Bob Lang, Executive Editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, was quoted in yesterday’s USA Today newspaper. He advocates more education for woodworkers about new blade guards, and opposes mandatory technology such as SawStop.
Why do table saw injuries happen?
For the record: I totally agree with Lang’s position, for the following reasons:
- Many, and possibly most injuries in the shop, happen because the person using the table saw removed the blade guard for being “inconvenient”. It is a given that the guard must be removed to make certain cuts; but it also should (must) be replaced.
- The person using the table saw does not know how to use the machine properly; this includes proper knowledge of situations that could result in finger amputation, for example.
- Or the worker is simply too tired, and therefore not paying attention to the procedure at hand.
My position
I have stated in the past that I would be willing to retrofit my table saw with a safety feature that is reasonably priced. What is this price? I would guesstimate in the neighborhood of $100 to $150. Lang estimates that technology such as SawStop will likely increase the cost of a saw by as much as 40%.
I hope common sense prevails
I hope that The Power Tool Institute and UL (Underwriter Laboratories) will develop guidelines that will eventually be adopted by CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
Should any guidelines be mandatory? I believe that voluntary guidelines are best, until new and competing technologies to SawStop are developed and implemented commercially. Whirlwind is one such technology I have written about in the past. This will likely contribute to driving down the cost of any technology implementation. Meanwhile, better education is likely to result in significant reduction in injuries at our table saws.
What do you think?
Let me know what you think about this issue, in the Comments section below, or via e-mail — simply click on my signature line below.
— Al Navas
A very simple reason to oppose governmental mandates…
One word: CRONYISM!
The only winner of such legislation is the SawStop developer / producer. The rest of us LOSE our freedom of choice, and our freedom of individual responsibility.
Hi Al,
There are two arguments to be made for/against the mandatory addition of flesh-sensing technology.
The first is the political argument, that government should or should not be dictating what goes on in our workshops. That argument is going to be long and drawn out and mainly depends on your personal views, which we are all entitled to.
The second is that the SawStop or similar technology really doesn’t provide an extra margin of safety. This is something that Bob Lang has alluded to in his coverage of this issue. This goes completely counter to any serious approach to safety that exists. Two examples that immediately come to mind are hospital policies and airline pilot checklists and routines. Both rely on a multi pronged approach to safety.
The model of a multi pronged approach to safety views safety mechanisms as slices of swiss cheese, where each layer of safety blocks an accident from happening, but that each layer has holes in it where accidents can pass through. For example, a riving knife helps prevent kickback from the board pinching on the saw blade, but does nothing for amputations. Likewise, flesh sensing technology will prevent amputations, but does not help with the kickback issue. Other layers include things like the shop environment (Is there good lighting? Is it clean?), the mental state of the woodworker (Is he tired? Did he have a beer recently?) and the condition of the wood (Is it straight grained and well behaved, or is it twisted with a lot of reaction wood?). If things go well, each layer of cheese overlaps in such a way that all the holes are covered. An accident happens if somehow the holes line up to allow an accident to pass through.
This is why arguments like, “We don’t need SawStop or similar technology because education will fill the same role” simply are not credible. Education doesn’t fill the same role as flesh sensing technology. Neither do riving knives, better designed guards, or other alternatives that have been proposed. Flesh sensing technology has one job to do: prevent severe injury if a part of your body touches the blade. And there is no evidence that it fails to do that job, and it does that job very well. The cost of a laceration/amputation from a table saw blade is easily in the $10,000 range, and that doesn’t cover the long term effects, like costs for physical therapy or occupational therapy, or lost wages due to the inability to do as much with your injured limb. Education, riving knives, or other alternatives can’t fill the same role. To say that you don’t need flesh sensing technology to be safe, now that the technology exists, is to say that we can remove a slice of swiss cheese and be as safe as we were before. Again, that argument doesn’t hold water.
To go back to the airline pilot and hospital examples that I mentioned above, no one in either environment is suggesting that pilots and doctors can be more vigilant and that will take care of all safety issues. So I don’t see why the same shouldn’t hold for your table saw.
As I stated above, it’s fine to oppose mandated incorporation of flesh sensing technology into table saws because of your own views of what government should or should not be doing. But making the argument that adding flesh sensing technology into table saws won’t make them safer is a non-starter.
I would oppose any mandatory addition even if the goverment somehow paid for it. It’s not a money thing.
Of course, I wouldn’t mind personally paying a couple of hundred bucks for a device that may save a thumb or two. But I like it being a chance.
Regards, and keep up the good work!