Comment by ne8il
7 months ago
You hear a lot from long-time woodworkers that this is unnecessary, as they are perfectly capable of using a table saw safely with just the riving knife/splitter and proper technique. Which is anecdotally true, but hard to accept with the actual data of 30k injuries a year. So it's not a question of _if_ there's a cost to society here, it's a question of _where_ we put the cost: up-front on prevention, or in response to injury in the healthcare system. Is the trade-off worth it to force all consumers to spend a few hundred dollars more for a job-site table-saw, if it means the insurance market won't have to bear several thousand for an injury? I'd say yes.
There's a second aspect to the "tradeoff" that's worth emphasizing: it's not an equal trade. A significant percentage of those injured never fully recover regardless of the insurance money spent. Even a 1:1 trade of prevention vs response dollars means we have tens of thousands fewer permanent injuries.
> but hard to accept with the actual data of 30k injuries a year.
Lacerations are the most common form of injury. Counting "bulk injuries" is not a particularly useful way to improve "safety."
> _if_ there's a cost to society here
The question you really want to ask is "is the risk:reward ratio sensible?" People aren't using saws for entertainment, they are using to produce actual physical products, that presumptively have some utility value and should be considered in terms of their _benefit_ to society.
> it's a question of _where_ we put the cost
With the owner of the saw. If you don't want saw injuries, don't buy a saw, most people don't actually need one. I fail to see this as a social problem.
> if it means the insurance market won't have to bear several thousand for an injury?
Shouldn't owners of saws just pay more in premiums? Why should the "market" bear the costs? Isn't "underwriting" precisely designed to solve this exact issue?
> I'd say yes.
With a yearly injury rate of 1:10,000 across the entire population? I'd have to say, obviously not, you're far more likely to do harm than you are to improve outcomes.
The junior apprentice didn’t buy the saw that took his fingers off. His disinterested, profit-seeking boss did.
A defining aspect of developed countries is that their governments don’t allow business owners to lock the factory doors. We used to. Now we don’t. Are you saying we should go back to the good old times when children worked in coal mines?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_boy
You're making a lot of assumptions. That the apprentice is totally incapable of evaluating the tools he uses. That his boss is disinterested or that the additional profits aren't used to pay his workers above what the other shops do. You're painting a hyperbolic narrative here and there's not a lot of evidence that this is the norm or the root cause of even a simple majority of the 30,000 incidents per year.
You're going from safety releases on exterior doors in the same breath to child labor? It genuinely makes me wonder if you've spent much time in places where manual labor with saws are done. In most of these places, the "apprentice" owns his own tools, and works as a sub contractor because that pay structure is ideal for them.
If you want to mandate that employers who own a saw that is used by shift workers must have some sort of safety technology, I think you'll be disappointed to find that these regulations already exist, and it's unlikely that "sawstop" technology is going to benefit these locations at all. They already have a more abstract set of rules that's more comprehensive and compliance is driven by worker complaints and fines.
Finally, it should be an obvious coincidence to everyone that we only outlawed child labor once gasoline engines were well developed and prevalent. Our social reasoning that "children just shouldn't work" isn't as simple as everyone presumes it to be.
1 reply →
I'm a member of a local artisan's workshop, where a whole bunch of talented folks share shop space for woodworking, metalworking, and various other stuff. All the saws are SawStop - the difference in price just isn't worth it. When you look at the costs of a table saw installation - space, blades, dust collector, etc. - going with non-SawStop would only save a few percent on the total.
If you look on YouTube, almost all US woodworking channels remove the riving knife and blade guard. That just encourages new woodworkers to do the same. They then demo rabbit blades which are illegal in the EU due to being so dangerous.
I would be surprised if you see a moderately popular woodworker on YouTube that has removed the riving knife. Are you assuming that no blade guard implies that the riving knife is also not present? Yes a lot of people remove the blade guard but they then insert the riving knife. If they would make the safety pawls slightly better I think more people might leave the blade guard on.
Here's an example of a popular woodworker with no blade guard, (also no mask). Wood particulate is really something you don't want to breathe in...
At least he has the riving knife in place. But YT is a cesspool of bad safety habits when it comes to most crafts (welding, woodworking, plumbing, soldering and don't even get me started on electrical work).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPQVPUfSKo
1 reply →
"Rabbit" (dado) blades aren't illegal in the EU.
Why are Dado Blades Illegal in Europe and Is It Safe to Use Them?
https://www.toolsadvisor.org/why-are-dado-blades-illegal-in-...
1 reply →