SawStop New Sliding Table

[James Zhu]

Jack is comparing his PK as a short stroke to the SS slider. He likely has less $$ in the PK than what the SS would cost. My Whitney 77 slider with lots of extra miter gauges and stops was < $1500 rehabbed. Not to turn this into another new vs old but the comparison is not really pickup vs semi. My point is there should be a market for a true short stroke slider, SS or MM or anyone who will build one. Dave

A few days ago, I emailed SawStop asking if they are working on a true Euro style sliding table saw. Just got the response, no, they do not have plan for a true sliding table saw.

[Keith Hankins]

That's purdy.

[Dave Anthony]

I'll give you $1000 for it, you could double your money!!

[jack forsberg]

I'll give you $1000 for it, you could double your money!!

but it will cut your finger off

[Dave Anthony]

I'll take my chances Tell you what, I'll throw in a Sawstop w/a Jessem sliding table. Do we have a deal?

[Greg Portland]

Several years ago, I thought it would be the cat's meow to add a sliding table to my Uni-saw. Well I bought one -- can not recall if it was either the "mid-sized" Exaktor or an Excaliber. Worked it or awhile, but I became frustrated with the amount of floor space it consumed and the time it took to remove/replace the fence. Even though there was a 90 degree stop for the fence, I never trusted it -- the stop just did not seem to be repeatable. Finally I took it off and it is still "in storage" for the Uni-saw's next owner.

I had the same experience except I sold the slider attachment. A circular saw with a good blade + guide now handles all my large sheet good sawing. $1k would could buy you a Festool circular saw + 118" track.

[Roger Feeley]

Erik, Isn't it kind of crazy to pay for the safety system and then not use it? I would think that the owners either bought the saw for insurance reasons or they thought they wanted the safety systems. In the former case, wouldn't the insurance company find out the first time there was an injury? In the latter, wouldn't they realize that the safety system wouldn't work with wet wood? They might as well take advantage of all those Unisaws and PM66s out there.

Not to jack this thread too much but I just remembered an interesting remark from one of our territory reps at the IWF show. He told me that almost every shop he goes into that has one of these, they have deactivated the cartridge-device and just run it like a regular cabinet saw. A lot of shops store their lumber outside, it gets wet, they go to cut it and "pow!". In a shop, time is money and they don't want to be fiddling with changing the cartridges or having it go off all the time. I thought that was interesting.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Cary Falk]

I think I will stay with my JessEm.

[Mark Carlson]

Me too. Cant get past those support legs. Yuck. I'd be interested in the Jessem II if it ever happens.

I think I will stay with my JessEm.

[Erik Loza]

Erik, Isn't it kind of crazy to pay for the safety system and then not use it?..

Roger, I agree with you 100% in principle but in the real world, you see it all. Folks who leave the guards off their jointers, shops that take out the riving knife (and guard that is attached to it...), guys working without eye or ear protection, empty beer cans sitting around the machines.

At the IWF show last week, we had a 10' slider set up in the booth and a Latin American dealer apparently wanted to "demo it" for some of his customers by showing how it could be used to cut stacked panels. We had no dust collection set up on the machine; it was just there for static demo, not actual cutting. My colleague and I had were chatting with our backs turned to the machine when we hear the saw fire up and start cutting. We turn around just in time to get covered in sawdust and see this gentleman cutting a stack of three or four 1'x1' melamine squares by using using both the rip and crosscut fence to put pressure on this stack as it went through the blade. That is an EXTREMELY dangerous cut and though (thankfully) nothing happened, it could have sent melamine squares flying everywhere. Point being that you can make this or that machine as safe as possible but in the real world, "foolish" often transcends better wisdom.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Peter Kelly]

Jesus that makes me wince. Why exactly was there power pulled to that saw in the first place? I'm amazed that show management even allows machines to be live during show hours...

[Erik Loza]

Jesus that makes me wince. Why exactly was there power pulled to that saw in the first place? I'm amazed that show management even allows machines to be live during show hours...

Most stuff has power at IWF, interestingly. We sometimes do that in order to show how the scoring blade operates or that type of thing but guys don't typically just walk over and start cutting. We turned off the main switch after that!

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[David Kumm]

There is so much power consumed there it is staggering. Just the dust collection alone at many booths would astound. Miles of pipes and hundreds of bags if you counted them all. Must have been 50 cnc machines running. Dave

[Frank Drew]

I went from a General 650 cabinet saw to the Hammer B3 Winner with the 49" crosscut capacity and would never go back to a cabinet saw now............Rod.

In my case it was from a Powermatic 70(?) to an Ulmia 1711 with a 52" crosscut, but otherwise ditto about never going back to a non-slider.