This comes after almost cutting my finger off 3 weeks ago (unrelated to seeing, hearing or breathing but the message still applies). Old piece of pine, 20 year old spray can red paint & v-bit.
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The best bit of advice I ever got in shop class was:
Visually count to 10 on your fingers by whispering to yourself while reviewing the entire operation step-by-step ā remember that you want to be able to repeat that count in the same way after the operation is complete, and adjust as necessary.
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Precisely why I bought a SawStop table saw. My Dad ended up only being able to count to 9 after getting in a hurry with a 2x4 and his old Shopsmith combo unit.
Iām going to make one of your reminder signs. Thanks!
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I had a Shopsmith that was a pretty good lathe. The table saw part was very scary to me.
How do you get the end grain to still show through with red paint?
I didnāt do anything special. Itās simply a piece of pine with some (very) old spray paint, 2 coats.
You can tell upon close inspection of the cuts that the paint bled into the wood 0.5mm or so.
Iāve told my wife i wonāt buy a new saw without this technology. Iām currently using the same tablesaw that put me in the emergency room 15 years ago getting skin grafts on my finger tips. Iām very very cautious now, but aware accidents are called accidents for a reason. Iām hoping beyond hope that the sawstop patent expiration next year will lead to price reduction, or more reasonably priced competition.
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Definitely not cheap, but Iāve been very happy with my sawstop experience. Just about a month ago, I had what I believe was a kickback that pulled my hand into the blade. I did lose a small amount of blood, but it would have been so much worse. I lost a tooth off of my 40 tooth Forrest woodworker 2 blade, but otherwise, it measured out dead on-thought I would have had to pitch the blade, but Iāll have Forrest fix it up for me. I had the saw back and ready to go after a half hour-did take a break to change drawers, think about things a bit. I had a spare cartridge on hand, but I did call sawstop to ask the best way to get the deal off the arbor-that took a bit of back and forth as it was somewhat stuck. Good news is that they send you a new cartridge free of charge if you send yours in and they determine it was set off due to skin contact. Paid $8 to ship it out, and I had a new $79 cartridge for free a week and a half later. The service guy was very enjoyable to talk to as well. Either way, Iām sold-instead of dealing with some lost time, fingers, and a lot of money, I had a bandaged finger and played baseball pass with my boy that night. Cool sign idea, Iāll be making one up!
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Was the blade you were using fully supported by sawstop? My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that the injury severity increases from something a little worse than a paper cut to a pretty deep cut depending on the type of blade. If itās a sawstop brand or one of their recommended blades, I thought it was āalwaysā the paper cut variety .
The only difference is certain blades with specific non-conductive coatings on the teeth may not be able to trigger the brake, any carbide/steel blade should be equally conductive for the purposes of the sawstop.
If you havenāt seen this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYLAi4jwXcs - itās the first time Iāve seen someone really throw a hotdog into the blade at speed, and it has great slo-mo footage.
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My understanding comes from threads like This
The anti kickback blades slow the blade stop process because there is less blade to grip, so your injury severity goes up.
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Thatās interesting, Iām not familiar with āanti-kickbackā blades so thatās certainly possible. I can see how blades with fewer teeth might have less engagement with the brake and therefore take longer to stopā¦but itās not totally clear to me why the anti-kickback blades would have a specific difference. If you look at the brake system, an extremely strong spring (I have an activated brake and I canāt compress the spring with my hands at all) slams a solid chunk of aluminum into the path of the blade, so itās not clear what difference tooth shape would make. Dado stacks are a different story since they have so much more mass relative to the area hitting the aluminum brake. In either way, I donāt claim to be an expert so itās interesting to hear about edge cases
The SawStop saw is a good saw first and then it has the added safety factor. However any hobby can injury you from playing cards to mountain climbing. The difference is exposure. If you haul feathers for a living the feathers do not pose as much of a danger if you hauling dynamite for a living. Both drivers are in danger of an auto accident but when the dynamite driver has an accident it can escalate very quickly. So every task has exposure and you have to calculate how much exposure you have and try to mitigate that danger.
Tablesaws, even SawStop, can be dangerous and life altering. If your SawStop was built by a guy that was out partying all night the night before you might not get the protection you thought you would get. So the best way to prevent the injury is to prevent the accident with careful planning and execution and hopefully you will never have to prove that SawStop works as advertised, I certainly hope it does but do not rely on that feature alone.
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Absolutely, just because you have seatbelts and airbags doesnāt mean you should drive recklessly. Kickback can be just as dangerous as the blade itself, my sawstop has indiscriminately thrown large chunks of wood in my direction more than once,.
Ahw, really? 
You mean like you opened the door to your shop and something flew by your head and hit the wall?
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Having no protection from something that causes harm (literally āexposureā) is one aspect, but that just affects the likelihood of injury. But I would have thought the severity of the potential harm (paper cut vs table saw) is the most significant difference, no?
edit: Seems I was just confused by the usage of the word āexposureāā¦ everything else in your comment makes perfect sense.