THW

Some of the frothing going on here against Gass and this proposed regulation doesn't relate to the facts. First, the standard proposed by the CPSC (and argued for by Gass) is a performance standard; it is NOT a requirement to use the SawStop technology. It may be that the only way to meet the standard at the moment would be to use the SawStop technology, but think about all of the different ways that seat belts worked before settling out on the nearly universal three-point system.

Several posts suggest that SawStop can be and therefore will be bypassed. The bypass is so that you can use the saw to cut very wet PT wood or some other conductive material, but you have to turn a key to bypass the circuitry each time you turn the saw on. It defaults to protection each time you turn the saw off. You can use the saw circuitry without setting off the brake to test whether you need to use the bypass. You can remove the key so that the bypass function is disabled, as for instance in a high school shop where any wood being cut would be dry.

Some also seem to think that the technology will make people careless about running their hands and fingers into a spinning saw blade, which seems a pretty strange reading of human psychology. Watch the video of Gass running his own actual finger, not a hotdog, into a SawStop blade: he KNOWS the thing works, but puts his finger in ice water beforehand to numb it and clearly has a hard moment as he moves his hand into the blade. In my experience, carelessness results from being tired or distracted or ignorant, but not from looking at something that looks more frightening than it is.

Some of those ranting against regulation should travel more. I have traveled in countries where there is no effective regulation, where I've seen lawnmowers with fully exposed blades driven directly by the engine and table saws that are little more than an electric motor, a belt, and a table with a slot in it. The idea that large corporations should be free to sell us the lowest common denominator tool, that employers should be free to supply tools and training that endanger employees seems to me at least as irrational as any concern about the so-called nanny state. I am as skeptical as the next person about the influence of corporate lobbying on our government (or corporate advertisers on our magazine), but at least we have a voice in the government too, and I'm sorry that some of those opposed to these regulations seem willing to align themselves politically with those who would leave our safety entirely to the profit interests of large corporations.

Like some others, I am a bit disappointed in the logic of FWW's coverage of this issue. For instance,Tom McKenna writes in the article above that "There’s no license required for using a tablesaw, but with a bit of know-how and attentiveness, and some kind of splitter behind the blade, the tool can be used safely." The issue is not, of course, whether a tool CAN be used safely, but whether the design makes it easy and likely that it WILL be used safely and that the damage done by unsafe use will not be out of proportion to the ease of using it that way.

McKenna's statement is simply a more judicious-sounding version of the argument we see in a lot of these discussions, which implies that only stupid or ignorant users are injured. I have used a table saw without injury for more than forty years, but I've bought a SawStop saw. I know several people who have injured themselves on table saws: none of them was stupid or inexperienced. All of them use a table saw much more than I do. Each of them was a bit tired, or a bit hurried, or a bit frustrated and feels in retrospect that he or she "should have known better."

But if you work for a living, there will be times when you are working a bit tired or a bit hurried or a bit frustrated, and you can't always afford just to stop. What matters then is not whether the saw CAN be used safely, but whether the penalty for a moment of carelessness is a mangled hand or an amputation and thousands or tens of thousands of medical bills and possible loss of the ability to work, either for a while or forever. These are euphemistically called "blade contact" injuries, but blade contact injuries are what you would get with a SawStop (or equivalent technology): a little nick you can treat with a Band-Aid. Injuries from most table saws are far worse than "contact": hands and fingers are cut into or cut off.

A tenon saw from Eccentric Tool Works, except they're no longer taking orders!