Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

I own and use a tablesaw for home maintenance, and occasionally building utilitarian furniture, loudspeaker boxes (musician here), etc. My saw is an ancient Sears Roebuck that a buddy found at a garage sale.

I'm aware of the SawStop technology, but haven't felt motivated to buy a brand new saw. The deal for me is simply that I don't have enough use for a saw, to justify buying a new one. I wouldn't recommend this approach to anybody else -- just using myself as an example of a person who has somehow rationalized keeping the old technology.

My approach is to limit what I do with the saw. My hands never go anywhere near the blade. For smaller workpieces, intricate cuts, etc., I use hand tools or just figure out a different design. I'm willing to waste wood rather than try getting one last cut out of a scrap. Also, I simply don't use it very often. Most of the time it sits with the blade retraced, covered with bicycle parts.

But in a lot of fields, it's impossible to discuss safety, or to get a straight answer about safety questions. Every technology has detractors with arguments that it is actually more dangerous. (Try reading web forum threads about bike helmets).

"My hands never go anywhere near the blade."

Isn't that what we all do, at all times ?

Who is putting their hands/fingers near the sawblade ?

It's actually quite simple to avoid if you have fences/blocks/SacrificalPieces ...

Folks get their fingers cut off, so their hands are going near the blade, though I don't know the exact circumstances. They may be trying to manipulate small pieces, or in too much of a hurry to take the right precautions.

Maybe there are cases where their hands get pulled in, but I can't think of how. Honestly I wouldn't recommend using a table saw at all to most people I know.

>Who is putting their hands/fingers near the sawblade ?

Most people don't deliberately place the hands dangerously close to the blade. Instead, it's an unforseen interaction with the wood and the blade. E.g. the hand holding down wood against the fence and is (supposedly safe distance of) 1 foot away from the blade but an unexpected kickback quickly pulls the hand into the blade before the operator can even react defensively. An experienced woodworker was demonstrating kickback using push blocks and thought he was safe but he almost got sliced by the blade.[1]

On can then say, install a riving knife to prevent kickback, etc... but that doesn't prevent an operator from reaching over the blade to grab a piece of waste. Whether fatigue or being in a hurry, he misjudges how his hand and the wood moves through space above the blade and boom, fingers get sliced. There are probably a 100 different ways to lose fingers on table saws.[2]

[1] almost amputated @ 2m30s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7sRrC2Jpp4&feature=youtu.be...

[2] http://www.sawaccidents.com/recently-added-accidents.htm

Tip buy a CNC router and throw the table saw out. Along with a bunch of other tools.

If you use it once in a blue moon, rental is smarter.

That's certainly an interesting thought. For now, I'm in maintenance mode, so my most important tools are the ones that I can throw in a bucket and carry to the point of use. And, stuff that's not related to woodworking at all: Repairing appliances and messing around with old bikes.

One of the most common uses of a table saw is preparing stock for other operations like ripping (cutting longitudinally) long boards or cutting a sheet of 4'x8' plywood into panels. You would need a pretty big CNC router to be able to do that.

Interesting idea!

How much would I have to spend? What if I want to do some simple cutting? Trivial?

Figure several thousand dollars if you want something that can handle a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. One of the commonly known brands is ShopBot:

http://www.shopbottools.com/

You can DIY one cheaper, of course, but you're still looking at a few grand. If you don't mind slightly less accuracy, and want to do it as a kit (instead of completely homebrew - which can be a pain to learn about if you aren't familiar with CNC already) - this company is pretty well known:

https://buildyourcnc.com/

Also something else to keep in mind: If you do metal work, you can purchase (or build) a CNC plasma cutter. You typically have to supply your own plasma cutter, or spend extra for it (what you normally pay for is the table, mechanicals, and interface electronics - computer is also extra). Many or most of these can be easily converted to adding a router for woodwork (provided it has a height control head to handle it). Just make sure you get one that can handle 4x8 sheets.

There are also CNC routers, etc that can handle much smaller sizes, if you aren't going to do anything big. Many of these are easy to DIY and there are plenty of examples, tutorials, books, PDFs, instructables, etc - on how to build one.

A small desktop CNC router can be homebrewed for less than $500.00 (plus a fair amount of time). Of course, you will need to have access to at least some basic tools to build one, and be competent at using them.

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