I would buy one in heart beat as long as price was competitive to an ICS saw.
I would buy a sawstop ICS
I would never buy a saw with a break on it.
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 03-03-2010 at 9:31 PM.
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Dunno about the pull saw but the tiger stop flip stop on crank and steroids. http://www.tigerstop.com/
I think you can compare. It goes without saying that if Grizzly offered a Sawstop type saw for $1,800 it would sell well, Very well. Fact is, It's not possible. If it was, Grizzly would be all over it. IMHO.
Every product we buy, Price is the factor. I own a JET cabinet saw. Cost was $1,200. Sawstop is what $3,000? If all of a sudden the Sawstop was $1,200. Yes, Then I would have purchased that saw in a heartbeat. Take the brake off the sawstop and it is still a very well built saw worthy of anyones consideration.
"Remember back in the day, when things were made by hand, and people took pride in their work?"
- Rick Dale
I was not planing to replace my 20 year old Delta Unisaw. Until both Grandsons asked when they could start working in grand-paws shop. My first thought was this great WW together, second thought was I need a Saw Stop soon. I have a good supply of band-aids for hand tool accidents. But power tools are never forgiving. And yes A Saw Stop or a TS with this technology.
Mike,
The pull saw was ( 40-50 years ago?) invented and made in US.
A tablesaw that you pull the motor with the blade to the wood.
Similar to a RAS but with the motor under the table and the blade fully exposed.
The latest " re- innovation" of all EU manufacturers.
Talking about marketing without any regard for safety.
Another innovation is the small combo machines.
Never enough material support and always dangerours.
A miter saw that can be use as a table saw.
Never mind the upside down circular saw "systeX"
I first saw a friend plunghing his worm drive into a table andd use a level as a tablesaw fence.
I never thought that the same concept may cost $ 2000.00... 30 years later because it was re-invented and made in EU.
I had read a while back that the primary reason that the major manufacturers do not license the SawStop technology is that doing so for only some of their product line would expose them to much greater liability risk. In other words, equipping the high-end saws with brake technology would be an admission that saws are inherently dangerous, they know this, they have the ability to make them all safe, but they don't do so, because doing so would mean that they would get fewer sales. The theory went further to say that in a court of law, this would be grounds for someone to successfully sue them for damages.
I have no way of knowing if this is true, but it certainly seems plausible.
Last edited by Carl Babel; 03-04-2010 at 1:58 AM.
Karl, I am glad that your injuries weren't any worse. I also sincerely hope that your having learned from this experience is enough to assure that you won't do it again.
I know myself too well to think that I would have the same assurance. Too often, I cave in to pressures, deadlines, etc to try to finish "just one more". Luck carried me through more than one near miss. My SawStop ICS now has that job. Fortunately (for my wallet), I haven't triggered the brake yet (its been over two years).
Probably just conjecture gone amok. There are plenty of examples of this across many industries. An excellent analogy is the car industry where they have always had more safety (both passive and active) in the more expensive cars in their line OR even the less expensive ones depending on the model cycles. One can get sued for anything by most anyone but making it through the court system and prevailing is a another matter. Quite frankly one would probably have a hard time getting through the appeals process even if they won a jury trial, it is in the interest of public policy to allow manufacturers to introduce safety features on their most expensive products and letting it filter down over time. The alternative is a chilling effect on any safety advancement. Sawstop is a niche company and the large companies will allow them to forge the way and help ferret out the proper business model to follow. The major machine importers only derive a small porton of their profit from cabinet saws and Grizzly, WMH and Black and Decker can afford to sit and watch the progression of the blade brake niche and enter it when they see fit from a finacial standpoint.
Bottom line is the other tool importers almost surely made their determination to forgo blade brakes in a meeting with Wharton types instead of in a meeting with Yale school of law types. There will likely be a day when you can by a Delta with a blade brake unless someone builds a better mousetrap all together, a laser saw with a kerf that is mesured in angstroms perhaps. Until that day we have Sawstop which provides three solid saws across a range of prices for those that can afford them and determine that the price premium has equal or greater value to them.
Carl,
This is reality.
I offered safety devices to two large manufactures...for free.
The people in charge have nothing to do with woodworking.
No clue or interest in safety and later ( three years later )
The legal dept. decided not to include any safety devices due to liability on their axcisting amputators.
Only SawStop can fix the problem because they don't have any amputators in the market. If they can come up with a better system to stop the kick-back they can easily fix all their saws before thir numbers go up
and make it impossible to do it.
I tried to get insurance for some safety devices for tablesaws and other tools
and the rates was out of reach.
Nothing is easy and we need to support SawStop and others instead of looking how to support executives with no regard for safety.
No, people need to understand that there is inherent risks to anything, and that inattentiveness has consequences. It the operators job, not the saw's, to determine if he is qualified to perform the task at hand. It applies to lots of things, and not just the operation of a tablesaw. It is the employers job to hire people that are either qualified, or capable of learning. The tool is just that, a tool. Unless you tell me stories of an actual failure on the saw's part, (blade flying out, etc), it carries no responsibility. This same thinking will eventually make forks hard to find if it goes on long enough.
A shop I worked at a younger guy removed a finger on a moulder, but he didn't do it on one of the cutters. Morons are very creative in their stupidity.
Karl, the guy who was inadvertently hit from behind and his hand was thrown into the blade comes to mind. S___T happens, the guy was practising good safety habits, but it didn't matter. Sort of like driving along the highway and someone comes over the center line and hits you. That's why we have seatbelts and airbags. Items that help us even when we're following perfect safety procedures. I don't have a SS. Unfortunately, I'm retired and on a strict budget. I just can't justify the expense. I complain because my gov't doesn't adhere to the budget so I can't tell LOML I should bust our budget to get one, but if it were otherwise....
A close friend of mine is an MD (specialist in occupational medicine). He mostly consults for companies and sees people that have been injured on job sites all day. He told me one of the highest rates of insurances are for roofers; the reason is many fall eventually and get serious injury/die if they don't use the harness. Based on statistics, insurance companies have figured out many do not use the harness (it's cumbersome/un-manly or they think if you are careful and don't make a stupid mistake it doesn't happen ) and for sure many do fall.
He said, once he told a father whose son started working with him to tell him to use the harness. The father's reply was: I've been doing this 30 years and have never fallen, so he can do it without it! I'd call that reply stupid!! (if he hasn't fallen in 30 years doesn't imply anything about the chances of his son falling).
I have done a roof without harness of course; it wasn't that difficult to walk and sure if you are careful it would reduce the chance of slipping/falling, but if one makes a mistake and falls, I wouldn't call him moron or stupid.
If he wasn't thinking ahead and use the harness, maybe.
If I were in the market for a new saw to replace my old Uni, it wouldn't be a traditional cabinet saw with a brake, it would be a slider. I think that is actually the better mousetrap.
The post about the Tiger Saw is very enlightening. Industrial "wood processing" machines often take a very different approach to presenting wood to the cutter or the cutter to the wood.