Be careful out there!

[Swingman]

... and I agree with you. A table saw is an inherently dangerous piece of equipment. If you don't believe that in your heart, you have no damn business operating one.

[Upscale]

Not really as I look at it. Anyway you want to look at it, it takes a pretty big leap of faith to push a body part into a spinning saw blade, Sawstop or not. It's just not something that one can get lazy about in my opinion. I don't think anyone is going to get complacent with their fingers and I certainly wouldn't get complacent using a Sawtop knowing there's less chance of losing a finger. I can't comment on other people. Kickbacks and flying pieces of wood are still a definite possibility on a Sawstop and that type of incident are by far more common on any type of tablesaw than losing a finger. It's not as if the Sawtop is suddenly going to prevent any type of injury, just most of the more serious ones.

[Swingman]

Damn, get the Windex ... the monitor needs cleaning, again!

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

While what you say has merit, one could accomplish the same thing by requiring that anyone causing the saw stop to fire is required to pay for the new cartridges. At least, when I was growing up, that would have been sufficient reason for caution.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Leuf]

Or by painting the thing grey and not telling anyone in the class what it really is.

-Leuf

[Joe Bemier]

That's an excellent idea!

[Puckdropper]

"Upscale" wrote in news:8d5e5$44f9eb60$cef88bc5$ [e-mail]:

I like to point out in discussions like this about technology and human safety, just what the first rule of technology is: Technology fails.

Puckdropper

[Roger Shoaf]

When I was a kid The San Francisco Giants star outfielder Willie Mays made a public service announcement about not touching blasting caps. Now his godson Barry Bonds has been involved in the steroid cheating scandal. My how times have changed.

[Roger Shoaf]

Sure it is. The danger is just minimized using proper procedure. All power tools are dangerous and will try and bite you if they get a chance. This is why we wear safety glasses.

[Upscale]

Of course it does and probably fails more than we'd like to admit. Nothing is ever going to replace proper training and good safety practices and that's always going to be a basic starting point no matter how much technology there is in operation to protect us. Assuming that technology is all this is needed for safe operation is sheer lunacy. It's imparting the knowledge that technology is only a small part of how to protect ourselves that's important.

[RM MS]

Push stick would not have helped keep it from jamming, but may have saved his fngers. Those wide and short pieces are definitely deadly, but he may have (almost certainly) gotten away with it had the piece not been touching the fence and he was using a miter gauge as a sled of sorts. Toss the darn blade guard in the trashcan where it belongs, it has no place on any serious, no, make that: any table saw whatsoever . They do NOT reduce kickback in any meaningful way, and in my huge, professional shop, they are only there to satisfy state safety inspectors, who, like teachers, are not professional woodworkers. Said guards are purposely constructed so as to be easily and positively slid aside and kept as far from the blade as possible. I cannot even comprehend anymore why anybody would have any trust at all in these niusance devices.

[RM MS]

Setting the blade "just high enough" has also tossed untold numbers of boards back at the operator, especially when the stupid guard was in place to hide the wood/blade contact interface

[Joe Bemier]

This will be the first thread that I use my new system on. In the past I would continue to post and post follow-ups until I seemingly had the last word....i.e., continue to try to convince others of my point of view. No more. Above are my opinions and I will drop off this thread from here. I've made my point(s), and some agree, some don't - end of thread for me.

[Sam]

I have been at the local high school and watched a 8x24x6" deep drawer being thinned down to 4" deep on the 12" Powermatic tablesaw. The teacher was in front of the blade holding the drawer on end as he pushed it through. There was a student on the left side, reaching over to help stabilise the drawer and another on the back side of the saw doing the same. Six hands on the drawer, no safety glasses, no guards, no pushsticks. There was an 8" jointer with the guard removed (broken) and the metal fence for the bandsaw laying on the table ,across the cutterhead. The shaper had a 3"wing cutter mounted on the spindle, no guards and the table covered with paint cans. Kids wearing hooded sweatshirts with the pull strings dangling down using the 6" belt sander. Many more things just too numerous to detail. 100% incompetence, but the bumper sticker mentality prevails, "We don't care how you do it up North". Sam

[J T]

Fri, Sep 1, 2006, 11:44pm (EDT+4) [e-mail] (Glen) doth adviseth: Here is a guy, experienced, but over confident who will have a long time to think about safety every time he looks at his hand. Please, guys, as I tell my kids, never rush. Be safe!

Problem was, he wasn't scared. I'm scared enough of my power tools to be sure to keep my fingers out of the way of the whirley parts. He wasn't scared.

JOAT Justice was invented by the innocent. Mercy and lawyers were invented by the guilty.

[Roger Shoaf]

Sure boards can kick back, that is why you don't stand directly behind the blade. If I had not set the blade just high enough I would be missing the tip of my thumb and one finger tip instead of a band-aid and a scar.

[10x]

->I just thought I would post a reminder to my rec. friends to think about

->safety. As some of you know I teach HS woodshop (greatest job in the

->world!).

Glen,

I couldn't agree more. I did it for 30 years and loved every minute of it. The advanced classes with the upperclassmen were the greatest. We made some pretty awesome pieces over the years.

->

->Here is a guy, experienced, but over confident who will have a long time

->to think about safety every time he looks at his hand. Please, guys, as

->I tell my kids, never rush. Be safe!

I am proud to say that I, and all of my students, can still count to ten without having to take our shoes off. We've had a couple of knicks over the years with the kids, but with the exception of one, they were just a couple of stitches and a band-aid. The one exception wasn't mine, but after a couple of hours in the ER, she was raring to go again.

The only safety rule that I ever knowingly violate was the saw guard. I never found one that didn't cause as many problems as it prevented. Maybe that's changed today.

Joe

[Puckdropper]

10x wrote in news:060920061634104982% [e-mail]:

*snip*

I never had any problems with the blade guard at my high school. For me, it did everything it was supposed to. Of course, I never ran dados (the dado cutter was set up on a radial arm saw) or anything more than basic straight cuts.

On my Crapsman saw, the blade guard is gone. If I never see it again, I'll not shed a tear. It got in the way and pinched the board against the blade. I'll take my chances with an exposed blade over the possibility of kickback on EVERY cut.

Speaking of table saw safety, push sticks are an excellent 10 minute project. I made mine from a 1"x2" with routered edges (it was originally a router test piece) and simply cut a 90 degree angle in one end with a miter box.

Puckdropper