Well crap - I am ordering a SawStop tomorrow. (Mildly graphic pictures)

[stephen thomas]

Sheesh!
Get well soon, completely, with no complications!

I posted pix of my post-op "salute" a few years ago.
SS would never have saved the only saw injury (so far, knock on wood, etc) i've endured.
It was cut-off ops with the slider, when one piece ricocheted off a loose piece further back, and shot 24" across the table to smash the bone in my left hand middle finger holding the stock against the slider fence. Nowhere near the blade.

OTOH, as you outline so well, a couple things were going on that were not good:
I was in a rush, cutting a pile of multiples.
I did have that "funny" sense: "something is not quite right here" but plowed on anyway.

smt

 

[jaguar36]

I've been told the saw stop doesn't like wet wood, or pressure treated wood. Kinda of expensive to find out. The Felder at least doesn't cost a blade when it is triggered.

You can turn off the safety feature if you're cutting wet wood.

 

[richard newman]

There are other problems with the SawStop system. When I taught at the craft school at RIT, a lot of the students had their own blades for the table saws. Apparently the adjustment for the blade sensor is very critical, so occasionally someone's blade would trigger it. Pretty costly! Also, when I taught a banjo making class at the Mark Adams school, we needed to cut finger board slots on the table saw with a much smaller blade. Took some heavy duty kludging to get it to turn on, big PIA.

If the Felder system works as well as it appears to, that looks like a far superior design. No ruined blades and brake cartridges, plus quick reset.

I think that there's a downside to these devices - people without experience on unprotected saws can become overconfident and not develop good safety habits of their own. I just don't trust "failsafe" mechanisms, reminds me of the idiots in Teslas who got into crashes by relying on autopilot. I just don't think we can engineer or legislate ourselves into a risk free existence, not how the world works

 

[RC Mech]

It was cut-off ops with the slider, when one piece ricocheted off a I was in a rush, cutting a pile of multiples.
I did have that "funny" sense: "something is not quite right here" but plowed on anyway.

Does anyone else also get the “Holy shit that was stupid” automatic moment of pause after doing something potentially lethal while rushing?

Like a self-preserving moment of sobriety.

 

[jerholz]

Triggering the Saw Stop only wrecks the brake module (about $90 last time I checked) and one or two teeth of the blade. If you use Forrest blades, you can send them back to the factory and they will repair them for much less than the cost of a new blade.

If you are working with wood that you suspect is wet enough to trigger the brake, just touch it to the blade and see if the amber light on the power panel comes on.

 

[Comatose]

I bought a sawstop PCS when my daughter got old enough to start teaching a few things because mangling my hands is one thing, but...

It's a nice saw.

I also have a Felder jointer/planer. It's okay, but doesn't live up to the hype. I'd take the sawstop over a Felder saw even if they were priced identically. If you're activating the blade brake often enough to make up the price difference, you're probably one of those people who demonstrate products for infomercials and should take up a different line of work or play.

I've had the sawstop for about three years and have popped the brake once. That was me forgetting that carbon fiber is conductive. Doh.

I held off for years because of the original owner's patent BS.

 

[CarbideBob]

Weird timing.
Ran into a guy I know and his hand is all warped up. I have to ask what happened.
"Lawn mower took the finger off clear back. Wife found it and brought us both to ER."
"They put it back on and now tell me to come back in two weeks to reattach the tendons and things."
How is this even possible? Wonder what the end bill will be.
I have broken and sliced many things but they have never departed my body.
There is no "saw stop" on a B-port or grinder.
I never thought I would be a "safety guy" as I do lots of high risk things.
Maybe having employees you have to worry about make a change in things.
Do no harm. Enforce silly or pain in ass safety rules.

But we will all shortcut all the world of super safety for time and get it done .....

 

[jim rozen]

"Does anyone else also get the “Holy shit that was stupid” automatic moment of pause after doing something potentially lethal while rushing? "

That's happened enough to me that there's a special warning voice in my head when I start to think: "this will only take a minute. I'm in too much of a hurry to use XYZ safety item."

There's only so much they can do to re-attach parts. My mom was an ER nurse when a person came in with a toe avulsion, where the tendons had been stripped out. Water skiing on the hudson, they got the tow rope wrapped up and were trying to signal to the boat driver. Who mistook the signal for a "hit it" signal and promptly ripped the toe off. Later the boat driver showed up at the ER with the poly rope wrapped around the biological bits, which had been soaking in the hudson for a while. "No, we can't do anything with that...."

 

[Trboatworks]

I spend an hour at the SS dealer looking over the ‘professional’ and the ‘Industrial’ models from SawStop.
Oddly the salesman summed up the Industrial model as more saw than just about any shop really needs.
It’s not.

I also called Felder back and got the word on the safety saws- for this year and maybe the next it’s just offered on the top line saw at north of $35k

The salesman said something interesting though about considering one of the appropriate lower tier sliders to solve the safety concerns by the different format/approach offered by sliders.

I am thinking it over.
I process sheet goods but the really risky work is just how much time I spend making small sections on the cabinet saw.
I use push sticks finger boards etc but the work is always close in.
If I can sort out makes by these cuts via the clamp to the slider and feed that table approach I may be looking at these types.

I got bit squaring a small scrap of laminated ply.
That operation at least would have been perfectly safe on a slider compared to hand feeding on the cabinet saw.

 

[M.B. Naegle]

My grandfather lost one of his little fingers when loading a horse in a trailer who spooked and kicked. A rope or chain whipped around his finger and degloved it and pulled it apart. Not a lot they could do for it (and this was probably 60 years ago too), but he always told us kids not to pick our noses because he did and look what happened.

My dad had a few close calls too. Before my time he had the last 1/4" of one thumb chopped off on a punch press. He didn't think to bring the chunk to the hospital (which the doctor didn't like) so they just pulled the skin up under the nail which he said the pressure of them doing that was almost worse than the injury. So he went around for 20 or so years with one thumb shorter than the other until he cut the last 1/4" off of the OTHER thumb on a table saw. This time he brought the chunk to the hospital but the doctor didn't want to reattach it and sewed up the hole like his other thumb (so now they matched!). He asked them to give him back the chunk, which they did in a handy little jar of green solution and he kept it on his desk forever. He's still got it somewhere saying he wants to be buried with it. I also remember at least two instances where I came to work after my dad had been there early to find him sitting at the break table with a bloody finger held over his head from a nail that got smacked by a chuck jaw or some other (relatively) minor injury. After a break he wrapped it up and when back to work.

It's funny how stories like this build my dad's heroism in my eyes. It simultaneously makes me be a little more careful, while also subconsciously urging me to toughen up. Not in a macho sense, but rather knowing my limits and when I'm getting close to them. Like how I used to be afraid of grinder sparks as a little kid, and now don't care how many micro 3rd degree pock-marks I get on my arms. They'll heal quick and the joy of working is worth more. The older I get the more my arms get the same calloused scared look of my dad's and the smell of burning flesh and hair becomes all to common. I've had a few bloody moments too but in general I think I'm learning to stay focused, respect tools, and do jobs correctly.

My grandfather died of natural causes but he wore himself out through a life of Arizona ranching. He had heat-stroke 4 times before he was 40 prompting a move to the nicer climate of rural California where he later retired. My dad's still alive and would still be working if he had the mental stamina (dementia and Parkinson's taking a tole on his mind), but both of them have been my examples of working to the fullest, but not being stupid either. Stupid moments happen and the best you can do is learn from them.

 

[Scruffy887]

Nothing beats a slider for dealing with panels and lots of other stuff. But being fully aware beats all. Cutting any parts in brain dead "automatic mode" will get you. The machine is patiently waiting and will not act at all when you do something stupid. It will just let you do it. Machine has no remorse.

 

[guythatbrews]

From some of the comments seems lots of injuries started as kickbacks. They happen instantly.

 

[richard newman]

If you need to cut a lot of small stuff, a Hammond glider is the nuts! They are little sliders that were made for the printing industry to cut lead and wood type. Small, but heavily built, and very accurate. Almost a cult saw amongst woodworkers.

 

[Trboatworks]

I go from forming short sticks of T’s sided 3/4” to rips them bevels for 15’ lengths of 5/4” cap rail sided 3” to short sticks of 5/4” frame stock sided 1.5” with shiplaps cut to the ply frame infills (the stock I got cut making) etc etc etc .

I switch hit constantly- forming the project of the day from rough board.

Like any aviation accident I can see clear as day the series of less than ideal circumstances which ended up trapping me in a higher than normal risk exposure.
Even at the final critical action I pressed on when I normally would have called a full stop- reaching down to kill the saw and spinning the blade down.

I know what I’m doing and I still am sitting here with a hand so torn up I can’t work.

I’m a good and experienced driver who pays attention and can sense clearly how risk exposure varies as one drives down the road.
I respond accordingly to navigate those.constantly changing risk exposures to keep the primary task happening- get the car down the road safely to its destination.
I drive a modern safe car which is and expression of empirical engineering science and features active and passive safety features to protect me if I ever screw up.
The penalty is extremely high for such screw ups- dead or grievous injury is common so I want the safest vehicle possible with those well developed engineering features to protect the occupants.

I am running a table saw which was built in 1944 and came equipped with a simple blade guard.
That guard would have been plenty to stop this injury from occurring and though I always keep it off to make work run faster I could well have had it on.

A SawStop is just as the safety engineering in a car.
It simply reduces the penalty for a screwup.
The saws also come with a guard which is pretty much just like the one my saw had when it was built 80 years ago.

Shops are tough unforgiving places- there are real hazards everywhere which any experienced guy can see and navigate by practices to reduce risk exposure just like driving down the road.

These days I am looking around and recognizing there are some real problems in my shop which make the machines more dangerous than they need to be.
That unguarded miter saws drives me crazy now though I had spend years with that saw in the same condition chopping stock for commercial trim contracts running at lightning speed often through the night to get jobs done.

Accident discussions about shops often boils down to “well you have to pay attention”.
I guess I would say it’s more than that.
Machinery can be made inherently safer by often simple means.
Engineering science can be employed so the penalties for perhaps inevitable screwups are lower by reducing injury.

I lived with a great old dog his entire life.
He would bite savagely if you ever touched his face and put me in the hospital three times.
I used to say it was like living with a crocodile- keep well clear of the end with the teeth.
That dog was dangerous and the penalty high for a moment of inattention.
Some were unavoidable- I was napping and shifted my arm touching that old guy and he tore up my hand and then the other as I tried to pry his teeth off.
We had a love seat just for that dog so we could watch TV in relative safety with some separation from those teeth.
Others were screw ups- I simply forgot he was napping on the cabin sole in a sailing trip and yanked my bare feet back up after touching fir when I had swung my legs down to get up off a berth.
The teeth audibly snapped on air just below toes that time missing me by a hair.

We didn’t put that dog down because he was in other respects just about the greatest dog I have ever met.
We decided to live with the risk but the standards were in reality too high- the slightest moment of inattention meant a trip to an emergency room.

Shops are like that- there can be things there which are quite plainly too risky to have around as the penalties are too high for an error and- that machine can be easily replaced with a functional equivalent which has reduced penalties for mistakes.

I loved our old dog so I lived with the risk.
I don’t have a single machine among the truly lovely dozen or so in the shop I care a whit about so far as living with if it endangers my health.

Our Eddy-
Truest friend one could ask for.
Damn dog did bite on occasion though lol

 

[jaguar36]

A SawStop is just as the safety engineering in a car.
It simply reduces the penalty for a screwup.
The saws also come with a guard which is pretty much just like the one my saw had when it was built 80 years ago.

The guard on the sawstop is quite a bit better than those old ones. It has a dust collection port which helps tremendously with getting the dust the blade kicks up. It also has some anti-kickback fingers to prevent that from happening. It's got a separate wire guard part so if you flip up the main guard there is still something there to prevent you from accidentally putting your hand on the blade. It also acts as a riving knife to prevent a board from pinching and kicking back. It's super easy to take on and off as well.

All that being said it still gets in the way alot and I don't use it as much as I should.

Sawstop also makes a sliding table accessory for the saws, don't know much about it though.

 

[Trboatworks]

I am looking carefully at the SS ICS.
Nice saw and if it were not for the sliders ideal I would be buying one today.

I am intrigued by the ideal of a slider and if I can understand how I would approach work with one of those I might go that route.

Simple operations like cutting rabbets in small stock or a bevel plus rabbet on a short length of fiddle stock.

The cabinet saw is mighty fast to setup cuts between the blade and fence but that means moving stock past the blade manually with various feathering techniques etc.
The work is close and I am hovering over the blade which is often fully exposed.
I would also love to have the ability to quickly square sheet stock.
My current saw lacks a riving knife but that hardly bears mention because any new saw I buy is going to have that.

Can I manage most of my work with the highly sensible clamping to the slider technique?
Say you have a 24” stick of 3/4” square and you want to rabbet a 1/4”x3/8”.
Simple and fast on a cabinet saw but it’s feeding the stock with push sticks etc.
I imagine on a slider the fence would be placed just as you would on the cabinet saw, the stock set against it and clamped to the slide table, the fence pushed over (or not) and you push the slider past the blade to make the cut.

What about squaring a small panel- the cabinet saw is fast if you have two good edges but it’s handling small kickback prone stock.
Would you bother to mount the whole outrigger on a slider for such work?

I guess I need to watch some dreaded YouTube videos on slider operations.
Or maybe I will drive over to the Felder shop in DE and look at the saws.

 

[Trboatworks]

Forgive me this thread is going towards a sort of cliche about woodworking-
The dreaded “slider vs cabinet saw”…

 

[jaguar36]

Woodworking is a hobby for me, and my shop is small so keep that in mind. However I use a tracksaw to break down sheetgoods. I have a Festool STM-1800 that makes it super easy to go up to a stack of plywood, lift one up without breaking my back and then break it down into more manageable pieces. I wouldn't want to be wrestling 4x8x3/4" sheets onto a slider all day even if I had the space (and funds). Particularly with fancier sheets where I'm concerned about dinging a face or edge.

If I'm building cabinets my workflow is generally to first rip the 4x8 sheet on the STM-1800 with a track saw. I then take the say 22" x 8' piece over to my work bench with a Festool MFT top and miter gauge on it to cut each piece to width. Then I take it over to the table saw to cut the dado/rabbits. Frequently I'll actually have the dado stack on my old table saw (which is setup behind the sawstop and acts as the outfeed). That leaves the Sawstop to free for cutting the face frames. Super quick, very accurate, and no having to manhandle heavy sheets around.

One thing on the ICS, its got a bigger table which is handy, but also means the blade is farther back and trying to reach past it to grab the cut board can be more difficult.

 

[Scruffy887]

I have 2) Altendorf sliders and they owe me nothing. But newest one is prob close to $75K these days. I use one of them for everything but I really would like to set up one of my Unisaws for smallish solid wood stuff. These saws have a 126" stroke and really never a need to remove the cross cut support unless I was ripping 12 foot plus lengths of wide stock.
Things to think about. The sliding part is always set higher than the fixed part. You will always square up panel stock on all edges. Factory edges are junk when precision is needed. Loading 4x8 or even 5x9 sheets is not hard at all. Pull the carriage back and lock it. Drag the sheet up, unlock and rip a clean edge to start. Sliders are also very useful to rip glue edges on solid lumber. My first Altendorf was over 35-40 years ago ant took every penny (and a bank loan) to purchase. Even had to trade in my 6" jointer. Cutting sheet stock for a kitchen used to take a long day. 3 hours my first kitchen while learning the saw.
One of the safety parts is you will always stand to the left of the table when using the saw, never behind it. And they all come with a very good overarm guard with dust collection.

 

[newtonsapple]

I think that there's a downside to these devices - people without experience on unprotected saws can become overconfident and not develop good safety habits of their own. I just don't trust "failsafe" mechanisms, reminds me of the idiots in Teslas who got into crashes by relying on autopilot. I just don't think we can engineer or legislate ourselves into a risk free existence, not how the world works

Despite the potential for bad habits I have yet to hear a story of an amputation from an accident with a SawStop.

The safety is pretty easy to turn in bypass mode, but a little slow. I do wish there was a way to make multiple cuts with stopping the blade and staying in by pass mode. I would accept an audible alarm as a trade off reminder.

Only issue I have had with mine is it didn’t like cutting 1/8” polyethylene sheet, which turned out to be some sort of weird polyethylene laminated to a steel core.