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YouTube loves peppering my feed with completely me unrelated Shorts, and so I tend to pay more attention to the ones that are tool or equipment related.
In this one, a YouTuber says that SawStop saved their finger from being cut off.
And, it does.
They use a push stick, and everything goes smoothly. I was expecting a kickback event or similar.
No…
They removed the guard and then reach over the powered and exposed blade in an attempt to grab the cut work with their opposite hand.
Why not use the push stick? Turn the saw blade off first? Did the guard have to be removed for this?
Luckily they’re out just a blade and brake cartridge.
This was an avoidable human error.
Not to mince words, I watched the video and thought “well, that was dumb.” But you know what? I do all kinds of dumb things too sometimes, usually by accident or unintentionally.
I don’t know this woodworker, but they can be any of us.
This is my question. Would this woodworker have demonstrated greater caution if they didn’t have a SawStop with flesh detection and active injury mitigation technology? Or would this have resulted in a disastrous life-changing injury?
The government is deciding on whether they will be creating a safety standard that would essentially require table saws to have similar safety tech. The comment window closes in one week.
Read More: We’re Much Closer to SawStop-Like Table Saw Regulations – Update
A common critical opinion is that SawStop safety tech promotes unsafe behavior. But the fact is that unsafe practices have existed for a long time and will continue to exist.
The woodworker in the video must be happy he’s not a finger or two short – or worse – due to a momentary lapse in judgement.
There’s also a chance that the video was staged as rage-bait, but I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt these days.
Should every new table saw offer the same protections?
Here’s the video:
