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Fine Woodworking Magazine A Slight Accident on the Tablesaw Operator error will never go away, but good safety gear can minimize the damage
The morning after shop manager John White had moved the saw by trailer from the test facility into our shop, hooked it all up, and fine-tuned it for good measure (he's a nut for accuracy, and we do appreciate that), someone had a slight accident with our brand-new saw. The words "tablesaw" and "slight accident" are rarely uttered in the same breath unless one is speaking ironically. In this case, I'm not being a smart aleck; I'm describing the situation accurately. Those of you familiar with saws have probably guessed by now which machine we bought. But first, a bit more about that accident. I'm happy to say that the person who had the accident was not injured. A junior editorial member who works for one of our other publications ran the miter gauge into the blade. But before any damage was done, our new SawStop stepped in like an action hero. (The saw has a built-in safety device that immediately will stop and retract the sawblade if flesh or metal come into contact with the cutter.) The miter gauge emerged with a minor nick -- scratch would be more accurate.  SawStop's technology really works, as we found out in the Fine Woodworking shop. In this case, someone ran a miter gauge into the spinning blade, kicking off the safety feature. No one was injured, and the miter gauge suffered only a scratch. But the blade is toast.The downside is that a new blade was trashed (there goes $119 we'll never see again). The safety feature sends a piece of aluminum into the teeth to stop rotation; for the blade, the result is like getting a hockey puck in the mouth. With this new machine in the shop, we aren't about to let down our guard. But with a $69 replacement cartridge in place, we can sleep a bit easier knowing that if we ever make a mistake near the blade, at least we can walk away with all of our digits. With a SawStop in the workshop, the scrollsaw begins to look like a more dangerous instrument.
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