SawStop vs Bosch ruling

[Jim Dwight]

Thanks for posting the news. I wish it had gone the other way but it is only over if Bosch decides there isn't enough market to justify the expense. We'll see.

To those with SS saws I have nothing against you. To me, it is a bit like Festools. I like some features of Festools but the price doesn't seem supportable to me. So my track saw is a DeWalt. I might have to get a domino since there isn't a similar alternative but for now my hollow chisel mortiser is fine.

I am also in the camp of not doing business with Steve Gass. In addition to wanting outrageous fees for use of his patents he testified for a flooring installer that used a $100 Ryobi saw with no guard and no rip fence and hurt himself. Gass argued the injury was due not to the flooring installer defeating the safety devices that came with the tool but, rather, the manufacturers fault in not installing his device. On a $100 saw. The jury gave the flooring guy a bunch of money. Juries are like that but to take that position is, in my opinion, intellectually indefensible.

[Simon MacGowen]

Hahaha, I'll have to save that for later use.

Kidding aside, I want to float something else out there. SS's aren't cheap. So, I don't really know how much of the market share they really have. their pie is only North America. Not Europe or Asia.

Erik

North America alone is big enough for SS. I doubt that SS is scratching the surface only (55,000 + sold so far), though it is NA's #1 selling cabinet saw. 55,000 x $3,500 is still a lot of money for a small company like that.

Simon

[Jerry Wright]

Why would Bosch want to enter a market that Sawstop created unless it is to piggyback on another company's marketing. Hmmm. Who is the "bad guy" here? You maybe can tell that I worked for a company that successfully defended it's patents against European knockoffs - albeit high quality knockoffs.

[Larry Frank]

It is always entertaining to read the threads with the same things brought up by the same people. You either like Gass and his saw or hate it.

Personally, I reserve my hate, dislike etc for the real corporate villians....in my mind they are the pharmaceutical people who have raised the costs on things like an epipens and life saving drugs. Who really cares about a saw...you do not need one to live. The gouging for these drugs really deserves the dislike some have for the Sawstop.

[Andrew J. Coholic]

Hahaha, I'll have to save that for later use.

Kidding aside, I want to float something else out there. SS's aren't cheap. So, I don't really know how much of the market share they really have. For customers who actually shop around and don't just blindly fall for the fear-based marketing (I'm not knocking them but I wish you guys could see the booth they put up at the big trade shows. Basically, "Buy ours, or else", with photos of dudes with 9 fingers, etc.) they are substantially more expensive than a lot of other Chaiwanese table saws and their "Industrial" model is not that much cheaper than Minimax entry-level sliding table saw. Their machine looks really well built but I'm not personally convinced how big of a piece of the pie they have. And keep in mind that their pie is only North America. Not Europe or Asia.

Erik

Erik,
I am a small custom shop owner/operator. Family business started by my father (a European trained millwright and woodworker) in the early 70's. I took over in the later 90's and at a few weeks shy of 46, have been running the shop for the past 21 years.

I set up a new facility in 2010/11. Spent about $200K to $220K on the stationary machinery. We have always had two saws, a full size slider and a 10" cabinet saw. The slider is great, but in our line of work (custom furniture and cabinetry and millwork) a 10" saw is just too handy to have. Many operations are easier both to set up and get done VS the larger saw. Also, with 3, sometimes 4 guys working it is not practical for one saw.

All I know with cost is when I was looking (here in Canada) for a minimum 5 HP 10" cabinet saw, the industrial version of the Sawstop wasnt a whole lot more than other offerings. Maybe 20 to 25%. It was a no brainer for me to get the SS, for two reasons.

#1, with employees - and with the 10" saw being traditionally the most likely to have an accident on - it is a very much peace of mind thing, not just for myself but even more so with my guys. I know I am very safety conscious and have a lifetime of experience working in a wood shop. With employees you just cant assume each and every day they come in, they will treat things with the same respect and awareness.

#2, I saw my father have a bad TS incident on one of our Delta unisaws. Severed all fingers on his left hand with a kickback. HE had a lifetime of experience and was not a risk taker. Accidents happen to the best sometimes. In the emergency room with him, before he went 4 hours away to the hospital that rebuilt his hand - it was gruesome. Like a pound of bloody hamburger.

WHen I was due to buy new equipment, I didnt need any marketing or fear mongering to make me want that saw. Besides the fact its a great little saw, if it can prevent one more incident its worth ANY additional cost IMO.

All the politics and so forth aside (it didnt play into my decision), some of us have practical reasons to have it in the shop. Like I said, it wasnt a whole lot more. And, for the average smaller woodworking shop I am familiar with, a grand or two isnt going to be the deciding factor. In a home or hobby shop, it might be. Just offering my own perspective.

JFYI my 10' slider is a Griggio C45, fitted with a Tigerstop fence. Its been a great saw seeing daily use for the past 5 1/2 years. But I'd not give up my 10" sawstop saw either.

The other thing I have to add - a lot of guys who are not in a working shop, where you are always under time constraints, under pressure to produce, etc might not realize that it only takes ONCE where you go to make a cut without setting things up properly, or taking the regular safety precautions etc, and take a chance. day in, day out, after thousands of cuts made safely. It only takes that one time of making a hasty decision/cut that you might get bit. That is why I have that saw in my shop. As a last resort so to speak.

I'd love to see this type of tech on more saws. If Griggio had their saw up and running in 2010, Im sure I would have gotten it. The more barriers to guys getting hurt all the better IMO.

[Erik Loza]

...it is NA's #1 selling cabinet saw...

As a guy in the industry for nearly 15 years, I've learned that everyone says theirs is the #1 seller and also, having sat in a number of high level meetings at a privately held company that is a leader in the industry, published statistics are almost always "fluffed up". Not arguing with you, just sayin'...

...All I know with cost is when I was looking (here in Canada) for a minimum 5 HP 10" cabinet saw, the industrial version of the Sawstop wasnt a whole lot more than other offerings. .

Interesting. I went to the SS website a while back and spec'ed out one of their industrial saws with the 12" blade (maybe 10" is a lot cheaper?) and sliding table attachment, basically trying to spec it out close to a Minimax SC2 Classic and, to my surprise, it was not that much cheaper. At least not down here.

Erik

[Kevin Groenke]

AMEN...from everything I've read about the history of the SS...as a fact my employer lost his manual to the jobsite version and SS charged him about $50 for a replacement...???

I'll give it to him for $20! - http://www.sawstop.com/images/upload..._3_11_2015.pdf

...I just can't see how a concept such as an emergency brake on a table saw is patentable...

Just regarding one aspect of the flesh detection patent.

Under U.S. patent law, an invention is patentable only if it meets the following four requirements:
The invention must be statutory - A patent was issued, so yeah.
The invention must be new - Nobody had previously used capacitance to detect flesh, thus it was new.
The invention must be useful. - A tablesaw that won't cut off fingers? Check!
The invention must be non-obvious - IMO since nobody had used capacitance in this application before, non-obvious follows. If it had been obvious Bosch would have done it (and not patented it) years ago right?

on the flip side, there is the concept of quantities of scale...e.g. if every saw had SS technology then the cost per unit would be way lower than it is now...if Gass was really concerned about worker safety then he would allow use at a reasonable price and then proceed to still market his products (which I have to admit are pretty darned good) and compete on a fair test of quality.

So why then is the Bosch not considerably less than the equivalent SawStop?

[Andrew J. Coholic]

As a guy in the industry for nearly 15 years, I've learned that everyone says theirs is the #1 seller and also, having sat in a number of high level meetings at a privately held company that is a leader in the industry, published statistics are almost always "fluffed up". Not arguing with you, just sayin'...



Interesting. I went to the SS website a while back and spec'ed out one of their industrial saws with the 12" blade (maybe 10" is a lot cheaper?) and sliding table attachment, basically trying to spec it out close to a Minimax SC2 Classic and, to my surprise, it was not that much cheaper. At least not down here.

Erik

Pretty sure they are 10" only.. I have never seen or read about 12" capability (was just on the site, nothing about 12" either).

If someone made a smaller size Euro slider with the same technology, I'd for sure have been interested.

[Andrew J. Coholic]

So why then is the Bosch not considerably less than the equivalent SawStop?

Because let be realistic... there isn't any company that spends large sums of $$ to develop a product, engineer and manufacture it and bring it to market, all out of the kindness of their heart.

Business' are in business to make $$. Not a bad thing. Its just business. Bosch sees what the market will bear for such a saw. So why would they "give" theirs away for any less?

[Simon MacGowen]

So why then is the Bosch not considerably less than the equivalent SawStop?

Bosch could price its saw well below SawStop's but it wouldn't want to for many reasons, one of which may be not to look cheap. Some buyers might wonder about its saw quality if it were $300 less than SawStop. Festool sets its prices way above others to create a sense that its quality is many times better than its competitors.

Of course, Bosch has the financial muscle to do so, but from a business point of view, unless Bosch wanted to start a price war (as Saudi did with its oil market share strategy), it need not launch its Reaxx saw low.

Simon

[Erik Loza]

.....So why then is the Bosch not considerably less than the equivalent SawStop?

Well, having seen both the SS and the Reaxx jobsite saws in person, I can tell you that the Reaxx is a LOT beefier looking than the SS jobsite saw. But since Bosch doesn't make a cabinet saw, it's probably apples and oranges to compare the two.

Erik

[Mike Henderson]

When I read these posts about people who say they will never buy a SawStop, I always think of the saying "Cut off your nose to spite your face."

Maybe it should be "Cut off your fingers to spite Steve Gass."

Mike

[Erik Loza]

Pretty sure they are 10" only.. I have never seen or read about 12" capability (was just on the site, nothing about 12" either).

If someone made a smaller size Euro slider with the same technology, I'd for sure have been interested.

You're correct on the 10" blade size. I must have been thinking it was 12".

For giggles, I just went onto SS's site and priced out an Industrial model with 52" rip capacity, sliding table, and 5hp/1-phase motor. This is as close as I can get a cabinet saw to a US-spec Minimax SC2 Classic sliding table saw. According to their site, an SS so configured is priced at $5,398, which does not include any extra carrtridges. The cartridges are $70 each, so we are basically looking at almost $5,500. That is in the same ballpark that I sell SC2 Classics at. So, you have a cabinet saw that does have a blade brake but does not have a true sliding table, a 4" cutting height, or a scoring blade and it costs what a real Euro slider does.

Continuing on that line of thought, a new Powermatic 66 (we can all agree, the benchmark of American-style cabinet saws) is about $3K with the 5hp motor. It does not have a sliding table option but the SS' sliding table option is $1K, but an SS equally equipped to the PM66 is still $4,300: $1,300 more expensive. Now, I'm not debating the merit of the braking technology or telling anyone what to buy but what I am saying is that for guys who can work safely (I have many, many customers who worked on PM66's for years and still have all their fingers, including my dad..), they don't need necessarily to pay an extra 30% to accomplish the same tasks and for customers who have the money, you can get a real slider, that not only is inherently safer than any regular cabinet saw but also cuts more accurately, for about the same price. Just some food for thought.

Erik

[Bill Orbine]

Or maybe Bosch can just put the Reaxx on the shelf for a few years and let SS patent protection run out....possibly 2021.

[Patrick Walsh]

I just purchased the SawStop Josite saw after my little Rigid poc bit the dust.

I looked closely at the Sawstop, the Bosch, a full size Makita and the Dewalt. Having spent a good amount of time behind the Dewalt at work and also the Bosch 4100 without the break i figured i would go Bosch. Both the Bosch and Dewalt are nice saws hard to find any real fault with. The bosch fence was kinda a pita being the back also had to lock to the tables. When dust would built up in the channels it could become a pain in the ars. The plastic base was a flimsy mess but otherwise the saw was powerful and reliable. The gravity rise stand was sweet. The Dewalt really is hard to find any fault with for general construction purposes. Its just a dewalt and for whatever reason i just cant get excited about Dewalt.

Back to Sawstop vrs. Bosch. I chose the Sawstop based on reviews and features. The small things Sawstop did like bevel adjustment, blade height and fence lock really sold me when i played with both saws. The stand on the Sawstop is just as nice as the gravity rise. One thing that turned me off on the Bosch was the gears for the bevel adjustment. They are plastic, being i will use this saw on a jobsite day in and day out plastic worm gears just dont sit well with me. Even full metal worm gears get all jammed up with dust more often than i care for. When this happens some knuckle head always seems to think it a good idea to just try and crank throught the dust as apposed to clean the saw. More times than not something ends up broken.

Anyway in true Sawstop fasion the machine is very very smooth and pretty strong. It is a giant pile of plastic but so is every other jobsite saw on the market.