[codemonkey]

The price difference isn't $80. My Grizzly cabinet saw retails for around $1100 today. The equivalent Sawstop saw retails for over $3000. When he couldn't convince other manufactures to include his technology, he built a high-end saw to market himself. That still puts the extra safety out of range for us lower-end consumers.

And the danger with table saws isn't carelessly putting your finger into the blade. The danger is kickback, where the saw violently throws the wood your cutting off the table, which can knock your hands about in unpredictable ways. Bandsaws and miter saws don't kick back. You can safely put your fingers very close to the blade (although a little less so with miter saws which do tend to push the wood around a bit as the blade enters the wood).

Of course, I wish I could afford one of his saws. I once put all four fingers of my left hand into a dado blade on my table saw due to kickback. I'm lucky to still have them.

[mechanical_fish]

That still puts the extra safety out of range for us lower-end consumers.

Yeah, alas, the $80 is the imaginary price difference that might exist in a world where every saw buyer thought as I do, leading every manufacturer to leap at the chance to license SawStop.

If the premium really were only $80 I might spring for the bandsaw version too, though I've used bandsaws many times and understand what you're saying about the relative danger. I just like being paranoid, when I can afford it. Just because a mistake requires you to be incredibly boneheaded or absent-minded doesn't mean it won't happen.

I can't necessarily blame the SawStop guy for building high-end saws that I'm reluctant to afford. I'm no expert on saw economics, but I find it easy to believe that there's no way to build a viable startup by trying to compete against the likes of Grizzly on price.

I will say, though, that every time I contemplate taking up woodworking without a SawStop saw I run into sentences like this:

I once put all four fingers of my left hand into a dado blade on my table saw due to kickback.

And then I start thinking about all the other hobbies I could be pursuing. Piano! Knitting! Electronics! Machining! (Which, if you do it right, doesn't involve a lot of kickback either. Wear those steel-toed boots, though.)

[wallflower]

> And then I start thinking about all the other hobbies I could be pursuing.

The feeling you get from taking pieces of raw lumber, shaping them, planing them, joining them (and yes shimming them), eventually turning the wood into something with form and function, through problem solving and love.

The feeling you get from seeing someone like and enjoy a piece of furniture you built as a gift.

Come to think of it, I think hobbies are about pursuing personal feelings. Not about the actual doing.

Even though, I've temporarily put woodworking on the back burner, I'm glad to see fellow woodworkers (coming-out-of cliche deleted). I still gawk at Woodcraft products. I still inspect the craftsmanship/joints of strangers' furniture (http://www.woodcraft.com/)

[mechanical_fish]

Oh, I may not resist the siren song of Norm Abram forever. We're just haggling over the price here. ;)