Anybody Who Has a Power Saw Knows What They Do

If you want to stir up some sawdust when you’re with a group of woodworking hobbyists, just bring up the topic of whether electric table saws should have an automatic shutoff. The divide between those who shout “Yes!” and those who howl “No!” is as sharp and clean as – well, what happens to a hunk of half-inch lumber after its run through one of the powerful devices. Don Shutt, founder of the Three Rivers Woodworking Club, knows both sides of the saw controversy. And he tends to come down more with the howlers. “Anybody who has a power saw knows what they do,” the 80-year-old Fort Wayne man says. “If you run the saw the way you’re supposed to, you won’t lose a finger.” But lately the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has come down on the side of lots of folks who have lost fingers – or suffered other kinds of injuries to their hands and arms – from accidents with table saws. Last year, the agency gave notice that it would propose new rules that could make auto shutoffs mandatory, calling the risk of injury posed by unfettered blades “unreasonable.” CPSC Commissioner Robert Adler, who supports the controls, cited statistics that the saws cause about 36,000 injuries a year, with about 10 percent resulting in amputation. "The injuries associated with this product are horrific – deep lacerations to the arms and hands, broken bones and, worst of all, amputations to fingers and thumbs,” Adler wrote. "I have met a number of these individuals, and, as far as I could tell, every one of them was an experienced woodworker who made a single small misstep or had a momentary lapse in attention – with ghastly consequences. To my mind, small errors like these should not produce tragic results on such a grand scale.” Many of the injuries, according to Adler, have resulted in work-limiting or disability among those who work, and “a disproportionate number” of those injured are over 65. But what kind of control should be required has proved difficult to resolve. One company, SawStop in Tualatin, Ore., has been working on saw-stopping technology for more than a decade and holds about six dozen patents on it. The company petitioned the CPSC as early as 2003 for a standard that its products would meet – a device that detects contact with, or dangerous proximity of, a body part with the blade, and stops and drops the blade within three one-thousandths of a second – before a cut deeper than one-eighth of an inch can occur. The company demonstrates the technology in a video – infamous among some – on its website that uses a hot dog that is merely scratched instead of cut in two by the blade. The saw has a sensor that reacts to electrical conductivity through water that is present in human appendages – and hot dogs – but not in most wood or metal. The blade is stopped with a metal boot-like device. SawStop has begun manufacturing both contractor saws that convert from a standard table to a table on wheels, and industrial and professional cabinet-style table saws. The lowest-priced contractor models start at about $1,600. But the Power Tool Institute, which has argued that newer saws have blade guards to reduce injuries, has developed its own proposal, which retracts the blade but without a brake. Because SawStop’s inventor, Steve Gass, a patent attorney as well as a physicist, holds patents on its technology, industry members say it’s close to impossible for them to compete without patent infringement. If federal officials mandate the flesh-sensing technology, it would amount to giving SawStop a monopoly, they contend. The industry urges CPSC to support “a variety of solutions that make sense for the entire range of table saw products and users” instead of mandating a single solution. Industry officials have argued that the shutoffs would add at least $100 to $150 to the price of a saw, effectively putting some lower-priced tools, which start around $150, out of range for some buyers. The CPSC closed an extended public comment period on March 16. Kathleen Reilly, CPSC spokeswoman, said that unless the deadline is extended again, the commission staff will review comments and prepare a brief with recommendations for commission members to vote on. The timetable is unknown, she said. Steve Fortriede, 66, of Huntertown, a woodworking hobbyist, said when he first heard of SawStop, “I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard of.” But that was before he heard that every time the saw actually comes to an emergency stop, it wrecks the works. "It jams a metal piece really fast in front of the blade and that wrecks the blade and you have to replace other things, and that can cost like $160 plus the blade,” he says. "On the other hand, a finger is worth a lot of parts,” says Fortriede, formerly associate director of the Allen County Public Library. Shutt, who has known at least one local woodworker who was injured by a blade, says the late Dr. Robert Bahr, a celebrated Fort Wayne woodworking hobbyist and family practitioner, was an early adopter of a saw with an auto shutoff. But Shutt says he thinks auto shutoffs can lure people into thinking they can’t be injured with a saw. Indeed, he says, many people are injured by kickbacks, or flying debris, by saws that have guards to prevent slicing injuries. Because of that problem, he says, many people take off the guards, although that’s not an acceptable safety practice. Some cuts also can’t be made with the guards on, local woodworkers say. Shutt also points out that the sensor also may make cutting wet lumber or some pressure-treated lumber impossible because of their moisture content. John Gospordarek, a Fort Wayne woodworker who specializes in turned objects, says he does that “all the time.” But Shutt notes that’s a specialty use of table saws. “Not many (people) would use them to cut that kind of wood,” he says. Shutt says in operating any power saw, safety rules must be observed. One, he says, is to push wood with a pushing instrument, not your hands. Another is to wear eye protection. "Some people get careless and some people are just plain stupid,” he says, adding he has nothing against an auto-stop saw “if you can afford it.” "It’s like with anything else. Technology always costs more.” Source: journalgazette.net