I suspect none of you own a table saw. As someone who does, some cuts require you to remove guards and safety parts. Even pushing the wood through the blade too quickly can cause kickback and injury. It is very easy to injure yourself when operating a table saw.
I only got injured on a table saw once and it was kickback on a saw I don't own. Not certain, but I think I was not used to the high rotation speed of the blade. Minor injuries but I am very very careful when using my table saw...to the point that I will not use it at all if I think I am too tired.
The struggle for people like me is that I currently can’t afford a new saw, and I don’t like the idea that the way Sawstop works is that it ruins the blade in addition to saving your fingers. A cheap trade when it works as intended but not cheap at all when it goes off because you forgot to disable it before cutting some treated lumber.
3% royalties is not “giving away”. Now they’re trying to force it by law while also patent trolling to stop manufacturers from making similar systems on their own. They’re not concerned with safety, they’re after profit.
A stick solves this problem. You shouldn’t need a saw stop, everyone should be using push sticks for table saws. Legislation forcing saw stop technology is insane.
Sticks, while they help mitigate some of the risk, it’s not the end all, be all of safety here, infact, I don’t particularly like the stick. I’ve had more than a few instances where things bind, stick slips, non-hilarity ensued and honestly a solution like saw stop or Bosch’s reaxx, which btw fuck saw stop for that one, solution is a better, safer solution. Hell I don’t even use sticks anymore, I much prefer the microjigs now but they aren’t perfect either.
Now you can argue about saw stop’s pettition to have their technology mandated on all new saws. That’s valid, but honestly I lean toward viewing this like air bags on cars, it’s the right direction to go but without mandating stop saw’s expensive patented technology unless they make it open or they have a reasonable agreement that isn’t going to jack up the price to hundreds of dollars.
Push sticks are good in some instances, but the lack of control can lead to kickback events. I don’t think there is one gold standard way to perform all cuts.
If it was a few hundred, sure but SawStops start at $1,000 for a jobsite style table saw which is more than I paid for my big cast iron saw. If I could retrofit that saw that would be great but I don’t see the need to replace it with a unit several times the price on a slim possibility of an accident.
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