hwgill

This is amazing...have none of you ever heard of the word 'accident'? Things happen, sometimes through no fault of our own. The jury went from the requested $250k up to $1.5m dollars, do you not think they have a better handle on what really happened? We sure as hell don't know, and I think this guy deserves the benefit of a doubt.

I think the whole point here is, Ryobi chose not to license the technology several years earlier, they chose to make their saws less safe so that when a woodworker does have an accident, the injury will be severe.

To all those who think the accident was his fault and he should not have gotten anything...what will you say when you cut your own fingers off? Everyone's perfect...until it happens to them.

This is nuts.
1.People saying he should have bought a SawStop in 2005 when he got his Ryobi.
Ans: I've been a builder for 25 years, and until last year, I never heard of the SawStop...yet I have purchased several tablesaws over the last 25 years as well as other tools which would have exposed me to the SawStop brand, yet never did.

2 People saying he's an idiot and caused his own injury.
Ans: Not one of you knows exactly what the circumstances surrounding his accident were, therefore you cannot say that he was an idiot, only the people in the courtroom would know those circumstances. Considering they asked for $250K, but got $1.5M, I think the jury knew it wasn't a stupid mistake that caused his injury.

3.SawStop is greedy because their saws are so pricey.
Ans: When you invent something new, and have to market it yourself, you have very little choice but to charge a high price for it. If Ryobi and others had licensed the tech, SawStop would not even exist today, and we wouldn't be paying more than a few hundred extra for out tablesaws.

4. Their tech isn't reliable, it can be bypassed.
Ans: Yes, it can be bypassed, but it must be done before starting the machine every time. It only needs to be bypassed if the lumber being cut is extremely wet. It does not, as someone posted, need to be bypassed when cutting a dado, there is a brake cartridge for dado stacks. The only caveat is that you need to use the SawStop dado set in order for the brake cartridge to function correctly.

All these negative assumptions being made.

To the Canadian professor, I live in Surrey and I would love to take a cabinet making course, but try to find one that is reasonably priced, and that is designed for working people (ie. part-time/evening), and is relatively close to where I live. Driving for an hour or more each way is not an option. That is why most people teach themselves, because they are unable to find someone to teach them within the constraints of family and work.

oldie, the comparison IS valid, it is valid because some idiot can come in to your shop and not know the rules of safety and come up behind you to yell a question in your ear. It's happened often enough to me by members of my own family until I exploded one day and told them not to open their mouths around me while a tool was running.

If a safety feature is available, and the inventor is willing to license it, it behooves the manufacturers to license that technology to make their tools and equipment safer. If their tools are priced a few hundred higher, than so be it. I think my fingers are worth a few hundred bucks...are yours?

To rsteramoto, while I agree with you on the one hand about paying attention to what you're doing when using a table saw (there's a reason I have never been injured by one...knock on wood), I am 100% diametrically opposed to what you are saying about Mr. Gass. Why in the hell shouldn't he make royalties off of his invention? He does have a family to feed, or should he just go back to lawyering and to hell with his creation?

The fact of the matter is that Ryobi's parent was one set of signatures away from licensing the technology in 2002, then backed out for some reason. Now this guy was injured (why we don't know, we still don't know the actual events that led to his injury!). Should Ryobi pay for their idiocy? Yes,I think so. They could have used it at a royalty of only 3% but decided they'd rather not,so now they, and every other manufacturer that declined the opportunity can pay. Lesson learned, when a new and proven safety device is invented, you use it, even if you didn't invent it yourself.

A bigger shop...though that would entail buying a new home on a larger property...sigh...gotta wait till the kids move out.

But for now, a Lee Valley sharpening jig, and the dovetail jig...and it would be nice to be able to find a joinery class somewhere that was reasonably priced and designed for a working man, not kids or professional students.