
> blade just to disrupt the class.

Just need a bit of rewiring with a randomized timer AND a large sign
which reads:

"USE EXTREME CAUTION! This SawStop saw is equipped with an intermittent
safety device which has the safety feature fully enabled 90% of the
time. Do you feel lucky?"

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> I've never managed to cut anything off my body I didn't intend to,
> neither did my father in a lifetime of woodworking, neither did my
> uncle in a lifetime of woodworking. Why? Because we all learned that
> whirling metal blades of death meeting flesh is a bad thing. We
> learned how to work safely, we learned that if you do something that
> feels dangerous, chances are that doing it at all is wrong. You know
> something? That's what kept us all safe. Not having nanny-equipment
> that doesn't let us be stupid, but learning not to be stupid in the
> first place. That's really where I object to all this anti-stupidity
> equipment that has come along. It doesn't teach people to be safer,
> it teaches them that they can be idiots, the equipment will keep them
> from having any consequences to their stupidity.
>
> Honestly, I think people need to suffer the consequences of their
> idiocy, otherwise how do you learn not to be an idiot?

You are sooooooo naive. You talk about those people that need to suffer the
consequences and yet you are headed right down that path and don't see it
coming.
You know the saying, you don't know enough to know that you don't know.

"Leon" wrote in message

> And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
> but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
> thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting
wood.
> ;~)

Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when not
cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13 stitches, on a TS with
the blade off and not even plugged in!

Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of all
opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an overhead blade
guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly functioning guillotine.

The E-room logged me in as a "table saw accident" ... though I doubt that I
skewed the statistic by much.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 6/1/07
KarlC@ (the obvious)

"RonB" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
>> but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
>> thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting
>> wood. ;~)
> Me too. I put a "to-the-bone" notch in the end of a finger a few years
> ago with the saw's motor off. I flipped the switch off, started to walk
> away, and realized I had left a cut-off piece on the table. I carelessly
> overreached the still spinning blade and "bang"!
>
> That's a hard hit when bone is involved. Very painful, but an invaluable
> lesson in safety. I am lucky, and a much more careful woodworker for it.
>
> RonB
>
Yeah, the bone being hit is pretty violent. I still remember how my whole
hand shook as I cut it away from the tip of my thumb between the nail and
the finger print up to the first joint. I also remember the nurse at the ER
commenting "Knarly".

Unfortunately I was clueless what happened. I initially thought I had a
kick back until I opened up my hand that was clutching my left thumb. I
never could figure out what happened until I almost did it again about 1
year later. One year later I did the same thing, I finished cutting a
through dado and turned the saw off. Then I reached with my left hand to
the far end of the rip fence to lift it up and off the table top. This time
however I felt the wind coming off of the dado set. Fortunately this time
my thumb was too short to come in contact with the blade. Now I watch the
blade come to a complete stop before making any adjustments.

Leon wrote:
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Jun 4, 10:17 pm, "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> This time however I felt the wind coming off of the dado >set.
>>> Fortunately this time my thumb was too short to come in >contact with the
>>> blade.
>> Damnit Leon... talk about wry and dry. "Fortunately this time my
>> thumb was too short to come in contact with the blade."
>>
>> I laughed so hard I almost fell out of the chair!
>>
>> Thank Gawd you cut half your finger off long before so you were
>> actually safe. It's a good thing; you coulda been hurt!!!!
[snip]
> Yeah, yeah, that's uh, that's right. ;~)
>
> No sense in grieving about what's done, might as well look on the bright
> side.

Not to mention those great deals on factory reject gloves! <g>

"Edwin Pawlowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "CW" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > I'm surprised that no one hear has realized the solution. The expanded
> > foam
> > tablesaw blade. Easily fitable to any saw and would render it totally
> > safe.
> > What an idea. I could make millions.
>
>
> Get started on the tooling; a four cavity would be nice. I have the
machine
> time to make them.
>

So do I.

"Upscale" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> The Sawstop is not for people who are prone to accidents, it's for those
> times when the unexpected happens and it happens to everybody, except
> Brian
> Henderson of course. He's just too perfect in everything he does to have
> some type of accident.
>
>

It would probably be a sure bet that the inventor had this particular
personality in mind when he came up with the idea.

"Leon" wrote in message

> It's getting pretty bad then the safety device is the part of the saw that
> gets you. ;~)

Pretty much my usual run of luck ... if you haven't noticed. :)

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 6/1/07
KarlC@ (the obvious)

"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Leon" wrote in message
>
>> And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
>> but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
>> thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting
> wood.
>> ;~)
>
> Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when not
> cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13 stitches, on a TS
> with
> the blade off and not even plugged in!
>
> Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of all
> opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an overhead blade
> guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly functioning guillotine.
>
> The E-room logged me in as a "table saw accident" ... though I doubt that
> I
> skewed the statistic by much.


It's getting pretty bad then the safety device is the part of the saw that
gets you. ;~)

<[email protected]> wrote in message
> I can understand why
> SawStop chose to make a cabinet saw with their safety feature since
> that is the only kind of saw Americans know and buy. But I think they
> missed the boat by not putting their safety feature into a far more
> usreful, modern sliding table saw.
>

They didn't miss the boat as it is still on the way over from Europe. Fact
is, a slider would not sell well here. Be it right or wrong, that is a fact
of life and they want to make money so they went for a saw that will have
higher potential sales volume.

I'm surprised that no one hear has realized the solution. The expanded foam
tablesaw blade. Easily fitable to any saw and would render it totally safe.
What an idea. I could make millions.

"Edwin Pawlowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >
> > Which is why they originally wanted to require all saw manufacturers
> > to license their technology, right? I'm not saying you can't buy a
> > SawStop if you want, it's fine with me if you have that kind of money
> > to throw around and want to feel safer, I just worry that feeling
> > safer makes people less careful and less prone to practice safe
> > techniques.
> >
> > You should be relying on yourself, not on your tools, to keep yourself
> > from being injured.
>
> You do have a good point. If seatbelts and airbags were removed from cars,
> people would pay more attention to driving and the accident rate would
> plummet. For the few that do die, that is just "thinning the herd".
>
> Think of the money to be saved by ditching head restraints, ABS, and
> collapsible steering columns. A section of 1" pip can to the same think,
> lots cheaper. People have just become to complacent.
>
>

"CW" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm surprised that no one hear has realized the solution. The expanded
> foam
> tablesaw blade. Easily fitable to any saw and would render it totally
> safe.
> What an idea. I could make millions.


Get started on the tooling; a four cavity would be nice. I have the machine
time to make them.

"Upscale" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>
> However, that hasn't stopped me from seriously considering one. I've
> examined the Sawtop closely in person and inquired about the possibilility
> of cutting down the Sawstop cabinet to lower the table. But, the
> additional
> mechanical components needed for the safety features in the Sawstop make
> it
> impossible to lower the table. Other makes of cabinet tablesaws however,
> can
> be lowered without extensive mechanical modification and that *is*
> something
> that I'm actively pursuing.


I do not know yore arrangement but rather than modify a saw to be lower,
could you modify or build up the floor around the saw? If you have a
wooden floor could you cut a hole in it and install a lower surface to set
the saw into? Or perhaps build up the floor around equipment that is or is
marginally too tall?

Just a thought.

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 15:42:56 -0500, "Leon"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>I'm confused, is this a comment on the fact that no one is incapable of
>>making mistakes except for you because you know what you are doing?
>
> No, I just don't think that people should rely on nanny safety
> equipment, they should learn how to be safe and use the safety
> equipment as a backup. Otherwise, it's all about evolution in action,
> the stupid get culled from the herd. If people have to be told not to
> lay on a running table saw because something bad might happen...
> something tells me these people deserve to be laying on running table
> saw blades, they're just too stupid to survive on their own.


What are you, 14, 15 maybe?

"Donna" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> I've always recommended that beginning woodworkers learn to "COUNT THE
> TEETH OF THE BLADE" before doing anything anywhere near it. I taught
> quite a few women over 6 years on safe power tool use and not one of
> us so much as got a scratch. I think this is a dumb kinda rule- but it
> works. Donna Menke, www.woodworks-by-donna.com, author: The Ultimate
> Band Saw Box Book
>

Good advise however there is always an exception to every rule. LOL

I had probably counted the teeth on more than a few blades 10 years before
having an accident and some times will nick my self just handling a freshly
sharpened blade.

"Frank Boettcher" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
> "safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
> to specify or make something that works?
>
> My point is that on very large hooks, no latch is the safest method.
> Nobody got hurt without the latch, many with it (including me). Hard
> to argue that it is appropriate. Maybe you have to be there,
> wrestling one of those super cables onto a hook to fully understand
> the difference and the problems the latches created.
>
> Frank


I am betting that the "latch" is misnamed. I believe that the "latch" was
intended to be more of a convenience feature in that during instances when
the line with the hook is "slack" the item hooked on it does not fall or
slide off. Somewhere along the line it was probably misinterpreted by OSHA
as a safety feature.

Not totally unlike the hook on a dog leash.

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Jun 4, 10:17 pm, "Leon" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>This time however I felt the wind coming off of the dado >set.
>> Fortunately this time my thumb was too short to come in >contact with the
>> blade.
>
> Damnit Leon... talk about wry and dry. "Fortunately this time my
> thumb was too short to come in contact with the blade."
>
> I laughed so hard I almost fell out of the chair!
>
> Thank Gawd you cut half your finger off long before so you were
> actually safe. It's a good thing; you coulda been hurt!!!!
>
> Talk about being grateful for small favors...
>
> Take 'em where you can get 'em, eh buddy?
>
> I'm still laughing.
>
> Robert
>
>

Yeah, yeah, that's uh, that's right. ;~)

No sense in grieving about what's done, might as well look on the bright
side.

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> And I wonder if the recreational woodworker might be better off. In
> the good old days people love to talk about, there were basically only
> good tools. No cheap imported junk.

I wonder how far back the good old day were. I distinctly recall cheap crap
in the 70's. "Wen" comes to mind and it was cheap.

"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote
>
> Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when not
> cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13 stitches, on a TS
> with
> the blade off and not even plugged in!
>
> Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of all
> opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an overhead blade
> guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly functioning guillotine.
>

Oh the irony, the irony.

I can think of a couple safety phobic folks I knew who would point to this
incident as "proof" that safety procedures and devices just don't "work".
LOL

"Toller" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>>
> Damn, but that's the question of the century!
> I thought only an idiot could put their hand into a TS; then I nearly cut
> my finger off on a BS last year. Now I am not sure.
> (It has healed cosmetically perfectly, but still hurts at times.)

Actually only an idiot thinks that it cannot happen to them.


> I think that all woodworking tools are dangerous. The solution is to be
> really careful using all of them; not to spend $2000 to make one safer.
> For instance, I now use push blocks when routing a rabbet on a picture
> frame, when a year ago I would have used my hands.


And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting wood.
;~)

Howard Swope wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>
>
When common sense and caution fail us, as they do all of us at one point
or another, the safety device would be nice to have.

I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate his
device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped up by
all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he lobbied to
make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a safety device
(his being the only one that would meet the requirements) installed.

"Nova" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:nVl9i.6989$Uy4.5414@trndny09...
> RonB wrote:

>
> Is the SawStop's safety mechanism is still active when the saw is shut off
> and the blade is coasting to a stop?


Yes, I asked the inventor that several years ago. That's the scenario
that I was in when I got cut.

On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:43:42 -0500, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:

>At least one of the woodworking magazines has added that mantra to their
>inside cover page, apparently in response to the legal beagles and in
>the interest of political correctness. I tend to disagree not in
>principle but in level of it being an "ordinary" level of danger
>associated w/ the activity and not worthy of mention per se.

Unfortunately, we live in a very sue-happy society where not only do
you have to tell people to be safe, you have to do it in such a way
that a brain-dead chihuahua could understand it.

>Re: the list of accidents, other than the splinter, I can't recall the
>last time one of the others has happened to me. Not that I'm somehow
>magic, but I do tend to be careful. Having hit myself w/ hammers in the
>past has taught me not to do that any longer.. :) I have a very strong
>aversion to _ever_ cutting myself again severely, and for that reason
>have very serious evaluations of how I try to carve/cut on stuff...I'm
>not a professional carver, though...

I've never managed to cut anything off my body I didn't intend to,
neither did my father in a lifetime of woodworking, neither did my
uncle in a lifetime of woodworking. Why? Because we all learned that
whirling metal blades of death meeting flesh is a bad thing. We
learned how to work safely, we learned that if you do something that
feels dangerous, chances are that doing it at all is wrong. You know
something? That's what kept us all safe. Not having nanny-equipment
that doesn't let us be stupid, but learning not to be stupid in the
first place. That's really where I object to all this anti-stupidity
equipment that has come along. It doesn't teach people to be safer,
it teaches them that they can be idiots, the equipment will keep them
from having any consequences to their stupidity.

Honestly, I think people need to suffer the consequences of their
idiocy, otherwise how do you learn not to be an idiot?

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:39:16 -0500, Leuf <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:20:48 -0500, Frank Boettcher
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>>"safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>>to specify or make something that works?
>
>Well ideally there would be enough pressure for your company to be
>going straight to the manufacturer saying your latch doesn't work for
>us, on one side of me I've got my guys bitching they get hurt if they
>use it and on the other I've got OSHA bitching if I don't use it. Do
>something. But yes in reality it's just easier to pay the fine and
>nothing changes until somebody gets killed.
>
With your last sentence, you must be assumming that there is an
inherent danger without the latches, and that somebody is more likely
to get killed with them removed. Certainly, my opinion would not be
the same. Maybe I don't share your confidence that the bureaucrat who
wrote the regulation was competent to do so.

>>My point is that on very large hooks, no latch is the safest method.
>>Nobody got hurt without the latch, many with it (including me). Hard
>>to argue that it is appropriate. Maybe you have to be there,
>>wrestling one of those super cables onto a hook to fully understand
>>the difference and the problems the latches created.
>
>I'm sure Mike Rowe will be along to show us at some point.
>
>
>
>-Leuf

Well, we could certainly debate this ad nauseam. Please note that I did
not say that he had disdain for humanity, and if you choose to believe
that his motives for having his device mandated by law were completely
altruistic, perhaps you might consider that he did not offer to give it
away; he offered to license it.
Suffice it to say that I personally am tired of having new laws passed
every time some special interest decides something is in their or
everyone else's best interest.


Mike Berger wrote:
> We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
> really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
> Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory, maybe it
> was because of his own blood-draining experience and was completely
> altruistic.
>
> Meanwhile, manufacturers of everything we consume lobby AGAINST
> consumer safety, encouraging the government to let them use more
> dangerous components and make more wasteful products. Do you have
> a car or truck? How altruistic do you think the vehicle manufacturers
> are?
>
> Russ wrote:
>
>> I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate
>> his device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped
>> up by all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he
>> lobbied to make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a
>> safety device (his being the only one that would meet the
>> requirements) installed.

"Rod & Betty Jo" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> Just curious....as a major (at least here) sawstop supporter as well as
> table saw victim why don't you have one?

Whether he actually owns one is mostly irrelevent in this case. As well,
there can be other reasons why a proponent of Sawstop safety might not own
one. Leon is arguing the benefits of the Sawstop in this case against
Brian's "impossible for me to get hurt" responses. I fully support the
safety features of the Sawstop myself, but don't own one. And since I know
you're going why, I'll indulge you with the primary reason I don't own a
Sawstop. I use a wheelchair and the Sawstop table surface is too high for me
to use in as safe manner as I'd like.

However, that hasn't stopped me from seriously considering one. I've
examined the Sawtop closely in person and inquired about the possibilility
of cutting down the Sawstop cabinet to lower the table. But, the additional
mechanical components needed for the safety features in the Sawstop make it
impossible to lower the table. Other makes of cabinet tablesaws however, can
be lowered without extensive mechanical modification and that *is* something
that I'm actively pursuing.

> On another note if any table saw accident is possible is it as well
inevitable?

Given enough time, yes it is inevitable. In the case of Brian Henderson
possibly, possibly not, but his "impossible for me to get hurt" attitude
makes him more vulnerable to accident. And the ironies of life have a way of
biting one in the butt when they least expect it. Not that I'd want to see
Brian or anyone else be hurt just to satisfy that irony, but his attitude
certainly mandates a good scare on the tablesaw just to bring him down to
reality.

<[email protected]> wrote in message
> You would end up with fewer, but much higher quality
> tools. And you might learn to use those fewer tools more. Which is
> more productive: four $2500 tools that work, or twenty $500 tools
> that don't work?
>
> I have a range of tools. And for the most part the higher priced,
> quality tools work well and I am happy to use them. The lower priced,
> imported from SE Asia tools don't work as well and I am always
> thinking about replacing them. Maybe if the cheap imported tools did
> not exist, I would be saved from myself.
>

Hard to say. Your example of four $2500 versus twenty $500 is a bit extreme
perhaps, and somewhere in between lies the truth. If all the tools were the
same quality and adjusted price as in the good old days, I wonder how many
of us could not afford to be in this hobby at all. I started out with a
cheap benchtop saw, later upgraded to a Delta contractor saw If I had to
start off with a $2500 saw from the start, there would never have been a
start.
--
Ed
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome/

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> harmed. Further, lots of people have reported false trips of the
> mechanism and at about $200 per trip, that can add up since you have

Define "lots". Instead of expressing your slanted imagination, try
presenting a real life figure such as percentage of owners who have
experience misfires during *proper* usage and not when someone is screwing
around that causes a misfire. Until you do that, your "lots" only adds up to
your own faulty preceptions.

> never need the SawStop mechanism. Lots of us though have been doing
> this for decades and still have all our fingers and toes, just because
> we know what we're doing.

And of course, you're one of those people who have never had an accident
because you're just to perfect in absolutely everything you do.

The Sawstop is not for people who are prone to accidents, it's for those
times when the unexpected happens and it happens to everybody, except Brian
Henderson of course. He's just too perfect in everything he does to have
some type of accident.

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 04:31:26 -0500, "Upscale" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>Whether he actually owns one is mostly irrelevent in this case. As well,
>>there can be other reasons why a proponent of Sawstop safety might not own
>>one. Leon is arguing the benefits of the Sawstop in this case against
>>Brian's "impossible for me to get hurt" responses.
>
> No one has ever said it's impossible to get hurt, but the reason I
> haven't gotten hurt isn't because I've got the
> safety-equipment-from-hell, it's because I know how to work safely.
> Is it possible I might get seriously hurt someday? Sure, anything is
> possible. Am I going to be paranoid about it? Nope.
>
> We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
> and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
> place. That's the objection.

I'll tag onto Brian's comment with a bit of reinforcement. I believe he's
right in that look how often we see posts here about accidents happening to
folks with all sorts of safety equipment on their tools. Yet, somehow the
accidents happen. Brian isn't arguing against safety equipment, he's
arguing in favor of the most fundamental of all safety equipment -
awareness. Wait long enough and a post will appear about someone who
whacked off a couple of fingers on a SawStop saw, just like we read about
kickback and fingers in blades with splitters and push sticks and...

--

-Mike-
[email protected]

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:58:58 -0500, Frank Boettcher
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:21:52 -0400, "Lee Michaels"
><leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when not
>>> cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13 stitches, on a TS
>>> with
>>> the blade off and not even plugged in!
>>>
>>> Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of all
>>> opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an overhead blade
>>> guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly functioning guillotine.
>>>
>>
>>Oh the irony, the irony.
>>
>>I can think of a couple safety phobic folks I knew who would point to this
>>incident as "proof" that safety procedures and devices just don't "work".
>>LOL
>>
>>
>Sometimes they don't.
>
>In an earlier life I was a welder making offshore oil platforms and
>deck sections. These things were loaded on barges using two bridge
>cranes that had two hoists each at 250 tons capacity each so 1000 tons
>total capacity The hooks were very large as were the cables that
>attached to them.
>
>Crane hooks are required by OSHA to have spring loaded safty latches,
>that is they spring out of the way when you push on the cable loop and
>spring back when you get the cable on. Picture cables as large as your
>upper arm with a swedged loop that required two men to lift onto the
>hook. The hook latches were so large the spring back was mashing
>peoples hands. So we took the latches off. Got cited by OSHA. Asked
>the OSHA inspector to demonstrate how to get the cables on with the
>saftey latches without getting hurt. He declined, admitted that
>logically we were right, but had to cite us anyway "got to go by the
>book". We also were curious as to how a crane hook loaded to 250 tons
>could have a cable slip off the hook if there were no latch. Our
>limited knowledge of physics could not fathom that happening. He
>declined to explain or to cite any specific statistics.
>
>Overhead blade guards, however, are very good safety devices (provided
>you can get them on without getting hurt in the first place).
>
>Frank

OSHA is one of the greatest BS components of the government today! AND
the principle reasons for companies to outsource!!
I was charged 3500.00 when my people were taking down a tower of
scaffolding FROM a sissor lift and one stepped out on the scaffold to
pick up a walk board. OSHA sent me a picture and the charge for "no
hand rails". We had the best safety record in the industry according
to my insurance co. Our country is destroying itself with political
correctness and lack of personal responsibility.

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:37:41 -0400, BillinDetroit <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Brian Henderson wrote:
>> We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
>> and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
>> place. That's the objection.

>Are the two mutually exclusive?

Nope, they don't have to be. As a matter of fact, they shouldn't be.

Have you ever seen a sawstop on the used market? They don't have
any dissatisfied customers that I've ever heard of. If you can
afford to pay the extra, you're right -- one injury prevented will
make it worth all the additional cost and more.

Howard Swope wrote:
> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
> on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
> like nothing.
>
> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
> Thanks,
> Howard
>
>

We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory, maybe it
was because of his own blood-draining experience and was completely
altruistic.

Meanwhile, manufacturers of everything we consume lobby AGAINST
consumer safety, encouraging the government to let them use more
dangerous components and make more wasteful products. Do you have
a car or truck? How altruistic do you think the vehicle manufacturers
are?

Russ wrote:

> I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate his
> device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped up by
> all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he lobbied to
> make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a safety device
> (his being the only one that would meet the requirements) installed.

They filed a petition. Do you really think it rationalizes
your original comment as quoted below? Do you have inside
information on how much was being asked for royalties?

I'll bet you use an unsafe table saw just to spite them :-)

***
> I however can't get over the greedy inventor's attempt to legislate
this device into every saw in the US. When his invention wasn't snapped
up by all of the major manufacturers as he assumed it would, he lobbied
to make it illegal to manufacture or import saws without a safety device
(his being the only one that would meet the requirements) installed.


Russ wrote:
> Mike Berger wrote:
>> We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
>> really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
>> Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory,
>
> In April 2003, sawstop filed a petition with the Consumer Product Safety
> Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all table saws.
>

Frank Boettcher wrote:
...

> So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
> "safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
> to specify or make something that works?
...

In my previous life in the (nuclear and fossil) power generation and
coal mining/preparation industries, only one. Any lost time accident or
injury requiring medical treatment was fully investigated for root cause
and mitigative or corrective action(s). If there was a problem w/ a
design of equipment, it or a procedure would be modified to alleviate
the issue...

--

Frank Boettcher wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:22:10 -0500, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Frank Boettcher wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>> So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>>> "safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>>> to specify or make something that works?
>> ...
>>
>> In my previous life in the (nuclear and fossil) power generation and
>> coal mining/preparation industries, only one. Any lost time accident or
>> injury requiring medical treatment was fully investigated for root cause
>> and mitigative or corrective action(s). If there was a problem w/ a
>> design of equipment, it or a procedure would be modified to alleviate
>> the issue...
>
> The poster indicated that following a bad reg because it is in the
> OSHA federal register would provide the pressure to get something
> changed. Therefore my question, because I think not.
>
> Most were first aid cases, not lost time or recordables. For it to be
> a recordable it would have to required off premises medical attention
> or a prescription. And recordables wether they be lost time or not,
> were investigated. Root cause was the use of "safety" latches on a
> 250 ton hook. latches removed, problem solved......However, that
> solution was not going to satisfy the OSHA people.
>
> My perspective is from the point of view of one who handled the
> cables, and later as one who was responsible for making those lifts in
> a safe manner.
>
> You ever try to modify a crane component to make it better. You have
> just relieved the manufacturer from all liability for any future
> incidents. On one particular lift, I worked with the manufacturer of
> those bridge cranes to do some modifications to make a single lift
> that would be over capacity. They did all the Engineering
> calculations and work, supervised the modifications, then on the day
> of the lift, they faxed in a disclaimer for anything that might happen
> as a result of the lift. Took the money though.
>
> Who were you with BTW. could it have been Combustion Engineering?

I agree on the previous that OSHA tends not to change w/o massive push.
Am surprised could have gotten the "remove latch" solution through a
safety committee even though understand that certainly removed the
proximate cause. Would have thought the solution more likely to have
been regarding alternate lifting procedure to remove hands from direct
proximity...

Also agree that no engineering firm would accept any responsibility for
a modified piece of safety equipment, no matter how minor nor benign the
modification appeared. Liability just too great and the lawyers and/or
field inspectors for OSHA, etc., have _no_ sense of humor (or
perspective, often, either). NRC didn't, either... :)

My vendor experience was w/ Babcock & Wilcox although knew a bunch of
guys from C-E.

-dpb

--

Brian Henderson wrote:

...

> Woodworking is an inherently dangerous hobby. You will get cut. You
> will smash your fingers with a hammer. You will get splinters. Most
> of these things are pretty unavoidable.
...

At least one of the woodworking magazines has added that mantra to their
inside cover page, apparently in response to the legal beagles and in
the interest of political correctness. I tend to disagree not in
principle but in level of it being an "ordinary" level of danger
associated w/ the activity and not worthy of mention per se.

Re: the list of accidents, other than the splinter, I can't recall the
last time one of the others has happened to me. Not that I'm somehow
magic, but I do tend to be careful. Having hit myself w/ hammers in the
past has taught me not to do that any longer.. :) I have a very strong
aversion to _ever_ cutting myself again severely, and for that reason
have very serious evaluations of how I try to carve/cut on stuff...I'm
not a professional carver, though...

--

Leuf wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:20:48 -0500, Frank Boettcher
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>> "safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>> to specify or make something that works?
>
> Well ideally there would be enough pressure for your company to be
> going straight to the manufacturer saying your latch doesn't work for
> us, on one side of me I've got my guys bitching they get hurt if they
> use it and on the other I've got OSHA bitching if I don't use it. Do
> something.

It doesn't really work that way. I'm thinking you've not worked in an
OSHA-controlled environment... :)

OSHA has the force of law and inspectors to enforce it and power of very
substantial fines with which to be punitive about it. Unfortunately, it
is one of those bureaucratic nightmares which has become the 900-lb
gorilla and often the good intentions are lost in detailed
"letter-of-law" enforcement. Not all inspectors are as qualified as
would be desirable nor are all as interested in working to find a safe
technique for a given operation as in finding violations.

Consequently, manufacturers of equipment have to produce it to OSHA
standards and if, for example in this case, the reg says "there shall be
a hook", then they're going to make the item with a hook because if they
don't they can't sell it as approved. And, unfortunately, Leuf is right
in that it isn't something one can simply tell OSHA "we'd rather do it
this way because..." and get an approval or waiver or any such relief in
a timely fashion.

> But yes in reality it's just easier to pay the fine and
> nothing changes until somebody gets killed.

The above said, however, last sentence doesn't in general reflect the
attitude of many companies on workplace safety, however. There are some
that tend to "not get it", but for the most part it is a serious effort.

--

Rod & Betty Jo wrote:
...

> ...if any table saw accident is possible is it as well inevitable? ...

You Presbyterian??? :)

--

Brian Henderson wrote:
...

> We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
> and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
> place. That's the objection.

I don't believe that's the case in any of the discussion here...

And, if you'll read Sawstop's literature, you'll note it specifically
points out the technology does NOT prevent accidents, it merely limits
the consequences of one...that can't be all bad.

--

Leon wrote:
> "Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 04:31:26 -0500, "Upscale" <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
...
>> ...I haven't gotten hurt isn't because I've got the
>> safety-equipment-from-hell, it's because I know how to work safely.
...
>> ...far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe...
...

> Brian I guess what makes your comments seem so naive and scream
> "inexperienced" is that you keep fabricating instances that have not
> occurred in these threads. No one in this thread that I recall has made
> the comment that they are going to rely on technology to keep them safe.
>
> Like most people know, looking down the barrel of a loaded gun is not going
> to save your butt if you pull the trigger and the safety is not engaged and
> whether the safety is engaged or not it is a dangerous move. ...
>
> The reason that you have not had an accident yet is because the safety
> techniques that you practice have not yet been compromised by the mistakes
> that you make. ...

I fully agree, Leon. As another sidebar of this thread has discussed,
some of us here have served on safety review committees doing accident
analyses and root-cause evaluations. It is truly to be amazed by at how
many of these have as at least one cause either willful disregard for
accepted procedure(s) or actual disabling of one or more safety devices
thus allowing or precipitating the injury.

--

Brian Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:42:19 -0500, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> And, if you'll read Sawstop's literature, you'll note it specifically
>> points out the technology does NOT prevent accidents, it merely limits
>> the consequences of one...that can't be all bad.
>
> Which is why they originally wanted to require all saw manufacturers
> to license their technology, right? ...

I don't think that follows directly, no. Why they wanted manufacturers
to license their product was they had a large investment in a product
which they thought marketable and had an (initial) business plan that
didn't include making the saw themselves.

Their technology was/is certainly clever, innovative, and successful in
addressing a market niche, but that's required of almost any product to
be successful.

> You should be relying on yourself, not on your tools, to keep yourself
> from being injured.

It's not a zero-sum game, though. Again, to reiterate, Sawstop does
nothing to _prevent_ an accident; in fact, an accident has to happen for
it to have any effect (neglecting the Type II error). It will almost
certainly mitigate the effects of that accident, however.

Safety is dependent on a combination of all the things that goes into
the operation from the design and manufacture of the tool to the music
blaring in the background. Operator attention and proper usage is
surely a major factor but as others have noted, the unexpected is often
the culprit.

And, as my final word, again from my experiences w/ accident analysis, I
can't number the times I've heard the expression of "I've _always_ done
it that way!" or "It seemed safe to me!". And, of course, those stories
were told by those that survived to tell their tale... :( It is
certainly fortunate that the most severe of woodworking incidents are
not likely to be fatal.

--

Brian Henderson wrote:
...

> ...Accidents don't just magically happen, they are a failure on some level of the
> operator or the equipment.

There's one nugget w/ which I agree. Of course, I had to take it out of
context to _fully_ agree, but, hey, you take what you can get... :)

I said I wasn't going to add more, but hadn't seen this response at the
time and this was too good an opportunity to waste... :)

BUT, the above truism said, your emphasis would say the punchpress the
previous respondent talked about would be perfectly safe if it were
designed originally to be operated as he described the jury-rigged
operation -- after all, all it takes is the operator not failing...

Simply for your consideration of the position of safety-related design
and equipment in the equation...

--

Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
> "Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
...

>> You should be relying on yourself, not on your tools, to keep yourself
>> from being injured.
>
> You do have a good point. If seatbelts and airbags were removed from cars,
> people would pay more attention to driving and the accident rate would
> plummet. For the few that do die, that is just "thinning the herd".

:)

Nicely put, Edwin...

--

CW wrote:
> ...The expanded foam tablesaw blade...would render it totally safe.
...

Not hardly -- the eye injuries from radial disintegration would have it
off the market in a week... :)

--

[email protected] wrote:
> Howard,
>
>> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much
>> decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like
>> a high quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is
>> about double what I had
> .....> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
>
> Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them. He
> gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
> teaching
> skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
> he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.

In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge of
the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a cartridge and a
blade just to disrupt the class.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Unquestionably Confused wrote:
> J. Clarke, wrote the following at or about 6/13/2007 1:54 PM:
>
>>> Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them.
>>> He gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
>>> teaching
>>> skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
>>> he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.
>>
>> In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge
>> of the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a
>> cartridge and a blade just to disrupt the class.
>
> Just need a bit of rewiring with a randomized timer AND a large sign
> which reads:
>
> "USE EXTREME CAUTION! This SawStop saw is equipped with an
> intermittent safety device which has the safety feature fully enabled
> 90% of the time. Do you feel lucky?"

Won't stop him. You don't have to touch the teeth to trigger the
cartridge. Touch anywhere on the blade and it goes. And if he touches
it and it _doesn't_ go then it's lawyer city. Understand, the objective
is not to see if the stop works, it's to disrupt the class.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Vince Heuring wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> [email protected] wrote:
>>> Howard,
>>>
>>>> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much
>>>> decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks
>>>> like a high quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It
>>>> is about double what I had
>>> .....> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>>>
>>>
>>> Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them.
>>> He gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
>>> teaching
>>> skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
>>> he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.
>>
>> In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge
>> of the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a
>> cartridge and a blade just to disrupt the class.
>
> CAUTION: the parents of any student triggering the safety mechanism
> will be charged the cost of the replacement cartridge plus labor. This
> will be approximately $200.00.

And the kid cares about this because?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Digger wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:58:58 -0500, Frank Boettcher
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:21:52 -0400, "Lee Michaels"
>> <leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> "Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when
>>>> not cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13
>>>> stitches, on a TS with
>>>> the blade off and not even plugged in!
>>>>
>>>> Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of
>>>> all opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an
>>>> overhead blade guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly
>>>> functioning guillotine.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Oh the irony, the irony.
>>>
>>> I can think of a couple safety phobic folks I knew who would point
>>> to this incident as "proof" that safety procedures and devices just
>>> don't "work". LOL
>>>
>>>
>> Sometimes they don't.
>>
>> In an earlier life I was a welder making offshore oil platforms and
>> deck sections. These things were loaded on barges using two bridge
>> cranes that had two hoists each at 250 tons capacity each so 1000
>> tons total capacity The hooks were very large as were the cables that
>> attached to them.
>>
>> Crane hooks are required by OSHA to have spring loaded safty latches,
>> that is they spring out of the way when you push on the cable loop
>> and spring back when you get the cable on. Picture cables as large
>> as your upper arm with a swedged loop that required two men to lift
>> onto the hook. The hook latches were so large the spring back was
>> mashing peoples hands. So we took the latches off. Got cited by
>> OSHA. Asked the OSHA inspector to demonstrate how to get the cables
>> on with the saftey latches without getting hurt. He declined,
>> admitted that logically we were right, but had to cite us anyway
>> "got to go by the book". We also were curious as to how a crane hook
>> loaded to 250 tons could have a cable slip off the hook if there
>> were no latch. Our limited knowledge of physics could not fathom
>> that happening. He declined to explain or to cite any specific
>> statistics.
>>
>> Overhead blade guards, however, are very good safety devices
>> (provided you can get them on without getting hurt in the first
>> place).
>>
>> Frank
>
> OSHA is one of the greatest BS components of the government today! AND
> the principle reasons for companies to outsource!!
> I was charged 3500.00 when my people were taking down a tower of
> scaffolding FROM a sissor lift and one stepped out on the scaffold to
> pick up a walk board. OSHA sent me a picture and the charge for "no
> hand rails". We had the best safety record in the industry according
> to my insurance co. Our country is destroying itself with political
> correctness and lack of personal responsibility.

One place I used to work there was a piece of machinery with a foot
pedal. Was installed before WWII. In the time from its installation to
the day that OSHA first looked at it, there had been _no_ injuries on
that machine of any kind. OSHA decided that the pedal was a tripping
hazard and required that it have an elaborate guard installed. At the
time I left the company there had been five injuries caused by that
guard.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:40:24 GMT, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
>saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
>originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
>has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
>you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
>like nothing.
>
>Thoughts, comments, advice?

I'd like to see how much the contractor saw version ends up costing,
now due out at the end of the year according to their website. Plenty
of saw for a home shop so long as it has a good fence on it.


-Leuf

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>
> The quality of the saw is excellent, you won't be sorry having it as a
> saw. As far as the safety mechanism, there's always a lot of
> discussion on how necessary and/or worthwhile it is. Someone who
> practices safety to begin with should never need the SawStop mechanism
> because their fingers will never be anywhere that they could be
> harmed. Further, lots of people have reported false trips of the
> mechanism and at about $200 per trip, that can add up since you have
> to replace the cartridge and blade. If you don't have an extra on
> hand, you're out work time as well.

"If" the device works correctly only 1 time, you could have an additional
100 false trips and the extra expense would still be well worth the extra
cost. $200 per trip is an assumption. If you are using an inexpensive
blade the trip is closer to $100 or less including the new cartridge. A
majority of the triggers save thousands of dollars in medical costs. Most
all that have reported false triggers have been compensated in some way by
SawStop and have been assisted in determining a reason and remedy for the
false trip.

> In the end, if it's worth it to you for the peace of mind, then do it,
> you'll be happy with the quality of the saw and hopefully, you'll
> never need the SawStop mechanism. Lots of us though have been doing
> this for decades and still have all our fingers and toes, just because
> we know what we're doing.

Accidents happen whether you practice safety or not. NO ONE is 100%
incapable of having an accident. To think otherwise is pretty naive.

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> Which is why they originally wanted to require all saw manufacturers
> to license their technology, right? I'm not saying you can't buy a
> SawStop if you want, it's fine with me if you have that kind of money
> to throw around and want to feel safer, I just worry that feeling
> safer makes people less careful and less prone to practice safe
> techniques.
>
> You should be relying on yourself, not on your tools, to keep yourself
> from being injured.

You do have a good point. If seatbelts and airbags were removed from cars,
people would pay more attention to driving and the accident rate would
plummet. For the few that do die, that is just "thinning the herd".

Think of the money to be saved by ditching head restraints, ABS, and
collapsible steering columns. A section of 1" pip can to the same think,
lots cheaper. People have just become to complacent.

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:01:14 -0700, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:

>On Jun 4, 7:40 pm, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>> on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
>> saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
>> originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
>> has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
>> you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
>> like nothing.
>>
>> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>
>The cost/risk analysis is certainly weighed heavily in the favor of
>prevention by the high cost of a single incident...
>
>My thought is if I were buying for a commercial shop and certainly if
>I either were going to have employee(s) or others besides myself using
>it I'd consider it almost a given.
>
>For home shop it gets more subjective -- usage typically is way down,
>time pressure of production, etc., are generally far less, etc., so
>risks _should_ be lower. OTOH, there's the possibility of less
>experience/familiarity, may be more likely rather than less to make a
>poor choice of operation or how to most safely perform a given
>operation, so risk _might_ be as high or even higher...
>
>All in all, if have the budget, from what I've seen of the saw at a
>single show and from reviews, seems hard to say you could go wrong
>with going that way. The only negative I've ever heard (other than
>the diatribe kind of stuff) was one reviewer a couple of years ago
>commented that his test machine turned off on its own a couple of
>times while using it--not a hard-stop false firing, simply the on/off
>switch dropped out. One would presume this was either an isolated
>faulty switch or the problem has been resolved by SawStop by now--I've
>certainly heard no more about it.
>
>IMO, $0.02, ymmv, etc., etc., ...
>
>- dpb

Those False Stops could be tough! I was told that replacing the module
after a STOP runs about $65,00 and I'm sure there is shipping and tax
added to that. BUT then I did see a live demo and sure looked like it
would be hard to find that "smarter idiot" to defeat it.
(from an idiot that filleted a finger tip himself)
My .02 worth

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 09:56:21 -0500, "Leon"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Like most people know, looking down the barrel of a loaded gun is not going
>to save your butt if you pull the trigger and the safety is not engaged and
>whether the safety is engaged or not it is a dangerous move. I think it
>goes with out saying that most mature people realize that nothing is fool
>proof and that placing a body part near a blade spinning at 100 mph is still
>going to instill a sense of fear regardless if the operator knows that the
>safety device will prevent injury 99.99% of the time.

No, most people know that standing in front of a loaded gun is stupid,
safety or no safety, just like reaching across a running sawblade
without a guard is stupid. It isn't any less stupid because you stick
a SawStop on it. Nothing is foolproof, it doesn't matter that you've
got a riving knife and anti-kickback pawls, you don't go standing in
the line of fire because that wood could come shooting back at you.
But you know, it isn't the safety equipment that makes you safe, it's
the techniquest that you use. Certainly the safety equipment can help
but it can never replace just being careful and thinking about what
you're doing.

It's funny, just about everyone I know who has had an accident has
said "I should have known better". Yes, they should have. Accidents
don't just magically happen, they are a failure on some level of the
operator or the equipment.

In article <[email protected]>, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:

SNIP



As another sidebar of this thread has discussed,
> some of us here have served on safety review committees doing accident
> analyses and root-cause evaluations. It is truly to be amazed by at how
> many of these have as at least one cause either willful disregard for
> accepted procedure(s) or actual disabling of one or more safety devices
> thus allowing or precipitating the injury.
>
> --

Oh man, did that make my hair stand on end - again. Haven't thought
about it for a long time, but all of a sudden I was back in 1964 sitting
down at a punch press for day after day of punching out zillions of 2
inch parts. Even though the press was old, it was fitted to prevent
getting fingers in the dies. Except that some genius must have thought
that using both hands to lower the press slowed them down too much,
because this one was modified. The left-hand handle was wired down and
the right-handle was wired to a home-brew foot pedal, so that you could
feed with the left hand, retrieve parts with the right hand and operate
the press with ONE FOOT. Even though it scared the shit out of me, I
knew I had to keep my mouth shut and just watch out for myself, or quit
the best paying summer job I could find. I was able to maintain
concentration for a couple of days, but eventually the mind-numbing
repetition took its toll and a couple of times I caught myself getting
out of sequence and reaching to retrieve the part while my foot was
starting to come down to lower the press. Never got hurt, and didn't
hear about anyone else getting hurt, but the experience obviously made
an impression.

And back on topic, if I replace my Jet contractor saw, the Saw Stop will
be high on my list of possibles. Even though I know I am able to prevent
most accidents, some day something may distract me at the wrong moment.

Regards,
PDX David

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> You're going to buy an expensive saw and use a cheap blade? Um...
> hello?

You never know with some people, I use strictly Forrest.



> I made my assumption using a WWII blade which is a pretty standard
> blade, if you want to throw a $10 Home Depot cheapie blade in your
> saw, more power to you.
>
>>Accidents happen whether you practice safety or not. NO ONE is 100%
>>incapable of having an accident. To think otherwise is pretty naive.


> But if you spend all your time quivering in fear that someday, you
> just might have an accident, why bother doing woodworking at all?

I'm confused, is this a comment on the fact that no one is incapable of
making mistakes except for you because you know what you are doing?


> Woodworking is an inherently dangerous hobby. You will get cut. You
> will smash your fingers with a hammer. You will get splinters. Most
> of these things are pretty unavoidable.


Not according to the way you do things.

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:54:28 -0400, "J. Clarke"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>[email protected] wrote:
>> Howard,
>>
>>> I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much
>>> decided on getting the SawStophttp://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like
>>> a high quality saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is
>>> about double what I had
>> .....> Thoughts, comments, advice?
>>
>>
>> Just heard from a local HS shop teacher - he's getting two of them. He
>> gets a kickback accident ever so often (more rarely, due to his
>> teaching
>> skills and the many eyes in the back of his head, I'm sure), but
>> he simply can not afford a possibility of an amputation accident.
>
>In a high school shop I can imagine the "bad boy" touching the edge of
>the blade, thereby triggering the Sawstop and using up a cartridge and a
>blade just to disrupt the class.
>
>--
More likely he will "accidently" touch it with a piece of metal or
wet wood. A couple of those a week and the entire shop program will
again learn the use of a hand saw as the shop budgets won't buy many
cartidges and blades.

Dave Hall

"Rod & Betty Jo" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>
> Just curious....as a major (at least here) sawstop supporter as well as
> table saw victim why don't you have one? On another note if any table saw
> accident is possible is it as well inevitable? Rod


Good questions, and I'll bring up some things to consider concerning other
comments in this thread so please do not consider that all of these comments
are directed at you.

This is the way I think concerning this topic.

Unfortunately my accident, which still seems like it only happed a few
months ago, happened about 14 years prior to the SawStop being invented.
Why don't I have one now? I am not in the market for a new TS. While many
will say that the SawStop is very expensive and may not be worth the
additional expense, it is marginally more expensive if you plan on buying a
new saw any way. It may only be $500 to $1500 more than a "comparable" saw
in the same class that you may be looking at. Yes $500 to $1500 is a lot
of money to some people including myself. I do however pay a similar amount
"every year" for home owners insurance and the chances of being hurt on the
TS are much greater than my house burning down or being blown away in a
storm. Damages incurred on a TS could be equal in value to those of your
house being blown away or burned down and could be more if the injuries
would affect your livelihood. If you do not need to buy a new saw the
expense is much greater than what you were going to spend. I absolutely do
not propose that every one go out and buy one. I do suggest that the saw be
strongly considered if you are going to buy a new TS. It's like considering
the purchase of a car with or with out air bags. Until you have been
injured you really have not concept of how venerable you are. Once injured
you have had the experience to realize that you simply do not know every
possible way that you can be injured. It could not happen to me and yet it
did. Every one that knows me was in shock because I was soooo careful.
Hummmm.

You asked, if a any table saw accident is possible is it as well inevitable?


Absolutely. So far, Table saw accidents are not on the decline. Will you
eventually get hurt, "maybe" not. Between you and 4 other TS users, the
chances are 5 times greater that one of you will get hurt. We are all human
and we make mistakes. With out fail we all eventually unknowingly let our
guard down. The more you use your saw the more likely it is that at some
time you are going to get hurt.

You always practice proper TS safety because you respect the machine and
know what harm it can do. Are you more comfortable using the saw today
than the very first day you used it? Do you think that you will become
more comfortable with it as time goes by or if you use it every day?
Thinking way back when your parents let you have your first knife, did you
respect it and know what harm it could do? Are you more comfortable using
the knife today than the very first time you used it?
Have you ever cut yourself with a knife even though you had the knowledge
that it could harm you.

You come from a long line wood workers. Your grandfather, your father, you
and your child were and or will become woodworkers. Your grandfather's,
your father's and your child's experience with woodworking equipment will
never have any extended power or extend good luck to protect you from
making a mistake. Your grandfather probably taught your father how to use
and respect a knife. I'll bet your father has cut himself with a knife.
Did you ever think that you would not cut your self because your father
taught you how to handle and use a knife?

The simple fact is, the more safety features a tool has, the less likely an
accident will occur when the inevitable happens. The inevitable would be
you letting your guard down or making a mistake. The TS is unforgiving. It
does not care whether you practice proper safety or not. You CANNOT know
all the steps to prevent any possible accident and practice them 100% of the
time.

If you are in the market for a new TS. Should you discount the SawStop
because of they way the inventor tried to bring the saw/technology to
market? :~) Before answering that question lets all remember that we all
practice proper TS safety. Right? Do we let our guard down at this moment?
Would not considering a saw with more safety devices because of the feelings
we have towards some one or something be practicing good TS safety.

Practicing good TS safety does exclude events that happen when wood is not
being cut.

Did you ever say or know some one that said, that will never happen to me?

"Hoosierpopi" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> As to fingers, used a high quality carbide tipped blade, It will cut
> through flesh, bone and fingernails cleanly and quickly.

That is simply not true. Cleanly, absolutely not. Quickly, absolutely.

You shouldn't feel a thing.

You clearely are talking BS. Cut through bone and it feels like your whole
arm is being electrocuted.

On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:02:11 -0500, Leuf <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 07:45:32 -0500, Frank Boettcher
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:39:16 -0500, Leuf <[email protected]>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:20:48 -0500, Frank Boettcher
>>><[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>>>>"safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>>>>to specify or make something that works?
>>>
>>>Well ideally there would be enough pressure for your company to be
>>>going straight to the manufacturer saying your latch doesn't work for
>>>us, on one side of me I've got my guys bitching they get hurt if they
>>>use it and on the other I've got OSHA bitching if I don't use it. Do
>>>something. But yes in reality it's just easier to pay the fine and
>>>nothing changes until somebody gets killed.
>>>
>>With your last sentence, you must be assumming that there is an
>>inherent danger without the latches, and that somebody is more likely
>>to get killed with them removed. Certainly, my opinion would not be
>>the same. Maybe I don't share your confidence that the bureaucrat who
>>wrote the regulation was competent to do so.
>
>No the last sentence I was talking more in general, that the status
>quo gets maintained until something terrible happens and then everyone
>wonders why no one did anything about it.
>
>But you can imagine a situation where the latches were removed and an
>accident happened that had nothing to do with the latches not being
>there, but the media would get a hold of OSHA citing you for not
>having them and be all over it but have lost interest in the story by
>the time anyone actually figured out what really happened.
>
>But my point is just that if the regulation says you gotta have the
>latch but there are no serious repurcussions for ignoring the
>regulation then there is no reason for anyone to either fix the
>regulation or the device.
>

Valid points.

Frank
>
>-Leuf

RonB wrote:

>
> Me too. I put a "to-the-bone" notch in the end of a finger a few years ago
> with the saw's motor off. I flipped the switch off, started to walk away,
> and realized I had left a cut-off piece on the table. I carelessly
> overreached the still spinning blade and "bang"!
>
> That's a hard hit when bone is involved. Very painful, but an invaluable
> lesson in safety. I am lucky, and a much more careful woodworker for it.
>
> RonB
>
>

Is the SawStop's safety mechanism is still active when the saw is shut
off and the blade is coasting to a stop?

--
Jack Novak
Buffalo, NY - USA
[email protected]

On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:42:19 -0500, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:

>And, if you'll read Sawstop's literature, you'll note it specifically
>points out the technology does NOT prevent accidents, it merely limits
>the consequences of one...that can't be all bad.

Which is why they originally wanted to require all saw manufacturers
to license their technology, right? I'm not saying you can't buy a
SawStop if you want, it's fine with me if you have that kind of money
to throw around and want to feel safer, I just worry that feeling
safer makes people less careful and less prone to practice safe
techniques.

You should be relying on yourself, not on your tools, to keep yourself
from being injured.

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 04:31:26 -0500, "Upscale" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Whether he actually owns one is mostly irrelevent in this case. As well,
>there can be other reasons why a proponent of Sawstop safety might not own
>one. Leon is arguing the benefits of the Sawstop in this case against
>Brian's "impossible for me to get hurt" responses.

No one has ever said it's impossible to get hurt, but the reason I
haven't gotten hurt isn't because I've got the
safety-equipment-from-hell, it's because I know how to work safely.
Is it possible I might get seriously hurt someday? Sure, anything is
possible. Am I going to be paranoid about it? Nope.

We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
place. That's the objection.

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 07:45:32 -0500, Frank Boettcher
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:39:16 -0500, Leuf <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:20:48 -0500, Frank Boettcher
>><[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>>>"safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>>>to specify or make something that works?
>>
>>Well ideally there would be enough pressure for your company to be
>>going straight to the manufacturer saying your latch doesn't work for
>>us, on one side of me I've got my guys bitching they get hurt if they
>>use it and on the other I've got OSHA bitching if I don't use it. Do
>>something. But yes in reality it's just easier to pay the fine and
>>nothing changes until somebody gets killed.
>>
>With your last sentence, you must be assumming that there is an
>inherent danger without the latches, and that somebody is more likely
>to get killed with them removed. Certainly, my opinion would not be
>the same. Maybe I don't share your confidence that the bureaucrat who
>wrote the regulation was competent to do so.

No the last sentence I was talking more in general, that the status
quo gets maintained until something terrible happens and then everyone
wonders why no one did anything about it.

But you can imagine a situation where the latches were removed and an
accident happened that had nothing to do with the latches not being
there, but the media would get a hold of OSHA citing you for not
having them and be all over it but have lost interest in the story by
the time anyone actually figured out what really happened.

But my point is just that if the regulation says you gotta have the
latch but there are no serious repurcussions for ignoring the
regulation then there is no reason for anyone to either fix the
regulation or the device.


-Leuf

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:44:54 -0500, Leuf <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:58:58 -0500, Frank Boettcher
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>In an earlier life I was a welder making offshore oil platforms and
>>deck sections. These things were loaded on barges using two bridge
>>cranes that had two hoists each at 250 tons capacity each so 1000 tons
>>total capacity The hooks were very large as were the cables that
>>attached to them.
>>
>>Crane hooks are required by OSHA to have spring loaded safty latches,
>>that is they spring out of the way when you push on the cable loop and
>>spring back when you get the cable on. Picture cables as large as your
>>upper arm with a swedged loop that required two men to lift onto the
>>hook. The hook latches were so large the spring back was mashing
>>peoples hands. So we took the latches off. Got cited by OSHA. Asked
>>the OSHA inspector to demonstrate how to get the cables on with the
>>saftey latches without getting hurt. He declined, admitted that
>>logically we were right, but had to cite us anyway "got to go by the
>>book". We also were curious as to how a crane hook loaded to 250 tons
>>could have a cable slip off the hook if there were no latch. Our
>>limited knowledge of physics could not fathom that happening. He
>>declined to explain or to cite any specific statistics.
>
>Load shifts resulting in slack in the line? I'd imagine any siuation
>with multiple cranes if that is happening you're pretty much screwed
>regardless. Maybe even better off if it does slip off. One less
>crane destroyed and able to start picking up the mess.
>
>But in theory if there's no pressure on you to use the thing then
>there's no pressure going back to the manufacturer from you to make
>something that actually works.
>
So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
"safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
to specify or make something that works?

My point is that on very large hooks, no latch is the safest method.
Nobody got hurt without the latch, many with it (including me). Hard
to argue that it is appropriate. Maybe you have to be there,
wrestling one of those super cables onto a hook to fully understand
the difference and the problems the latches created.

Frank


Frank

>
>-Leuf

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 15:42:56 -0500, "Leon"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I'm confused, is this a comment on the fact that no one is incapable of
>making mistakes except for you because you know what you are doing?

No, I just don't think that people should rely on nanny safety
equipment, they should learn how to be safe and use the safety
equipment as a backup. Otherwise, it's all about evolution in action,
the stupid get culled from the herd. If people have to be told not to
lay on a running table saw because something bad might happen...
something tells me these people deserve to be laying on running table
saw blades, they're just too stupid to survive on their own.

On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:22:10 -0500, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:

>Frank Boettcher wrote:
>...
>
>> So how many people should it take to get hurt using an ill advised
>> "safety" device before either OSHA or the manufacturer would be moved
>> to specify or make something that works?
>...
>
>In my previous life in the (nuclear and fossil) power generation and
>coal mining/preparation industries, only one. Any lost time accident or
>injury requiring medical treatment was fully investigated for root cause
>and mitigative or corrective action(s). If there was a problem w/ a
>design of equipment, it or a procedure would be modified to alleviate
>the issue...

The poster indicated that following a bad reg because it is in the
OSHA federal register would provide the pressure to get something
changed. Therefore my question, because I think not.

Most were first aid cases, not lost time or recordables. For it to be
a recordable it would have to required off premises medical attention
or a prescription. And recordables wether they be lost time or not,
were investigated. Root cause was the use of "safety" latches on a
250 ton hook. latches removed, problem solved......However, that
solution was not going to satisfy the OSHA people.

My perspective is from the point of view of one who handled the
cables, and later as one who was responsible for making those lifts in
a safe manner.

You ever try to modify a crane component to make it better. You have
just relieved the manufacturer from all liability for any future
incidents. On one particular lift, I worked with the manufacturer of
those bridge cranes to do some modifications to make a single lift
that would be over capacity. They did all the Engineering
calculations and work, supervised the modifications, then on the day
of the lift, they faxed in a disclaimer for anything that might happen
as a result of the lift. Took the money though.

Who were you with BTW. could it have been Combustion Engineering?

Frank

Mike Berger wrote:
> We've all heard this anecdotally. How much direct knowledge do you
> really have of the inventor's greed and disdain for humanity?
> Even if he lobbied to have the device made mandatory,

In April 2003, sawstop filed a petition with the Consumer Product Safety
Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all table saws.
If adopted by the CPSC, this ruling would carry the weight of law, and
make illegal the sale or manufacture of any new table saws without this
patented technology.

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:45:00 GMT, "Leon"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>"If" the device works correctly only 1 time, you could have an additional
>100 false trips and the extra expense would still be well worth the extra
>cost. $200 per trip is an assumption. If you are using an inexpensive
>blade the trip is closer to $100 or less including the new cartridge. A
>majority of the triggers save thousands of dollars in medical costs. Most
>all that have reported false triggers have been compensated in some way by
>SawStop and have been assisted in determining a reason and remedy for the
>false trip.

You're going to buy an expensive saw and use a cheap blade? Um...
hello?

I made my assumption using a WWII blade which is a pretty standard
blade, if you want to throw a $10 Home Depot cheapie blade in your
saw, more power to you.

>Accidents happen whether you practice safety or not. NO ONE is 100%
>incapable of having an accident. To think otherwise is pretty naive.

But if you spend all your time quivering in fear that someday, you
just might have an accident, why bother doing woodworking at all?
Woodworking is an inherently dangerous hobby. You will get cut. You
will smash your fingers with a hammer. You will get splinters. Most
of these things are pretty unavoidable.

If you're that paranoid, you should take up knitting.

"Brian Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 04:31:26 -0500, "Upscale" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>Whether he actually owns one is mostly irrelevent in this case. As well,
>>there can be other reasons why a proponent of Sawstop safety might not own
>>one. Leon is arguing the benefits of the Sawstop in this case against
>>Brian's "impossible for me to get hurt" responses.
>
> No one has ever said it's impossible to get hurt, but the reason I
> haven't gotten hurt isn't because I've got the
> safety-equipment-from-hell, it's because I know how to work safely.
> Is it possible I might get seriously hurt someday? Sure, anything is
> possible. Am I going to be paranoid about it? Nope.
>
> We see far too many people who rely on technology to keep them safe
> and just don't bother actually learning how to *BE* safe in the first
> place. That's the objection.

Brian I guess what makes your comments seem so naive and scream
"inexperienced" is that you keep fabricating instances that have not
occurred in these threads. No one in this thread that I recall has made
the comment that they are going to rely on technology to keep them safe.

Like most people know, looking down the barrel of a loaded gun is not going
to save your butt if you pull the trigger and the safety is not engaged and
whether the safety is engaged or not it is a dangerous move. I think it
goes with out saying that most mature people realize that nothing is fool
proof and that placing a body part near a blade spinning at 100 mph is still
going to instill a sense of fear regardless if the operator knows that the
safety device will prevent injury 99.99% of the time.

The reason that you have not had an accident yet is because the safety
techniques that you practice have not yet been compromised by the mistakes
that you make. Yes you make mistakes. I know you do. You are not the only
that does not. Given enough use and time a mistake will happen when you are
not practicing a safety technique that you are so far unaware of. If your
grand father or father taught you all the safety measures that they know,
you have not learned all the safety practices. Your comments demonstrate
that.

Digger wrote:

> OSHA is one of the greatest BS components of the government today! AND
> the principle reasons for companies to outsource!!
> I was charged 3500.00 when my people were taking down a tower of
> scaffolding FROM a sissor lift and one stepped out on the scaffold to
> pick up a walk board. OSHA sent me a picture and the charge for "no
> hand rails". We had the best safety record in the industry according
> to my insurance co. Our country is destroying itself with political
> correctness and lack of personal responsibility.

Lord have mercy, you are so right. We used to have another wood teacher
at my school until he cut off two fingers (now he runs the tardy
center). OSHA fined the district (if I recall correctly the
amount)$3200, claiming that it insufficiently trained the (state
credentialed wood shop) teacher. Then they sent out some baboon to
inspect the shop while I was teaching. He complained that my drill
press did not have a safety guard on it, thus a student would be able to
injure himself by touching the drill bit. He also complained that the
lathe tools, all in the tool rack, were accessible to the students, thus
could be used as weapons in a fight. I explained that the students
actually use the lathes, and thus the tools are necessary. He answered
that it was still dangerous and I should keep them locked up in my
office and give a student one tool at a time, swapping them out as
necessary. I could continue with this idiot's suggestions, but it would
be just more and more lunacy. I told him he was a horse's ass and asked
him to leave my shop. The district office risk management supervisor
was with him (whom I have known for years) also suggested to the OSHA
guy that he should move along because he had two more shops to inspect.
My supervisor later returned alone and told me that he agreed with me,
but I should try to be a bit more tactful since the district is
appealing the fine. I answered that I would be tactful to anyone who
isn't an idiot.

Glen

"Leon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> And that is a good upgrade in the thought process of operating procedures
> but accidents often happen when there is no wood being processed. And I
> thought only an idiot could cut half their thumb off when not cutting
> wood. ;~)
Me too. I put a "to-the-bone" notch in the end of a finger a few years ago
with the saw's motor off. I flipped the switch off, started to walk away,
and realized I had left a cut-off piece on the table. I carelessly
overreached the still spinning blade and "bang"!

That's a hard hit when bone is involved. Very painful, but an invaluable
lesson in safety. I am lucky, and a much more careful woodworker for it.

RonB

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:40:24 GMT, "Howard Swope" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>I am getting ready to make a table saw purchase. I have pretty much decided
>on getting the SawStop http://www.sawstop.com/. It looks like a high quality
>saw and the safety features can't be beat. It is about double what I had
>originally wanted to spend. My thought was that if it prevents one injury it
>has easily paid for itself. An extra 2 grand seems like a lot of money until
>you weight it against the loss of a finger(s), and then that 2 grand seems
>like nothing.

The quality of the saw is excellent, you won't be sorry having it as a
saw. As far as the safety mechanism, there's always a lot of
discussion on how necessary and/or worthwhile it is. Someone who
practices safety to begin with should never need the SawStop mechanism
because their fingers will never be anywhere that they could be
harmed. Further, lots of people have reported false trips of the
mechanism and at about $200 per trip, that can add up since you have
to replace the cartridge and blade. If you don't have an extra on
hand, you're out work time as well.

In the end, if it's worth it to you for the peace of mind, then do it,
you'll be happy with the quality of the saw and hopefully, you'll
never need the SawStop mechanism. Lots of us though have been doing
this for decades and still have all our fingers and toes, just because
we know what we're doing.

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:21:52 -0400, "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote:

>
>"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote
>>
>> Unfortunately, I can do one better for a "table saw accident" when not
>> cutting wood. I "filleted" a thumb, to the tune of 13 stitches, on a TS
>> with
>> the blade off and not even plugged in!
>>
>> Always endeavoring to be safety conscious, and taking advantage of all
>> opportunities to further that goal, I was installing an overhead blade
>> guard, and, in the process, created a perfectly functioning guillotine.
>>
>
>Oh the irony, the irony.
>
>I can think of a couple safety phobic folks I knew who would point to this
>incident as "proof" that safety procedures and devices just don't "work".
>LOL
>
>
Sometimes they don't.

In an earlier life I was a welder making offshore oil platforms and
deck sections. These things were loaded on barges using two bridge
cranes that had two hoists each at 250 tons capacity each so 1000 tons
total capacity The hooks were very large as were the cables that
attached to them.

Crane hooks are required by OSHA to have spring loaded safty latches,
that is they spring out of the way when you push on the cable loop and
spring back when you get the cable on. Picture cables as large as your
upper arm with a swedged loop that required two men to lift onto the
hook. The hook latches were so large the spring back was mashing
peoples hands. So we took the latches off. Got cited by OSHA. Asked
the OSHA inspector to demonstrate how to get the cables on with the
saftey latches without getting hurt. He declined, admitted that
logically we were right, but had to cite us anyway "got to go by the
book". We also were curious as to how a crane hook loaded to 250 tons
could have a cable slip off the hook if there were no latch. Our
limited knowledge of physics could not fathom that happening. He
declined to explain or to cite any specific statistics.

Overhead blade guards, however, are very good safety devices (provided
you can get them on without getting hurt in the first place).

Frank

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:58:58 -0500, Frank Boettcher
<[email protected]> wrote:

>In an earlier life I was a welder making offshore oil platforms and
>deck sections. These things were loaded on barges using two bridge
>cranes that had two hoists each at 250 tons capacity each so 1000 tons
>total capacity The hooks were very large as were the cables that
>attached to them.
>
>Crane hooks are required by OSHA to have spring loaded safty latches,
>that is they spring out of the way when you push on the cable loop and
>spring back when you get the cable on. Picture cables as large as your
>upper arm with a swedged loop that required two men to lift onto the
>hook. The hook latches were so large the spring back was mashing
>peoples hands. So we took the latches off. Got cited by OSHA. Asked
>the OSHA inspector to demonstrate how to get the cables on with the
>saftey latches without getting hurt. He declined, admitted that
>logically we were right, but had to cite us anyway "got to go by the
>book". We also were curious as to how a crane hook loaded to 250 tons
>could have a cable slip off the hook if there were no latch. Our
>limited knowledge of physics could not fathom that happening. He
>declined to explain or to cite any specific statistics.

Load shifts resulting in slack in the line? I'd imagine any siuation
with multiple cranes if that is happening you're pretty much screwed
regardless. Maybe even better off if it does slip off. One less
crane destroyed and able to start picking up the mess.

But in theory if there's no pressure on you to use the thing then
there's no pressure going back to the manufacturer from you to make
something that actually works.


-Leuf