In our research we study a lot of Biblical images for their woodworking content – thank the someone that Jesus was a carpenter.
My favorite Biblical image is one that Jeff Burks sneaked into a working folder of images from the Middle Ages. When I saw it I almost sprayed a beverage out my nose.
I have no idea where this image came from, but it amuses me to no end. The saws. The hammer. The brace. All about 2,000 years BCE. I somehow lost this image and wanted to make sure it never went missing again.
For many years, I restored Karmann Ghias as a side hobby. I sold my last Ghia about four years ago for the same reasons I bought a SawStop table saw.
While I love the simplicity, beauty and build quality of a 1960s Karmann Ghia, I also appreciate anti-lock brakes, traction control, over-the-shoulder seat belts and (in theory) the airbags in a modern car. I’m willing to trade away some soul for safety.
I’ve now spent more than two-and-a-half years with a SawStop cabinet saw in my shop. I haven’t set off any blade-braking cartridges – either accidentally or on purpose. But I have pushed the 3 hp machine to its limits, plus I have the unusual perspective of someone who has worked on everything from an Altendorf down to the Ryobi jobsite saw that wounded Carlos Osario.
Bottom line: I like the SawStop a lot, but I think it could be better.
Most people buy the saw for its safety features, so let’s start there. If you are leery of the saw because you have to swap cartridges, get over that. It’s not even the slightest bit tricky; after a few months you will do it mindlessly, like brushing your teeth.
I love the riving knife and the easy way it locks in place. It hasn’t bent or gotten in the way once. For me and my work, this is the most important safety feature because it prevents your work from pinching the back of the sawblade.
The blade cover is OK. Its anti-kickback pawls give me fits because they can get in the way when you install the guard. Because of their length, you have to raise the blade quite high before you can sneak the saw’s throat plate in place. Or you have to lock the pawls up into the blade cover. And sometimes they come loose. I want to remove or shorten the pawls, but I swore to myself I’d keep the blade cover unmodified.
Trunnions and Guts My only disappointment with the SawStop is in the overall feel of the machine. When I bought this machine, I replaced a 1990s-era American-made Unisaw. And I have spent thousands of hours on a Powermatic 66 that was made in McMinnville, Tenn. Those are my baselines for cabinet saws.
The SawStop works and feels like a really well-made Taiwanese cabinet saw, such as a Jet, a high-end Grizzly or a General International. Overall, I’d say the SawStop controls move just fine, but they don’t have the heavy-iron feel of a Powermatic 66. If you’ve used only Taiwanese saws, you’ll be thrilled with the SawStop. If you come from heavy-metal roots, you’ll feel something is missing.
For the most part, the SawStop has kept its settings from August 2013 when I installed it in my shop. The table is still aligned perfectly (just checked it) with the blade. The fence (I have the cheap one) still works great. On lesser saws, the vibrations shake nuts loose and things go wonky. Not so on this machine.
The only downtime I’ve experienced with this saw has been when the blade-tilt mechanism failed. When returning the blade to 90° a stop collar came loose inside the machine and the tilt mechanism hung there like a broken arm.
I dug out the parts from the dust in the cabinet, cleaned them off and replaced them. Took 30 minutes.
The only other time the saw went down on me was when the switch decided not to cooperate. I suspect some dust got in there and wreaked havoc – that’s what dust does best. Blowing compressed air into the switch cleared things up and I haven’t had a problem since.
Speaking of dust, I have to give this saw the highest marks for its dust collection. The only saws I’ve seen with better dust collection cost more than a sports car. So congrats to SawStop for solving this long-time problem on cabinet saws.
In the End I’m difficult to please when it comes to machinery. Most home woodworkers will find the SawStop to be an incredible machine that will give them a lifetime of pleasure.
I wish it could be more. Perhaps a Powermatic 66 with the safety technology of the SawStop. Powermatic perfected – I’ll say it again, perfected – the 10” cabinet saw with the Tennessee-made 66. That high-water mark has yet to be met or eclipsed in my opinion.
I’d be happy to pay more for this mythical saw. Double the price and I won’t blink. I know enough about the modern machinery market to know this is a pipe dream. But I think someone should say it.
For those of you in the market for a table saw, I still think the SawStop is the only machine to consider. We’re not lizards; fingers don’t grow back.
— Christopher Schwarz
Notes: I’ve disabled comments for this post because I don’t want to drag this blog into the Table Saw Holy Wars. I purchased this saw at full retail, as I do every tool in my shop. We don’t take free or discounted anything here at Lost Art Press. Also, I have yet to try the Bosch Reaxx, but I’m not going to buy a jobsite saw.
A few customers have requested an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” to help decide if it’s a book that would suit them.
So I’ve assembled this short pdf. It includes the table of contents, the preface, the introduction and about half of the chapter on making a sawbench. This will give you a taste of the writing style, the book’s core ideas and the level of instruction in the chapters.
It’s difficult to prove a negative. So when readers suggested there was no such thing as a slant-top chest or container after this post and this one, I knew that the Internet would provide.
Indexer Suzanne Ellison turned up this interesting example from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It’s called out as a “desk cupboard,” and the evidence suggests it was elevated on a stand at some point in its history.
Check out the full description of the item and the dendrochronology stuff. It’s nice to see that some of the people at the V&A know their woodworking stuff.
So one example doesn’t prove that this was the item shown in the 14th-century images from the original post. But it does show – as always – that early woodworkers were capable of almost any furniture form we can conceive of today.
Last week I discovered the Balthasar Behem Codex of 1505 (also known as the Codex Picturatus), a compilation of the charters and bylaws of the guilds of Krakow written in German, Polish and Latin. The Codex includes an illustration for each guild, including a carpenter’s workshop and a cooper. Finding the Codex was significant for two reasons: I haven’t seen too many early woodworking images from Eastern Europe, and both images show women working alongside men (my two Polish aunts are cheering!).
In the carpenter’s shop a women is using a bellows to keep the coals under the glue pot warm. In the cooper’s scene a women works on a large cask and a younger women (possibly an apprentice) works on a small bucket. In several illustrations for other guilds women are also working alongside men.
In illustrations from Medieval and Early Modern Europe women (other than the upper classes) are usually seen doing the arduous work of the farm: working in the fields and tending to animals.
When women were portrayed in a woodworker’s shop they are spinning, doing needlework and tending to children. Often, a similar scene is of Mary, Joseph and a young Jesus.
Were the women of Krakow an anomoly? No, they were not. Women can be seen working as stonemasons, blacksmiths, bakers, as well as in the textile trades. The various crafts and trades were family businesses requiring the work of all members of the family. In 1405 in Christine de Pisan’s “Treasure of the City of Ladies,” she advised: the craftswomen…”should learn all the shop details so that she can properly supervise the workers when her husband is away or not paying attention.”
Some of the early research on the role of women and the work they performed in Medieval and Early Modern Europe concluded it was only supportive in nature, or work only done until marriage. These conclusions undervalued both women and the work they did, and these attitudes persisted well into the twentieth century. In the last 30 years a huge amount of research has been done to uncover the details of the daily life of Medieval and Early Modern European women. As more city registries and other archives have been made available, and as more researchers have delved into non-English archives, a very different picture of women (single, married and widowed) has emerged.
The family workshop was a mainstay of the economy and master craftsmen were expected, or required, to be married. The wife was expected to balance her activites between working alongside her husband, manage accounts and sales, oversee apprentices and journeymen and also manage the household. Being the wife of a craftsmen conferred status and reflected her value to the business. In some German records the wife of the master was noted, for example as, “die Frau Bäckerin” (the wife of the baker). Daughters and household maids also worked in the shop. In periods of high demand other women in the community would be hired to work.
Some records show daughters were apprenticed to their fathers although there were few formal provisions for recognizing their apprenticeships as there were for boys. A daughter who had worked in her father’s craft was often viewed as more “marketable” as a wife.
City records and other archives in Spain, France, Germany and England have revealed women working with their fathers or husbands as masons, capenters, doormakers and other crafts in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Women have been documented working on stone and wood structures as day laborers on construction sites.
One of the reasons early reseachers did not recognise the full extent of women working in male-dominated crafts was how women were noted in the records. Women might be documented with their father’s or husband’s name or in terms such as mulier, mullyer, dona, femme or wench. Medieval and Early Modern writers were also largely silent on women’s employment. A woman being fully engaged in an artisan’s workshop or working outside the home did not fit in the conservative and religious views of the the proper role of a women. As for the visual record of women working one has to consider who commisioned the illustrated manuscripts and seasonal calendars and their purpose. The patrons were usually aristocratic and religious figures that were paying for an idealised view of the their estate or world, not an historical documentation.
Another consideration as to why there are few women shown working in male-dominated occupations is the persistence of viewing women as dangerous, polluted and ruinous. An example of this is the blacksmith’s wife. As the story goes (and there are variations) the blacksmith was asked to make nails for the crucifixion of Christ. When he refused, his wife said she would make the nails. The image below is from the Holkham Bible (1327-1335) in the collection of the British Library. This is one of the more destructive images of a woman, as she is engaging in a man’s work, she is enabling a reprehensible act and it has helped perpetuate anti-Semetic ideas. What is factual, is women made nails and otherwise worked in the smith’s shop as part of contributing to the family business. Women continued to make nails as a means of income well into the 19th century.
In a few days or so I’ll continue this short series with the topic of women and the guilds. In the meantime consider this….at the end of the 14th century Giles de Benoyne was allowed an additional apprentice by the founder’s guild of York “because he had no wife” (he was likely a widower).
In 1889 the Balthasar Behem Codex was published in the original languages with black and white illustrations, additional commentary in German and you can find it here.
