O D wrote:
Can some of you people that work with this kind of tools for a living ,
please tell me the advantage of this saw stop saw for about $3,000.? I
know it is only a 10" cabinet saw also. Right now we have a 12" delta
and 2 ea 10" unisaws. All three are 10-15 yrs old but work fine. Except
they will eat fingers if inserted. Our shop
(retirement community in fl) has the money to buy, but I am having a
hard time trying to convince myself to buy this. I have read all the
other stories on here about this saw , but nothing to make me say hey
"we need this, can't live with out it". Think someone said yes it will
stop the saw but will it cure the problem of why it stopped the saw.
Also do you have to buy the saw stop blades? How about the sharpening of
them? And there are questions that I am sure I don't know to ask yet.
Pig in a poke? All this and asking myself what we could get with the $3
Gs.
Some people see all the sales brochures and say they want it, but you
never see the mfg tell you the cons. So What are the cons. I know the
answers are here, just have to find them. Thanks all.

No, you don't have to buy SawStop blades. Any 10" standard blade will
do. (However, I have seen comment here on the wreck that the Freud
adjustable dado cannot be used, likely because it is marginally over 8"
in diameter at some, or all, width settings.) My Freud stackable dado is
fine.

Should the cartridge fire, you not only have to buy a new cartridge, but
also replace the blade which is destroyed in the process.

Changing from a standard blade to dado, or vice versa, takes an
additional 30 seconds or so.

The blade insert is complex and expensive and not easy to duplicate. So
far I have not seen any third party inserts for the SawStop for sale.
The dado insert is made of walnut and mine was badly warped on receipt.
The standard insert is phenolic - no problems.

The manual that comes with the saw is by far the most comprehensive I
have ever seen for a power tool of this level of complexity but it is
full of errors - annoying things like the index pointing to the wrong
page numbers, parts numbers missing from exploded view diagrams, etc.

The shiny black finish on the saw and extension table shows every bit of
sawdust. I'll leave it to you to determine if that is a plus on minus.

All in all, I am very happy with the saw.