Agreed. Miter gauges are horrible, wretched things anyway. At least mine is.
Not hundreds, but dozens for me. Yes, I'll agree with what you just said there. Miters are different. If you lose a little 1/64" curvy whisper of material, it won't look right.
Miters are quite difficult. I was really thrilled when I finally produced something where a total of 16 mitered joints all came out without needing any doctoring whatsoever. Wu HOO!!
Bigger than mine too. When I was a kid, I had one of those toy microscopes. I wanted to see some blood, and I tried for an hour to prick my finger with a needle. Never could do it.
I'm not a crybaby. Hell, I cut my finger to the bone with a *backsaw*, threw a bandage on it, and finished what I was doing. Gouged myself good with a chisel too; same outcome.
The problem is all in the anticipation. No way I could stick my finger into a spinning saw blade on purpose.
Aw hell, someday I'll show you the scar where I cut a stonefish spine outta my arm with a dive knife in shark infested waters. too bad it wasn't a sharp knife, woulda hurt less. And talk about anticipation, those sharks looked intersted. The stonefish tasted good though. Dave in Fairfax
If you're talking woodworking stuff, that's one thing. One man, one machine, and the biggest unknown is what kind of tension might be locked up in that piece of wood.
If you're talking traffic accidents, it's not possible to anticipate every eventuality, and avoid every accident.
I've seen a lot of absolutely insane driving in seven years on the road, and I don't mean the usual, predictable, avoidable stupid people tricks.
You got them too close to the blade. Come on, that wasn't that hard, was it?
But of course, none of them ever do. It's always "guards removed for clarity" and "let's do it quick before it costs us any more money."
Keep making excuses.
George,
You must be a trial lawyer, right?
Only a contingency-fee grabbing ambulance chaser could come up with logic like that.
And that's why our insurance premiums are through the roof.
-JR
While contingency-fee grabbing ambulance chasers are the reason why insurance premiums are soaring, the concept ("there are no accidents, only negligence") is hardly new, nor restricted to CFGAC lawyers.
It's a standard mantra in the shooting sports that there are no accidental discharges, only negligent discharges. An accident is something that could not be foreseen. A saw cutting something that touches the blade is hardly unforeseeable; it's the intended purpose. Something touching the blade that you didn't intend to cut (like your fingers) might be unintentional, and is definitely undesirable, but it isn't unforeseeable. Failing to safeguard against the undesirable but foreseeable is tantamount to negligence.
Returning to insurance... if it was truly *accident* insurance, then it would be no-fault, and your insurance would pay for your injuries. Instead, blame is assigned to determine whose insurance pays. Thus, insurance pays for negligence, not accidents. ;-)
Good thing I took Business Law 101 mumble-mumble years ago!
Kevin
I can't disagree with this logic, but I disagree with the extent to which it is often carried. We have determined by long experience that it is simply not possible, even far less feasible, to foresee all combinations of circumstances or chains of events that lead to an unfortunate outcome in some case. We become adept at seeing them in hindsight, and reasonably adept at prevent that same arrangement of circumstances from having the same outcome in the future. But if you want to relate foresight and negligence in absolute terms, and thereby condemn as negligent by definition anyone who has an unfortunate experience, that's something I'm not prepared to accept.
Failing to take the precautions available is negligent. But believing that every misfortunate has or had a viable precaution is naive.
--Jay
And my TI, TSgt Bowels.
No matter how much I disagreed with the concept at the time it was introduced, in the last twenty something years I have come to see it's true. Or 99.9% true.
I won't take exception to your referring to me as a lawyer so I won't post how you must be a mamby pamby MaMas boy who believes everything that happens is someone else's fault thus releasing you of any personal responsibility so you can go on through this world fat, dumb and happy in your ignorance.
Nope, won't post that at all.
Post away, Brother.
I take all responsibility for my fuckups and full credit for my successes.
Any time the successes outweigh the fuckups, I'm a happy guy. ;-)
-JR
There needs to be a common sense balance.
I witnessed a two-car accident. There were 5 high school students in one car. No one was injured in either car. I chatted with the teen driver while the police and tow trucks were working. I told him that had he been driving a 1940's automobile there would have been serious injuries, maybe fatalities.
- No seat belts, and getting all cut up by going through a windshield -- especially pre safety glass, is very nasty. My boss vividly remembers an accident he saw when he was young. The person only made it part way through the windshield and IIRC died before the emergency workers could get him out. Tumbling out of the car and/or having it roll over the top of you can also ruin an otherwise promising career.
- Non-collapsible steering columns that came back to your chest. Sometime into your chest.
- Engines & transmissions that ended up in the passenger compartment with you.
- No air bags.
Etc.
Government safety standards had a lot to do with making these proven safety improvements ubiquitous.
Many of us have bled all over our tools & shop floors. A college roommate had an 8-inch scar on his arm. A great uncle twice cut off parts of three fingers.
I would like to see SawStop-like features become common. Between the blood-sucking lawyers and bean counters, the government often *has* to mandate things or they just don't happen. I wish it wasn't that way.
-- Mark
I'd love to see good safety features, but Saw Stop's owners went about it the wrong way after being slowed to a halt on their first try. The second try: getting the Feds to force the gate.
Back in either '56 or '57, Ford brought out seat belts, even then a proven safety device (in competition vehicles). The cost to the consumer was something low, even for the day, maybe $7. Bombed big time because people would not pay for seat belts as an option. The government forced seat belts into vehicles in, IIRC, the middle or late 70s. They have saved many thousands of lives.
But for a manufacturer to try to get the government to use unproven technology that adds appreciably to the cost of an item, especially when lower cost safety options are available, is just plain wrong headed. Saw Stop may save fingers. It will seldom save lives. And every time it fires, there's going to be a cost that is a sizeable fraction of the cost of the entire tool. There is no information on false firings that I've seen, nor is there reliable information on possible damage to trunnions, motor mounts, blades and similar parts. If the information is available, it should make it into more public arenas for consideration, whether it is favorable or unfavorable. Then, maybe, Joe and Jane Sixpack may be willing to spend $500 to $700 extra for the unit. Until then, it does seem unlikely, as does government intervention.
We do have to remember, though, that back in the early or middle '70s a few enlightened Congressional types called for seat belts on motorcycles, so who knows what might happen.
Charlie Self
"Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal." Alexander Hamilton
You're exactly right, and stated it quite well.
I was presenting the argument; it's not one that I support absolutely.
Kevin
There's an OpEd piece from the 1970's on Opinion Journal this week.
Seems that during that time, catalytic converters were one option to reduce emissions. Stratified charge engines, which converted waste fuel into actual MOTION, as opposed to the catalytic converter's waste heat, were being explored by Honda among others.
GM bought up several years usage worth of platinum.
Then they agressively lobbied Congress to mandate catalytic converters, which use platinum, which naturally caused the price of platinum to climb significantly. This hurt all other car makers. It hurt Chrysler enough that they needed a bail out.
But of COURSE GM had only the BEST of intentions. . .
Charles (Mike, I've NO idea whether or not GM has ever made a blanket chest)
Fair enough. It is not my aim to be argumentative for its own sake. My engineering training included elements of failure and reliability analysis, and that's a part of what I do professionally. I have had to diagnose failures in well-built systems operated by people with more-than-expert understanding, and often the failures come down to a completely unforeseen (and highly improbable) combination of events. There are many physical and psychological factors that affect failure prediction and analysis.
Now there's a vast difference between something like a nuclear power plant and a simple table saw. So vague handwaving about the unpredictability of complex systems is only partially applicable to what happens in a woodshop. I own power tools, and it's my goal to die with all my fingers and toes still attached. And so I operate my power tools with as much care as I can muster. And we've heard several people confess that their injuries were caused by their own carelessness or impatience. How many times, setting up a rip on my RAS, have I thought, "Do I *really* need to deploy the kickback guards? What are the chances this particular piece of stock will kick back?" That, of course, is the beginning of many stories told in emergency rooms.
--Jay
May I submit the system was not as well built as you believe and your experts are lacking.
If a designer/ engineer/ expert fails to see a potential situation (the highly improbable?) then the system failure is likely to be completely unforeseen.
What a wicked little circle.
I've also seen clientitus, where a customer rep or consultant looses sight of their function and loyalties. They begin to act as though the contractors their employer, not the customer.
Dominos always fall with the first one. This causes that which causes something else and soon it's an unforeseen circumstance.
Nuclear power plants? Can you say Davis-Bessie? Chernobyl on the north coast. A very complex system with a very simple fault, a simple leak. D-B is reported to have many design faults but those aren't the ones that damned near killed us.
Truth is for everything someone wants to call an accident you only need to find the first domino and the events leading up to it's tipping and virtually every time you'll find it could have been easily prevented.
If you find the first domino was caused to fall by something previously unknown then it is an unpreventable accident.
For example, (IIRC) Madame Curie got cancer in later life from her handling of radioactive materials. No one knew the danger.
Much human knowledge came from people analyzing something that broke and all too often had mangled body parts in it.
-- Mark
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.