Agreed, it IS a great video. Fella deserves both accolades and riches.
Edit -> I also deeply respect his willingness to put his finger where his mouth is, so to speak. I like honest sales presentations; If I wanted a table saw, I’d damn well make sure his doohickey was installed!
…But hell no. I already am down to 9-1/3 digits, and another of the 9 is more ornamental than functional ^^’. Nope nope nope, and the same goes for circular saws. I know my own inner oaf.
I could do without that narration. His voice seems to impress upon me the feeling that I’ve been wasting my life in front of the idiot box.
not really, you absolutely have to try to make it happen the way that dude did. He also has every possible safety mechanism disengaged.
You mean like a laser cutter?
Only bigger. Much bigger. Mad scientist bigger.
A lot of research in human factors and systems engineering has to do with vigilance. For sure, safety protocols reduce vigilance: a classic example is that motorists give unhelmeted bicyclists a wider berth than helmeted bicyclists (apparently without conscious decision or intent).
(Related, but not to table saws: One of the challenges of automation is that we need closed-loop systems to ensure ongoing safety, but as the role of the human gets reduced, their vigilance just tanks. This is a huge concern about experimental “driverless cars” with drivers as safety backups. You’re essentially setting up the human drivers for failure when the driverless car technology inevitably hiccups, since the car is essentially 100% open-loop except when the driver needs to notice the driverless system’s error. Regardless of how the driver tries to remain vigilant, in an open-loop system they are physiologically/psychologically incapable of maintaining the right level of vigilance.)
Came to the comments for the riving knife. The one on the SawStop is one of the best I’ve used: strong, perfectly aligned and profiled. I’ve seen newbies make exactly the mistake he demonstrates in the video and still not get a kickback.
There are so many things a table saw does better than other tools, but yes you have to know how – and use it often enough to be comfortable with it.
In a pinch (working on projects in less well-equipped shops) it’s worked very well to mark or scribe the 45 line, cut just shy of it on the bandsaw, and finish it to the line on a fixed sander. You can even use whatever square you used to mark the line as a quick guide to hold your piece to the sander (and the sander table has to be squared too). It’s slower and requires that the precision come from you rather than the tool, but it can make a very good mitre.
I’ve tried ripping boards with my circular saw and I’ll do it if I only have one cut to make and Don’t feel like setting up the table saw. But I’m a noob, I would love to have the time to learn all the different joints/cuts etc.
One researcher using using only himself as a subject claimed this in 2007. I have yet to see the conclusion confirmed.
However, even where risk compensation is a thing, the issue is still overall outcomes. I’ve heard all manner of safety measures criticized by Libertarian types as being more dangerous - from anti-OSHA types to anti-motorcycle helmet law types. Sometimes the results are counter intuitive, but mostly I think safer design is safer - particularly when the design takes into account how people actually use a product and work so that the safety measures work naturally with the way people use the product. SawStop is a perfect example of that. You use the saw exactly as before, only now it is safer. And because it is expensive to replace, hopefully you won’t get people using risk compensation and getting dangerously close to the blade knowing it is safer.
The hardest part about woodworking when I first started was learning how to do a nice, straight, clean cut in a single pass that forms a tight joint. I quickly found out that crappy tools produce crappy results so it takes a healthy financial investment in quality equipment and sharp, high quality blades. If you’re constantly fighting with either the tool or the material you’re gonna be disappointed with the finished product.
A stacked dado head on your table saw can easily create just about every joint you’ll ever need. However, dados, rabbets and shoulder cuts also require the removal of many of the safety features like blade guards and riving knifes so you gotta be extra special careful. A large, sturdy fence and push blocks are an absolute must.
It will with the right sized extension for the sliding bed.
That video doesn’t show it, but I like that you can clamp your wood to the sliding bed and run it across the blade like that (similar to how he is using the miter stop). It’s more like machining wood than sawing and seems much safer. Unfortunately I don’t have 5 grand to drop on a saw right now…
Yeah, I’m definitely not arguing against built-in safety in designs. But whatever safety features and automation are designed, we need to consider the possible effects on vigilance and attention and (to the extent possible) design against them.
I have no left thumb print thanks to a brief moment of inattention with a tablesaw. Well, sort of a thumb print - it did actually come back a bit.
Yes, he is working from the wrong side of the fence. This causes him to have to reach farther and lean over, which diminishes his control. Worse, it means he has to counteract his center of gravity to pull the workpiece against the fence. By standing on the same side of the fence as the workpiece and blade (but not inline with the work), he woould be reaching a shorter distance, and his center of gravity will naturally help push the workpiece into the fence and away from the blade.
Yup. Grew up on a ‘fixer-upper’ farm with anti-OSHA parents and zero supervision. The only emergency room stitches I ever got was when I was an adult city-dweller with a pair of kitchen shears.
You’ve never met a member of my subculture. I used a pruning saw blade in a SawZall to cut down 3 or 4 inch diameter standing dead ‘Dutched’ elm trees, then used my brother’s crapola Ryobi table saw to rip them into 1 x 1’s and made them into a butcher block table top. When I was gluing up the strips, I discovered that the saw blade can’t maintain a 90 degree angle to the table - I had a bunch of lumber that had been ripped to about 88 1/2 degrees.
I paid for my first year of college by being the shop safety steward in a small cabinet shop. Who just shot milk outta their nose?
Hey- haven’t seen you about for a while, welcome back from the wilderness!
My dad had a machine shop and he taught his kids to have a healthy respect for “anything that works faster than you can think,” then he left us alone to cause whatever mayhem seemed good to us. All three of us survived with a full complement of fingers, toes, and eyes.
