Table Saw Safety

I haven’t kept an exact count, but I would venture to guess that table saws have been responsible for more lost fingers among people I’ve known than any other power tool—or anything else, for that matter. After writing about DIYers and safety the other day, I came across this YouTube video featuring a fellow named Steve Gass and his creation, the SawStop table saw.

The SawStop is a fully functional table saw that is equipped with a blade that stops turning the moment it senses a conductive item, such as a human finger, nearby. The SawStop folks created quite a buzz a few years ago demonstrating their saw’s functionality by using a hot dog as a surrogate thumb. It was quite remarkable to see this blade, spinning at 5,000 rpms, stop in 1/1,000 of a second, just before the hot dog got close enough to scratch.

But hot dogs aren’t fingers, and I guess the SawStop crew decided they needed to provide visual prove that their product would work just as well under a more real-life test. It did, I’m happy to say, but I still cringe each time I look at the video.

The SawStop Web site offers a gallery of fingers that were saved by this remarkable machine, usually sporting just a very small cut.

Photo © AMagill