On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:50:25 -0500, "Upscale"
wrote:


"Dave Hall" wrote in message

Being a commercial user with a number of units at different locations,
I assume that you did some sort of internal evaluation of the
probability of this company staying in business for a reasonably long
period of time to provide parts and service.

Are you a commercial user with injury insurance? If so, what are you going
to do if your insurance company refuses to insure you unless you buy one? Or
at the very least, what will you do if your premiums are greatly increased
unless you buy one?

Aside from the moral aspects of using a SawStop which goes a long way to
preventing the loss of fingers, I believe Lee Valley adopted SawStops mainly
for insurance reasons. If it costs a business money *not* to use a SawStop,
then there's only two solutions and that's either to buy or go into a
different line of business.

This is not an attack of any sort, just an observation with limited choices
for choosing a business direction.

Well, as I noted in my post, I have a Shopsmith and don't have room
for a SawStop even if I wanted one. However, I am the business manager
for a public school district with a couple of shop classes and several
(very old) cabinet saws. I deal with the insurance company (both
liability and workers compensation - as well as property, auto and all
the rest) seemingly every day. Not once has the concept of a Sawstop
been mentioned. There has not been any indication whatsoever that
there would be so much as a penny drop in our insurance bill should we
replace all of those (very old) cabinet saws with SawStops, let alone
a threat that our insurance would be outright canceled. This is
probably fortunate because if tomorrow some gov't agency mandated that
we replace those saws with new $3,000 saws it is likely that the shop
classes would simply go away and we would get yet another space for
pottery classes. ($3,000 for a kiln, no biggie. $3,000 for a tablesaw
and the world is ending).

Be that as it may, if the company fails to establish a viable business
model - and to me one high end tablesaw as the entire company's
product line is not a viable business model - I would have some
concern as to the long term viability of the company and the saw. If
the saw was a major factor in the continuing operation of my business
that would give me cause for concern.

Dave Hall