Andy Pratt
04-20-2008, 4:41 PM
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
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