Practical test: sawstop with wet wood

[Andy Pratt]

A number of people have voiced concerns about using a Sawstop with wet wood, so I'm posting this to offer my results from a project I just did. While I have always used it without concern on damp wood, I had never tried it with truly soaked wood.

Recently, I had to cut a few cedar 2X4s that had been sitting out in the rain for a while (open stack at a lumber yard), and were wet through to the middle. I was a little worried about the brake tripping, but wanted to know the limitations of the saw for future use. I brought the wood indoors (raining at the time) and let it sit about 12 hours so there was no standing water on the surface.

Before the cuts, I touched the wood to the stationary blade to test it, and the system read "green" (no issues). I then touched metal to it and it read "red" (brake would fire if saw was running), this was just to make sure something wasn't wrong with the system. I made a total of 8 rip cuts on four 24" sections of 2X4, essentially cutting a 1"X2"X24" block out of each piece. The brake did not fire, nor did the saw turn itself off, everything functioned normally.

My intention with posting this is to help people with a sawstop to not be worried about cutting wet wood (possibly turning off the safety feature when they don't need to), and for people without one to not mark that worry as a reason not to get one. If anyone has a contradictory experience, please post it so that I'm not leading anyone in the wrong direction if my case is a fluke and this is a bad idea.

Andy

[Cary Swoveland]

Thanks, Andy. That's good to know. Cary

[Steve Gass]

Andy,

I just want to clarify one point of confusion in your posting. Touching the blade with a piece of wet wood will not tell you whether or not it would trigger the brake if you cut it. Although the 'error code' displayed is contact detected in standby, that isn't quite what is going on inside the cartridge.

The cartridge is always monitoring the signal on the blade to try and see if anything is contacting the blade - even while the blade isn't spinning. Part of the reason it does this when it isn't spinning is to prevent you from touching the blade and then turning on the saw while you are already in contact with the blade. Because the brake will not fire if the blade is not spinning, the cartridge uses a far more sensitive threshold to determine if something is touching the blade while it is stationary than when it it spinning. Therefore, just because you may get the contact detected during standby error code when you touch the blade in standby with a piece of wood, doesn't mean that it would actually trigger the brake if you were cutting that same piece of wood.

The only way to know for certain if a given peice of material would trigger the brake is to cut the material - either in bypass or normal mode. If you are using normal mode, obviously the brake will trigger and you will know. However, that is kind of an expensive test, so the cartridge lets you do the same thing in bypass. If you run the saw in bypass, the cartridge will still be looking for contact - using the exact same sensitivity it would in normal mode. If it detects contact while cutting in bypass, it will start flashing the red light in addition to the green light. Therefore, if you just look down at the LED's after finishing the cut but before turning the motor off, you can tell whether or not the brake would have triggered if you were not cutting in bypass.

Keep in mind that it is always a good idea to watch to see if contact was detected when you are cutting in bypass. This will allow you to determine whether or not you really needed to be in bypass or not - hopefully maximizing the time spent not cutting in bypass.

Steve Gass
SawStop LLC

[Chris Padilla]

Great info, Steve, and right from the "horse's mouth"!! Can't do any better than that! :) Thanks for your participation as always and congrats on a fine saw!

[Andy Pratt]

Thanks for the response steve, I really appreciate you taking the time to monitor the forum and help people out with your product. That speaks well for your company and is in keeping with the impression I've gotten from the quality of the saw. I didn't even think of running the saw in bypass and checking the lights after as a test, that's certainly what I'll try the next time I have a questionable material I'm working with. Good to know on the sensitivity difference between a stationary and runnning blade, that make sense.

Andy