In the middle of November a friend of mine was helping install hardwood flooring. He has worked in the construction field for years and is very skilled. While custom forming a doorway transition on my BT3000 he got his hand sucked into the blade. Luckily it was not a "serious" injury but it was not a scratch.
I had been talking about the SawStop technology with my wife for a couple of years but could never convince her that the expense was justifiable. The accident changed that. I purchased the SawStop Contractor with 36" rails, cast iron wings, mobile base and the T-Glide fence 3 days after the accident and had it setup when the insuracne claims adjuster arrived. Needless to say the adjuster was very impressed with the videos of the saw in action. I purchased the saw from the Toolking store in Lakewood Colorado and was impressed with the sales people and the customer service.
Glenn
Before I continue let me make it clear that my woodworking skills are pretty much non-existent - I have done things like proch floors and a pergola for the koi pond but all my attempts at doing more "delicate" projects have had limited success.
Assembling the saw was very easy. The only problem I had was caused by having the wrong rails - Toolking replaced them and gave me a $60.00 gift card for my trouble. The manual was very clear on the assembly procedure.
Out of the box the alignment appears to be spot-on. I do not have a dial gauge yet so cannot check runout but do have digital protractor and angle guages (Wixey). The blade is 90 deg from the table at 90 deg and 45 is 45 so I am comfortable with them.
The first thing I did was build an outfeed table (48" X 63") for it. Because of space constraints (the saw is sharing the garage with 2 cars) the table has only 2 legs and the legs are easily removable. It is nothing fancy but it functions and is very stable.
I am now tackling making a desk for the grand-daughter and have been impressed with the accuracy of the saw. The fence and the scale on the rails gives me exactly what it says. The first part I did was the bottom frame for the desktop. Everytime I have tried to do something like this I have had problems getting it square. This time it went together without having to recut any pieces and, after putting it together with pocket hole screws, it is square. Measuring the diagonals is within a 32nd.
The SS has me very impressed with the quality of the saw and with the accuracy. Having the braking system does not make me less aware of safety; rather it has me more aware of it and I find myself evaluating what I am doing more than I have in the past.
I have always considered a contractor saw to be a so-so tool - functional but at best much lower quality that a cabinet saw. The SS has changed my mmind.
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Originally Posted by Glenn Vaughn
