The Riddle of the Table Saw

(Note: this article will appear as part of my newsletter Fabrication First. As a Patron, you already get all the Fab First content, and you get it early.)

For many of us the story is the same. You want to become a woodworker, so you go down to the home improvement store and buy a table saw. Maybe you stop for a moment and look at the hand saws, but these cheap tools with their neon-yellow handles don’t look capable of good work. No, you’ve watched the videos and you’ve seen the effortless, clean cuts that a table saw delivers. It’s obvious: this is a precision tool. It’s the basis for a whole shop that will turn out crisp, strong furniture. You buy the best you can afford.

At home, you set the tool up and make your first hesitant cuts. Right away, some things make you a little nervous. That blade guard seems safe, but it’s a clumsy design and it gets in the way. Maybe it needs to come off. Some of those rip-cuts put your fingers awfully close to the spinning blade. Maybe you stop and make a push-stick. Maybe there’s a little accident. You catch a kick-back in the chest. There’s a bruise and a good story there. As you use the machine, you become more skillful and more confident.

The more you read and watch videos about your saw, the more you realize how much it can do, how much potential it has. You build a cross-cut sled and ditch that flimsy miter gauge. You make a miter-jig with toggle clamps. You can’t afford a powered jointer yet, but there’s a jig for that too. You buy a dado stack. Suddenly, you’re plowing cabinet joints into poplar boards and sheets of plywood. You’re knocking together bookshelves and cupboards. Maybe you cut your first tenons and, with the help of a router, you plunge some mortises. There’s a lot of fiddling and testing on scrap, but when that first joint slides home, when it gives you the resistance of tight surfaces that  squeak together and that shoulder line closes up….well, damn.

It’s happening. You are a woodworker.

Now, you are obsessed with the craft. You subscribe to the magazines, you buy all the books, you devour videos late into the night until your (suddenly) grumpy spouse orders you to bed. Clearly, it’s time to find other people who understand, other people who can teach you. You join a woodworking club.

The other guys in the club are pretty old, but that’s a good thing. They’ve been woodworking for decades and they have so much to show you. Once a month, the club organizes a shop-tour and everyone crowds into someone’s detached, two-car shop. You’re still working in a shed or corner of the basement and you can’t believe all the space some people have. And every shop you visit is organized the same way. Right in the middle, at the center of the action, sits a massive, cast-iron precision beast of a table saw.

You are on the path. All is well.

There is one guy in the club who you don’t understand. He talks a lot about hand tools. He tries to get the other guys interested in this thing called a “shave-horse”. You haven’t talked to him much, but apparently he works by hand. He doesn’t even own power tools. But this guy is younger than you. He has dreadlocks and you once saw him carving a spoon. Ignore this guy.

You know what you’re going to do. Your current tools will build Adirondack Chairs. You can sell these to your neighbors. Your brother-in-law buys four. The sales finance new tools. You get a bandsaw, a thickness-planner, a dovetail jig. You find your true passion: Arts and Crafts furniture. You discover Gustav Stickley and the Greene brothers.  How did you not know about these amazing designs? They’ll fit right into your house. All that Ikea crap is going in the trash. You will build the end-table, the cabinet, and (take a breath) the Morris Chair. And on. And on.

From here, the story can branch in all sorts directions. Maybe you just push ahead with the route you’ve chosen, getting deeper and deeper into the styles and techniques you love. Maybe that kid with the dreadlocks will finally convince you to try a hand plane and you’ll slowly bring some hand tools into your shop. As you go the “hybrid” route, your work only improves and you find some moments of startling peace when the machines are quiet and the shavings fall onto the concrete floor. But that’s just detail work. Most of the real cutting still happens at the table-saw.

And let’s face it. You might cut off a finger.

This is where my story gets dark, but it’s a true story. There are somewhere around 30,000 table saw injuries per year.  Obviously, many of these are mere nicks or cuts that need a few stitches. They aren’t all imputations. Calm down.

Or maybe you shouldn’t calm down. Maybe you should be really concerned about the machine you’ve built your shop around. I know, you don’t trust statistics. Can we really rely on the Nanny State to tell us the truth? I mean, who do you actually know who’s had a table saw accident?

Jimmy DiResta 

Sam Angelo 

Mathias Wandell 

Me 

Of course, these injuries aren’t all the same. Mathias barely nicked himself. Jimmy took his pinky completely off. Sam lost part of three fingers. I blew apart the tip of my thumb. These aren’t all life-changing catastrophes, but some of them are. Anyone who says these machines aren’t dangerous is flat-out lying. And it’s true, most of these injuries are caused by some form of operator error. But what does it take to make that error? A bad judgment? A little lost focus? A loud noise that makes you jerk? Who doesn’t have these things happen? Who keeps perfect focus and makes the right decision 100% of the time?

But don’t stop reading.

I’m not some hand tool fanatic preaching the pre-industrial gospel. I own the power tools. I use them. I’ve had the injury and been to the hospital and done the recovery and I didn’t scrap all my machines in disgust.

Here’s what I really think: the woodworking industry and woodworkers themselves are shockingly dishonest about these machines. Tool companies often pay lip service to safety, but it’s rarely a feature of the tools they sell. Woodworking magazines regularly publish photographs of woodworkers posed casually at dangerous machines wearing little or no safety gear. Everyone is selling an image: relaxed, effortless precision.

And that’s the problem. Table saws to really do deliver what they promise. The low-end models are rickety widow-makers, as likely to take off your thumb as cut a piece of wood. But even mid-priced machines will rip and cross-cut hardwoods and sheet goods with stunning accuracy.

The accuracy is the real point.

Machine tools are always sold as time-and-effort savers. You harness the power of electric motors to save the hours of grueling effort ripping and dimensioning your stock. And it’s true, they do that. But the other, deeper allure of these machines is that the precision is built into the machine, not the user. No one wants to hear this, but the machine-only woodworker cannot produce precision without these machines. Of course, that’s part of the allure.

Your first cut on a table saw will be perfect. Really. The tedious work of acquiring a hand saw and learning to use it is unnecessary. The machine will do it and you will be free to think about proportion, design, artistic expression.

I appreciate everything that these machines offer. I’ve used them in my own shop and in professional settings. And it’s true that most commercial woodworking operations would be instantly bankrupt if you took away the machines. Custom cabinetry and bespoke furniture require machine tools to be profitable.

And don’t we want to be as close as possible to these professionals? Isn’t that the goal?

Not for me. I am a hobbyist. I’ve been a professional and I hated it. Thanks to the Internet, I blundered my way into a career where I produce small-scale hand-made furniture and still knock out a living. I guess you could say that I’m a “professional hobbyist.” My job is to make a woodworking accessible and fun.

People are busy. They have limited shop time. If they can buy a machine that lets them get straight to work and produce real pieces of furniture, then shouldn’t they just do it? Shouldn’t we all just buy the table saw and get on with it?

This is the riddle.

For many people, machine-based work is ideal. Machine craftspeople do great work and most of them do it faster than I do. I’m slow. I make a handful of pieces each year, almost entirely with hand tools, and much of my work is simple. But I enjoy my time in the shop. I rarely wear protective gear and my workspace is quiet.

More than that, I have begun to train my eyes and hands to produce the precision that I used to get from machines. Give me a hand saw, a decent plane, and a shooting board and I will produce a cross-cut every bit as good as your table saw. But it will take me longer and I spent years developing the skills to do this. Maybe you don’t want to do that. I understand and you’ll get no judgment from me.

But we need to be honest about what we do. You might make amazing furniture with machines, and you might be lost without them. You might spend your time and your money on ever bigger and more precise power tools. But then, the precision is in the tools. It’s not in you.

We should be honest about that.