“You’ll never regret buying more power than you need!” Yes, but…

When I visited with the person who made me the woodworker I am to day for what I knew would be the last time, he reminded me that he was counting on me to extend the life of his prized basement workshop full of tools and machines. With one exception: the table saw.

You see, my Uncle Tom started acquiring hand tools, power tools and big machines like lathes, band saws and drill presses in the 1970’s and 1980’s. While most of the bigger machines, if bought today, are largely the same as they were forty or fifty years ago, the advances in safety features of some machines - like table saws in particular - must be mind blowing for some who were around when houses sold for roughly the same price back then as some 4’ x 8’ CNC machines sell for today!

Our last chat started and ended with shop safety., While he would rest easy knowing that his tools wouldn’t be sold for pennies on the dollar by a grieving widow when he passed (oh, the stories I’ve heard about estate sales!), my uncle had one very important request: that I sell his powerful General cabinet table saw and replace it with a SawStop table saw. My daughter was five years old back then, and he knew I’d one day want to work with her in my shop as I once wanted to work in his with him. His saw had no safety features - not even a riving knife - and he had done his research and knew that SawStop had special technology within each and every machine that would turn a potentially life altering injury into a mere incovenience (albeit a fairly expensive one - but for those who don’t have universal health care like we do here in Canada, $250 for a new brake and blade is bargain that can’t be overlooked in the grand scheme of things).

Sure, I thought. Had he looked at the price tags associated with SawStop table saws? He was right, though. And while I more than cringe at the thought of my daughter getting hurt (or worse) ripping a board in my shop, I thought of myself - the main breadwinner in my household - as I work with my hands every day at my full-time job, and I couldn’t afford to lose a finger, a hand or worse…. when it can, for the most part, be completely avoided.

But which machine should I buy? Contractor Saw? Cabinet Saw? 1.75 horsepower? Three? Five?! Virtually everyone (who seem to know everything) on the Internet or in Facebook groups almost in unison would shout “you’ll never regret buying more power” at the top of their lungs and sneer at anyone who would dare offer a contrasting opinion. Most salespeople basically said the same thing - except for one guy at a store in Ottawa’s east end., Like Ren Molnar used to say on his radio show, I’d always look for the oldest member of a sales team in a hardware store, hoping he (or she!) might use actual experience when formulating a response from a potential client on the sales floor. I found that one guy.

He told me that my research was pretty much spot on. He said that unless I had planned on running my table saw forty hours a week for weeks or months on end AND I had been planning on running two, three or four inch thick hardwoods through it over and over again, odds were I’d be just fine with the contractor saw AND I wouldn’t be disappointed with the 1.75 hp version of it.

If bought today, the difference between the saw I have and the professional cabinet version is roughly $1,400 or $2,200 more - plus tax - than the machine I bought. So that same guy at that store told me to think about the savings… or of another machine or two (or four!) I could buy by sticking with the one we both figured I’d be more than OK buying.

So I bought the 1.75 hp contractor saw, and almost four years later, I can say that I haven’t regretted it one bit and never once have I been unable to rip or cross cut anything I brought into my shop for use in a project. And I’m not talking about 3/4” thick pine here… purpleheart, bloodwood, hard maple up to a few inches in thickness have all been handled with ease - though there was one time a particularly gnarly board caused my table to shut itself off because it was binding something fierce… but the tension in that board was incredible and likely would have made bigger and more powerful motors moan a bit. I reset the machine and ripped the board in a couple passes and I was done. THAT WAS THE ONE TIME my saw protested…. and a mild protest it was.

I know I won’t convince everyone - why not go for the industrial cabinet saw with the 7.5 hp motor while you’re at it? It might be worth more than some folks’ cars… but why not, eh?

Not everyone has the unlimited budget that people on the internet pretend to have. Take it from me - re-read what that older gent at the store told me and ask yourself if you need to spend $2-10k more than you really need to. You won’t see this opinion very often out there in the wild, but it’s just that… an opinion… but it’s one backed up with a good amount of experience. I plan on using this table saw for another four years…., and if I’m lucky, another forty years.

All I ask is that you give it some serious thought before possibly spending more than you need to. And for what? So you can brag about it and shame those who bought a “lesser” machine in online forums? Stick to making sawdust instead, please. And have fun making it!