SawStop

And so kind of like when you put in barriers or mitigators or controls in a system, Every time you put a control in a system, you can guarantee that that control will in fact be used eventually as a production advantage.

The example I think of all the time is if you bought a SawStop, right? That's the machine that if it senses human skin, it puts a dog in the blade and stops it.

That technology has been around a while.

It's really interesting and it's really changed.

Obviously, they're not a sponsor or anything.

I will say SawStop had the best customer service I've ever had in my whole entire life.

Within minutes, I was on the phone with a person that knew my exact saw.

And they're like, they're our exact saw.

the unifence.

Yeah.

And it's weird because I'm telling you, like, by every metric, the SawStop on paper is a better saw.

But there's something about cutting with that unisaw where it's like, oh, this feels like extra

he, whomp

whomp, ultimately ended up making his own line of saws, which are called the SawStop saws.

And high school shop classes, he said, are some of his biggest customers because they don't want the liability because they're dealing with stupid high schoolers who maybe don't take off their ties.

But it sells worse to just amateur woodworkers.

And I actually talked to a product safety expert, a guy who teaches this at an engineering school.

And I told him about SawStop.

He says, oh, that sounds great, but I do some woodworking and I wouldn't buy it because of the cost.

And that's the product safety expert, but the risk is less.

In Orlando, Florida, the Fall Extravaganza runs October 30th and 31st.

They'll have reps from Festool, SawStop, Rikon, and Kreg, plus Rob Cosman-

Ooh

... doing hand cut dovetail demos.

This thing does run $1,000, though.

And if I'm being honest, if I'm going to pick a $1,000 job site table saw, probably just going to get the SawStop myself.

But it's powered, corded, not cordless.

So I guess it depends on if you need a cordless table saw.

What are you going to play? I'm just going to, Steve's going to go and play with his new apples.

So I see, last week I said I got an email about SawStop reducing the price of a saw by £2,000 because they've quit Europe.

That's why.

Are they quitting Europe already? They're quitting Europe already, mate.

Yeah, could be, yeah.

Um, yeah, that's, that's too bad.

I mean, I haven't, I haven't been, uh, when I bought my table saw, if SawStop was in Europe, I probably would have gotten a SawStop.

Yeah.

Anything special going on at IWF? Uh, there was a lot of, of course, announcements, uh, for new tools.

Uh, you know, SawStop released their new band saw- Band saw ... with the braking tech- yeah, braking technology.

Uh-huh.

Which, one of the safest tools in the shop.

So I said to my wife, I says, "I know unit two is gonna become available." So I said, "It probably makes sense that I take over unit two, but if I take over unit two to put the wood in there, I don't know that I can sell enough wood to really justify paying the rent, and all the utilities, and all that stuff for another space.

I think we would need to do something more than just wood." And she goes, "Well, what, like what?" I said, "Well, we, we wanted to sell sheet goods, and we didn't really have the space for it." I said, "I think I would bring in sheet goods." I said, "But I, really, I think we should try to sell tools." And I said, "If we're gonna sell tools, it would have to be the tools that I know, and, and understand, and can s- you know, s- stand behind." And I said, um, "It would have to be like Festool, SawStop, Shaper," all the tools that I was already using in my shop so that I could talk intelligently about the tools as the people came in.

And, uh, so that's what we did.

We started having conversations with Festool, um, SawStop.

Shaper was a little hard to get ahold of 'cause they're, you know, th- they're smaller, so it was hard to get somebody on the phone right away.

Mm-hmm.

But we started with Shaper, SawStop, and Festool.

Um, SawStop bought in quicker.

So that was cool.

A couple other things from IWF is SawStop announced or unveiled a new bandsaw with their SawStop technology in it.

So that is kind of cool.

I think that's coming in 2027.