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"When it does —because you're human and we make mistakes— you get to lose a digit." By that logic I should just get rid of my 3 wood lathes, metal lathe, 2 ban

"When it does —because you're human and we make mistakes— you get to lose a digit." By that logic I should just get rid of my 3 wood lathes, metal lathe, 2 bandsaws, drillpress, chop saw, shaper, horizontal boring machine, metal bandsaw, sawzall, circle saws, etc, because none of those have the sawstop feature. And, by the same logic, loose the 5 chainsaws, the industrial chipper, the excavator, the two tractors, the rhino, because none of those are safe either. Which is just silly. This whole discussion is silly. I've got a system that's been working for me for 40 years yet you feel like you want to tell me I'm gonna lose a finger. Maybe I will but it won't be on the tablesaw, I use push sticks. Religiously. Which is why I still have all my fingers. Sam Maloof pushed his stuff through with his hand and never lost a finger. I just don't like the sawstop. It doesn't remove all of the risks, it's expensive when you forget to turn it off when you are cutting green wood, it's easy to forget to turn it back on when you switch back to dry wood, and I have never, in 40 years of using tablesaws, had any sort of fear of the tablesaw. Respect, absolutely, but a tablesaw, properly used, isn't high up on the risk scale. Free handing on the bandsaw is way way more risky yet people do it all the time. I'm not telling you to do what I do, you can do whatever you want. I do resent, a bit, your view that I'll lose a finger. That implies you think I don't know what I'm doing and I resent that. Or maybe it is just like you said, it has been 40 years of getting lucky. Or maybe not.

oliwarner 9y ago
> That implies you think I don't know what I'm doing and I resent that. That's fair enough. I'm sorry. I truly believe you are knowledgeable in your tools and what you do with them. I think if that weren't the case, 40 years using them would have left you unable to type these comments. But I would also put some of the other 40-80 thousand people hospitalised by table saws in the last year in your category. And over 90% of those were hand in blade injuries. The sort of thing that is vastly eradicated by a blade that can detect a hand and deactivate. So yes, I take your points, but epidemiologically, doing nothing and hoping people just do it better next time is more harmful to all of us than demanding better safety equipment as standard. Perhaps that opinion is my Britishness coming through; we're paying the medical costs of our woodworkers' injuries directly.
- luckydude 9y ago
  I went and googled and, yeah, sure seems like a lot of table saw accidents. I went to the database and looked up tablesaw and bandsaw estimates. 2605 bandsaw vs 33164 tablesaw. Something is kinda weird about that. Unless everyone has a tablesaw and few people have bandsaws I'd expect that the numbers would be similar. I'm starting to wonder if there are just a lot of stupid people using tablesaws. Which wouldn't surprise me, there are an amazing number of untrained people doing all sorts of stuff. Whatever, I'm perfectly happy to say that sawstop is a fine idea for stupid people. I just don't need one, I don't put my fingers anywhere near any blade, that's stupid. And we have all sorts of data that says when you do stupid stuff you lose your fingers. In my case, knock on wood, I believe I don't need that technology because I have a lot of respect for that spinning blade and don't get close to it. And what I've been trying, and apparently failing, to say is that my respect for the tablesaw is part of my mental state when I'm in the shop. I actually don't want a safer saw, it's still dangerous, it can still throw stuff at you hard enough to really hurt you, I'm fine with the protocol I have to not hurt myself. I realize that winds people up, they think I'm Mr Cuts Corners or something, I'm not. I live on a 15 acre property, I use chainsaws, tractors, excavators, mowers, all sorts of stuff that can kill me. I do that stuff every day so I have to have a mental state of carefulness. On all the equipment. None of it is safe. So for me, sawstop doesn't add any value, I'd use it the same way I use my current saw, with push sticks. Which is how everyone should use their saw. That's not saying I'm against sawstop or other safety equipment, it's just saying that I've got a safety protocol that works. And I won't let anyone into my shop who doesn't follow that protocol. YMMV.

oliwarner 9y ago

> That implies you think I don't know what I'm doing and I resent that. That's fair enough. I'm sorry. I truly believe you are knowledgeable in your tools and what you do with them. I think if that weren't the case, 40 years using them would have left you unable to type these comments. But I would also put some of the other 40-80 thousand people hospitalised by table saws in the last year in your category. And over 90% of those were hand in blade injuries. The sort of thing that is vastly eradicated by a blade that can detect a hand and deactivate. So yes, I take your points, but epidemiologically, doing nothing and hoping people just do it better next time is more harmful to all of us than demanding better safety equipment as standard. Perhaps that opinion is my Britishness coming through; we're paying the medical costs of our woodworkers' injuries directly.

luckydude 9y ago
I went and googled and, yeah, sure seems like a lot of table saw accidents. I went to the database and looked up tablesaw and bandsaw estimates. 2605 bandsaw vs 33164 tablesaw. Something is kinda weird about that. Unless everyone has a tablesaw and few people have bandsaws I'd expect that the numbers would be similar. I'm starting to wonder if there are just a lot of stupid people using tablesaws. Which wouldn't surprise me, there are an amazing number of untrained people doing all sorts of stuff. Whatever, I'm perfectly happy to say that sawstop is a fine idea for stupid people. I just don't need one, I don't put my fingers anywhere near any blade, that's stupid. And we have all sorts of data that says when you do stupid stuff you lose your fingers. In my case, knock on wood, I believe I don't need that technology because I have a lot of respect for that spinning blade and don't get close to it. And what I've been trying, and apparently failing, to say is that my respect for the tablesaw is part of my mental state when I'm in the shop. I actually don't want a safer saw, it's still dangerous, it can still throw stuff at you hard enough to really hurt you, I'm fine with the protocol I have to not hurt myself. I realize that winds people up, they think I'm Mr Cuts Corners or something, I'm not. I live on a 15 acre property, I use chainsaws, tractors, excavators, mowers, all sorts of stuff that can kill me. I do that stuff every day so I have to have a mental state of carefulness. On all the equipment. None of it is safe. So for me, sawstop doesn't add any value, I'd use it the same way I use my current saw, with push sticks. Which is how everyone should use their saw. That's not saying I'm against sawstop or other safety equipment, it's just saying that I've got a safety protocol that works. And I won't let anyone into my shop who doesn't follow that protocol. YMMV.