I’m considering buying a SawStop table saw, but I worry about buying relatively new brands because I don’t know if they’re going to stay in business. Any thoughts on whether this company is likely to be around for a long time to come? Also any feelings about the product itself based on personal experience of using one?
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I was in A Woodcraft school last week. Asked the same question. They told me it was the most relaible and highest quality table saw they owned. I will be interested in what others say.
I can speak to this question for two reasons: we chose the SawStop as the best overall cabinet saw in our 2006 tool test and we purchased one for our shop.
Rather than summarizing the review, I'll just point you to that article on the Web and you can read the authors conclusions for yourself. There is also a summary review in our online Tool Guide here, where you can also find five reviews from users.
From personal experience I can say that the SawStop performs just as well as the Powermatic it replaced in our shop. The fence is smooth and accurate, the on/off paddle switch is in a nice location, it's quite and powerful, and the riving knife is a great safety feature that is easy to set and remove.
We've fired the cartridge twice since it arrived in the shop. Both times because the blade came in contact with aluminum. Each time that happened, we saw first hand just how responsive that safety feature is. Hopefully, we'll never have to test it on fingers.
I do have two issues that we've alerted the company about. The saw has a tendancy to accumulate fine saw dust in the motor housing, which causes two problems. When you take the blade off 90 degrees, you have to make sure there is no dust around the tilt mechanism when you move it back to 90, or else it will actually move it back to 89 degrees. The dust also gets packed around the riving knife and it can be hard to remove without pulling out the compressed air.
Matt Berger
Fine Woodworking
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