Thread: ShortCuts Table saw Survey

Graham
I've completed your survey.

However, there's some things I'd like to add
1) going back to the Orsino (spelling?) court case. As I understand Australian OH&S legislation, here Orsino's employer would have been done for either
a) providing the wrong tool for the job -- arguebly a small band saw (or jig saw) should be used to scribe a board to a wall, not a table saw.
b) modifying the saw, or allowing the employee to modify the saw.
so it never would have got back to the manufacturer, because the above would need to be ruled not relevent to the injury before the saw manufacturer became involved.
I'm continually surprised that this aspect is never discussed.

2) I can see the benefit of Saw Stop technology on a conventional table saw. However, I'm not as convinced of it's value on a Euro style saw which already has a riving knife, separately mounted overhead guard, and an adjustable fence.

3) what we, as table saw users think and our attitude to the technology, is largely irrelevent in this issue, at least here in Australia and probably in North America as well. Whether the technology is mandated or not will largely be dependent on the attitude of the insurance and medical industries, and the wishes of our loved ones, who don't really care if the technology adds $1000 to the cost of a table saw if it prevents an injury.

Originally Posted by justinmcf

I absolutely disagree with all posters who state that this technology will lull anyone into a false sense of security.
Just because my car has seat belts does not lull me into the false sense of security that I can race along the streets at 150kph.
I still follow the road rules and mostly I use my common sense.
This rings true whether I am driving down the road, using a hand held electric planer, or using a table saw.

Thank-you Justin, you have just inadvertently proved my point. You have to undergo training and certification to be allowed to drive on the roads. thats why you dont race along at 150 km/h on the road. because you know it is illegal and you have been taught during your driver training to get your license that this is not the right thing to do.

But anyone can go out and buy a table saw and take it home, set it up in the garage and start using it without any training on how to use it or even set it up safely.

Thats why I said earlier that if anything needs to be put in to legislation it should be mandatory training, not mandatory sawstop. Tell me that sawstop publicity on how safe the saw is doesnt lull people into a false sense of security.

Does anyone know if Sawstop provides any form of safety training to supplement their product, be a printed manual, DVD or anything?

I have just filled out the survey.

"COMMON SENSE". Dead and buried and long mourned.

"RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS". Ask a 16 year old if they know what that means.

Teaching and sharing real on the job knowledge is the best safety tool ever.
This should not need to be enshrined in legislation. "COMMON SENSE". See above.

Paul.

I don't have a problem with it.

It's more about the culture of a certain country in my opinion, in that if I get hurt in some way then it can't be my fault and it has to be yours and if you don't accept it's your responsibility then I'll sue you. Type A has it, but I bought Type B which didn't and I got hurt so I'm going to hurt you back because you didn't install something onto Type B. It's always been bound to happen one way or other.

I could start on about seatbelts in cars over there.

I have just done the survey. Sawstop is obviously good technology but I have an issue where, as a result of a lawsuit, a firm is attempting to commandeer the tablesaw market (as it appears to me). Most things undergo a cost/benefit analysis, and it may be capable of having significant cost reduction with mass production however other safety issues in woodworking need to be considered at the same time , and not necessarily be pushed back by this costly technology being forced on a firm. Examples provided in this forum include dust extraction and (off woodworking) seatbelts. What about routers/moulders.?
It may eventuate that worker insurance policies may be reduced if this equipment is installed, and this could influence larger workshops.
Unfortunately mistakes and mishaps will always happen, good policy (safety glasses,training and protocols etc) need to always be applied.
My only significant injury was kickback caused by my stupidity sawing with an offcut jammed against the fence- approx 19mm x19mm and 600mm long speared into the bridge piece of my polycarbonate safety glasses. I had a headache for a day and left the workshop pretty shaken but grateful for the glasses! As I said it was stupidity- I knew about kickback but didn't connect as I set up the cut.
This rant may actually support the technology, to try to circumvent operator, however as I said I don't like the way it is being appoached.

I have decided against completing this survey as I question the validity of a survey of largely Australian based wood artisans when it comes to U.S. and Canadian health and safety in the workplace.

I am not keen on the idea of a monopoly type situation arising through forced compliance which is what I see as happening here. Sawstop are using the government to force consumers to adopt a particular technology and have been very careful to ensure they, Sawstop, are the only providers of that technology. I have a real problem with that, ethically and morally.

If this problem was as real as Sawstop would have us all believe, then there would not be a need to legislate us all into using this technology, we would be adopting it is willingly and quickly. From what I have read about this, Sawstop have been accused of twisting figures to support it's case, I see real potential for opponents of Sawstop to do likewise which is just one reason why I have doubts about this survey and the uses to which the ensuing data will be used.

Just curious, what are the accident figures compared to runaway routers, circular saws, electric planers, SCMS, metal cutoff saws etc. Maybe we should put emergency brakes on these so people don't hurt themselves either.

And those damn scary sharp chisels....

I would have thought 'good on you' when reading it as a local news feelgood story if the guy was modest enough to push for it to be in place at schools, training centres or even gov't workshops where people may be untrained/green (except gov't workshops of course).

To be this greedy however, I sincerely hope that someone invents and even safer, better idea that doesn't ruin the blade and leaves him to ponder whether he tried stuffing to much pie in his mouth.

There will probably be more injuries sustained from people punching/kicking the saw table after accidentally tripping the device and ruining the blade.

As long as it stays in America my only grievance would be if it affects all the other universal table saw devices like jigs, safety devices, riving knives etc etc. modification of the table was needed for it to be enabled on other saws.

My safety device is my 3yr old- I think of how I'd explain missing fingers/stupidity or even worse and common sense "kicks in".

Cheers,
G

I have posted this table before but I couldn't find it on the forum so I post it again. This comes from this document - http://www.iccwa.org.au/wp-content/u...ury-report.pdf .

It is for Victorian DYI accidents only - the report has more data including some for QLD.


The first thing that one sees is how common injuries are with grinders but only ~7% of people injured by grinders end up being admitted into hospital whereas 86% of people injured by a power saw are admitted. Most of the power saws on the list are portable saws - it would be interesting to know exactly how many are TS.

Note also how many were hospitalized by a hand saw injuries, and the humble nail and hammer??

Here is some data for a wider range of power tools over a different time period. (from http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/VISU/hazard/haz52.pdf)


More people are injured by nonpowered compared to power tools but only 1/3 of nonpowered injuries are hospitalized
In terms of % admitted to hospital following injury, routers are slightly worse than power saws, but the sheer number of power saw injuries admitted are much higher.

Note also the proportion of Chain saw (CS) injuries admitted. CS are potentially very nasty (kickback, leg and foot injuries etc) and were at one stage proportionately the number one power tool which required hopitalization but following the introduction of chain brakes in the 1980s, and a very concerted safety campaign started in the 1990s to promote proper use of CS, and the use of chaps and helmets, the number of injuries and admittances has decreased. One important piece of information missing is the number of specific tools owned by DYI - this would enable the number of injuries/tool to be determined. I suspect there are fewer CS owned than power saws so the risk of CS injury is still probably proportionately greater.

Another thought has occurred to me, if the sawstop technology is as good as claimed & becomes mandatory, does that also leave the manufacturers of sawstop liable to any injuries that still occur on a TS???

I'm also not completing the survey because of a) lack of experience with table saws and b) not in North America.

However, last time I was in the US I did witness a sawstop demonstration. Based on that experience I would like to see some statistics on accidents on saws using saw stop technology before making a decision. The demonstrator was not prepared to use his own limbs as test material, the test material was an average looking soft sausage. Yes the saw blade retracted and self destructed with impressive speed in the test scenario, but there was still a graze on the sausage that to my mind would have drawn blood on a live operator. Speed of feed was relatively slow and I wondered about the effect of a faster swipe at the blade or from a different direction. I suspect that if the cut happened at say a knuckle where there wasn't much flesh over bone the results might also look different.

Even with sawstop I think you will still need to be cautious and observe existing safety protocols. It will stop major amputation accidents, as will avoiding contact with the blade by other means, but in some of the scenarios I've read about table saw accident, it sounds like they might continue to happen to the sort of people who might buy a sawstop then bypass the facility after a first fail. Sort of like keeping driving your car without seatbelts or after the air bag has been deployed.

If sawstop are pursuing this as a public safety initiative rather than for profit then perhapse they should allow the technology to be used by rival manufacturers without a licence fee.

Anyway I did the survey.

Graham,
Having done the survey and read the comments by very experienced wood-workers, I would not be comfortable relying on SawStop to protect my hands.
It is better to learn and stick-to safe working practices.

For home woodworkers, a better table saw guard would be more cost effective than SawStop, leaving money available for dust extraction etc. The standard guard allows some space for fingers to slip under, and can't be used at all when rebating or dadoing. It is also slow to remove/replace for alternating rebate and rip cuts, tempting us to leave it off altogether.

A better type of table saw guard is demonstrated by Kelly Mehler in the Taunton video
"Mastering Your Table Saw". This was available commercially, or better still you can make your own. A photo of my version is attached, made from a spare vice, some gal tube, wood scraps and clear poly. The vice handle raises or lowers the guard depending on the thickness of the work. The guard slides left/right to allow space for measuring fence to blade, or to remove the splitter for grooving cuts. Thin strips can be ripped safely using this guard with a thin push stick. The whole thing clamps onto the frame of my saw, and can be removed easily when the crosscut sled is used.
This guard is not absolutely foolproof, but it is overcomes most of the shortcomings of the standard guard.

Kelly Mehler's video also shows a safe guard for your shopmade crosscut sled.

Rob

Maybe we should put emergency brakes on these so people don't hurt themselves either.

I guess I spoke too soon after reading their FAQ!

Bandsaw, router table etc- it'd sure add up...


Just curious-

if you could metaphor a seatbelt as a blade guard and a sawstop as an airbag and using sawstops big borg logic why aren't airbags on cars mandatory in the US by now?

You'd think that'd have to be passed before this, but maybe Ford don't own the patents...


In their FAQ I would have felt their recommendations of:

When the safety system activates, it will often damage one to two teeth on the blade. It is usually cost-effective to have high-quality blades repaired by a qualified blade sharpening service. However, less expensive blades should be discarded.

...although it will usually be necessary to drill new mounting holes in the table and extension wings to mount the front and rear rails...

...the fence must be sized...

could contribute to an increased chance of my main safety concern- kickback, if performed by an operator/owner that needs this level of finger protection (less-so with the blade bit but confidence is a large component of safety/competence to me and something that has been jarred that hard to remove teeth would make me less confident in operation no matter how it's been repaired).


Now we just need someone to make a failsafe anti-kickback device that could possibly warp your tabletop when activated to be made law and it'll take all the fun out of woodwork...

Originally Posted by woodhunt

Just curious-

if you could metaphor a seatbelt as a blade guard and a sawstop as an airbag and using sawstops big borg logic why aren't airbags on cars mandatory in the US by now?

You'd think that'd have to be passed before this, but maybe Ford don't own the patents...

I'm not sure but my recollection is that air bags were mandatory in US cars about 20 years ago. They may still be.
Note that an SUV is rated as a truck not a car


but (again around 20 years ago), the trouble with US air bags was they were killing a fair number of people. With no seat belt, light front seat passengers -- think 6-10 year old kids -- found themselves on top of the passenger air bag when it went off. The force of the airbag inflating was enough to crush the kids against the roof of the car