steve gass on national public radio

[tommyt654]

Quote from Vaking "but I would say that any table saw installed in a place where they teach woodworking needs it."

Thay's the most absurd thing I have ever heard. If folks practiced properly taught safety practices when using a tablesaw or any saw for that matter their would be no need for Sawslop and Gass. Simply placing one in ones shop does not guarantee you will not become injured. I think everyone knows where I stand on this issue ,but that was wrong. If only for the sake of safety we need to have his saw in a place that would teach you too keep your fingers away from the saw in the 1st place why bother to have one if only for teaching folks its OK to play with fire.

[LinuxRandal]

but I would say that any table saw installed in a place where they teach woodworking needs it. ...... It is a good insurance against cut fingers for a one-time fee of less than $1000.

do patents have a shelf life and at some point expire?

Yes, I believe it is still 20 years.

Quote from Vaking "but I would say that any table saw installed in a place where they teach woodworking needs it."

Thay's the most absurd thing I have ever heard. If folks practiced properly taught safety practices when using a tablesaw or any saw for that matter their would be no need for Sawslop and Gass. Simply placing one in ones shop does not guarantee you will not become injured. I think everyone knows where I stand on this issue ,but that was wrong. If only for the sake of safety we need to have his saw in a place that would teach you too keep your fingers away from the saw in the 1st place why bother to have one if only for teaching folks its OK to play with fire.

You missed the its good insurance part. There is a legal term which I can't remember at the moment, that will "mitigate your damage"s and liability. (if I actually remember the term correctly)
It would also lower your insurance, exactly due to that. At least the way I read that it was a cost verse risk analysis.

[tommyt654]

Well that would equate to a business primarily ,not a proper schooled education in the use of a tablesaw.If anything I would think its teaches little johnny that he can be less safe around that tool because it has a feature in it that will not allow him to become badly injured.A practice that IMO is bad advice across the board as it leads to lack of dicipline when using tools of this type. While I agree it might be great for insurance liability purpose's I have seen that most business's that are doing high capacity woodworking tend to go more with robotics than this anyways and I have seen quite a few of these saws aready on the market after they realised that the cost associated with replacement and downtime resulting from unintentional trips of the mechanism associated with things other than actual physical contact have put some back to the basics of skilled workers in place of the save us all from ourselves tablesaw in the workplace. It does in fact have its place in both the business world as well as schooling, but only because of the threat to society as a whole to save us from ourselves with fearmongering by types like Gass and the insurance industry. The days will come when it fails in its capacity to do what its intended for and fails as all modern technology does inevitably. In the meantime I'll keep pluggin along with my pushstick, guards and proper safety techniques that have left me with all 10 digits as god intended.

[JimD]

The key question I would love to ask Steve Gass with a lot of people listening is why he chooses to charge such an exhorbinet price for his patent and to totally disavow any liability if his invention does not work. I'd have to do a little work to remind myself of the numbers but I believe his demand is more than an order of magnitude more than is typical. If he wants to present himself as wanting to help people avoid injury then he needs to answer why he prices it beyond reason.

Another factor that works against his device is that the saws whose price would not be shifted hugely and whose structure could absorb the explosion of his cartridge probably need it the least. Most people buying a saw like a Unisaw have already used a table saw and often for a decade or more. To preserve their digits, they've learned to work safely. They are less likely to be injured so they need SawStop less. The saws that need it, the entry level saws, would be priced out of the market by what Gass wants to charge. Entry level saws also might be damaged including in ways that could injure the operator by the exploding cartridge. You could argue, however, that this same logic supports use of SawStop in teaching environments where the tools will be exposed to students who do not have the important experience. But the fact that the instructor presumably does, at least partially and arguably fully offsetts the student's inexperience. Many of us have proven over decades of experience that table saws can be operated safely without SawStops.

The other thing I find offensive about Mr. Gass's efforts is his attempts to force people to buy his device. The normal, free market way to sell your invention is to price it such that people agree to buy it. Mr. Gass wants a very high price so instead of pricing to the market, he tries to use the courts to force all of us to pay his price. That is just wrong.

Jim

[toolguy1000]

you know, i had the same feeling. but in checking the price of a 3hp 52" fence SS with a comparable unisaw i found the following:

http://www.burnstools.com/product/fe...=Google%20Base

http://www.google.com/products/catal...33&os=sellers#

both saws seem to be avaialble for around $3000, +or- some. now i don't enjoy the idea of someone trying to force somehting on me, but one could make the argument ( and it's an argument i am not making) that SS's aren't really exorbitantly overpriced when compared to other high end tablesaws.

but i still think the participants of the show i noted in opening this thread were one sided and relatively unfair in the depiction and discussion of the issue.

[jackellis]

A civics teacher in high school often reminded us that the New York Times included "all the news that fits the print', rather than the motto on its masthead, which reads, "All the News That's Fit to Print".

My skepticism about the press was reinforced after reading an article in the Economist that included distortions and misrepresentations about a recent large power outage in California.

Even the best news program has to tell a story.

As for Gass, I'd have to agree that if the man is really committed to helping the public, he should lower his royalties. What he clearly wants is a monopoly, which is typically frowned upon by the government.

[gnal41]

I stopped by Woodcrafters in Indianapolis over the holidays and a salesperson stated that SawStop TSs account for a majority of thier TS sales.

The two reasons I do not consider a SS is the price and size. I have both limited dollars and garage space. If the SS feature would be offered on BT3 type saws (size & cost) I might reconsider.

I have and use a shark guard and really try to be much more careful now that I'm a little (actually a lot) older and slower.

[conwaygolfer]

do patents have a shelf life and at some point expire?

If I am not mistaken - patents are only good for 7 years. At least it used to be. When McCulloch chainsaws came out with the single trigger on top of the handle, they had the market. After 7 years Homelite came out with their version.

Conwaygolfer

I stand corrected - just rechecked and it is 20 years if the patent was filed after 1995

[toolguy1000]

so all the tool companies have to do is wait out gass and try to keep his product from becoming legistlatively mandated until the patent expires.

[pelligrini]

According to an article in the Feb 2012 issue of Fine Woodworking he owns 70 patents. Gass said "I would guess that a little more than half our patents relate to Sawstop technology on tablesaws." That same article said he had the sawstop idea in 1999. It'll probably be a long wait for the patents to expire, and I'm sure there will be more patents as Sawstop improves their tech.

UL 987 which includes the standards for tablesaws was revised in 2005. Some of the revisions were to include a riving knife on all new models starting in 2009. All saws sold after January 31, 2014 shall have a riving knife.

What really gets me is that the current regulations haven't even played out and there have been no studies as to their effectiveness, yet the CSPC looks like it is willing to move forward with more regulations possibly including flesh sensing tech.