New table saw.

[Scrit]

Sorry. I'll come clean and admit that the way I put those statistics was deliberately meant to mislead - but then so, I feel, is SawStop's inference that the SawStop saw would prevent 60,000 table saw accidents a year. It won't, especially because SawStop won't stop kickbacks (for that you need a short rip fence as well as a riving knife, then you're 80% there). Sure, it's a good near miss and it has already got makers like Powermatic and Delta looking very carefully at their product lines (about 30 to 40 years too late, IMHO) so in the long term American buyers will benefit from saws with riving knives and possibly better guards - but they'll still have second rate rip fences, second rate stacked dado heads, unbraked motors and poor dust extraction. They have a long way to go yet. In the end Gass will possibly be bought off by the big boys - probably before he gets too big to do any real harm to them and at that point the SawStop will be quietly dropped. In the meantime the EC will have continued to develop it's safety concepts proactively with industry.

Scrit

 

[Pecker]

Scrit, you seem to be implying the use of push sticks is not recommended and dangerous???

The saw stop looks a good idea, but I too would have reservations about it. I do agree that correct usage is better, however as someone who stuck his fingers in moving plane blades for no obvious reason last year, I can testify that acidents do happen to even the most diligent of us, so any safety measure should be welcomed.

mark

 

[Jake]

I think Scrit was decrying the use of the particular types of push-sticks

which place your hand at the side of or over a blade

, rather than push sticks per se. It is difficult to always keep your hands 300-400mm from the blade with using a push-stick of some form!

 

[Scrit]

Scrit, you seem to be implying the use of push sticks is not recommended and dangerous???

Not at all - but in the USA there are plenty of sites advising the use of a push stick like this:

which is dangerous as it puts your hands far too near the blade for safe operation. Oddly enough the same site also recommends these:

Scrit