The Newbie Woodworker

My SawStop Saved My Thumb (pt. 1)

by Dan Thomas 1 min read

Older: "No scheduled blog posts until Mo..." Newer: "Woodworking and ADD"

Most of you who read this blog already know this from my social media posts, but yesterday I found out that my SawStop brake works just fine. I stuck my thumb in the blade, and BAM! the brake kicked in, and saved my thumb.

Well, the truth is, the blade was already spinning down, so I can’t say for sure how much damage would have been done without the brake. But, here’s what happened while I was taking the blade out, and this blade wasn’t even spinning:

Bled like a mutha too, even with a bandage.

The point being, blades are sharp, no batter how fast they’re spinning.

I’m not going to go into details in this post. I’ll do that in another post, when things have calmed down a little.

Here’s a few pics to tide you over:

Here’s all that happened to my thumb. Broke through one layer of skin. The thumb felt like it was burned.

Here’s what happened to the blade and the brake. Click the image to view full-sized:

Here’s how the brake is put together:

1) The blue spring, which is extremely strong, goes into the hole.

2) The brake hinges closed,

3) causing the metal tongue with the hole in it to go inside the spring.

When the brake is closed, there’s a pin that slides into the tongue’s hole, holding everything together.

So when the brake fires, it just yanks the pin out of the tongue, and the spring does all the work.

So I got a new brake at Rockler today, for $79 plus tax…

…and a new blade from Home Depot…

…checked my calibration, which is fine…

…and made a test cut, which was fine…

So, everything’s fine! Like I said, I’ll go into more details at another time.

Later.

Older: "No scheduled blog posts until Mo..." Newer: "Woodworking and ADD"

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