Getting in Touch With Our Inner Europe

I think I was in the DeWalt booth when I suddenly felt the tide turn.

One of the company’s product managers was explaining the new guard on the DeWalt jobsite table saw. It was one of the new riving-knife-based guards that all the manufacturers are installing on their machines to comply with new government standards.

“This guard is so easy to use,” the product manager says, “the user won’t have any excuse or reason not to use it.”

And with that he installed all three components of the guard on the saw in less than 17 seconds (I timed him).

When I say the tide turned at that moment, I mean that at that moment I realized how many times I had heard that same speech , and almost those same words , used by other manufacturers as they introduced their new European-style guards during the last 12 months.

Bosch, Delta, Steel City, Grizzly and Jet have all been eager to show off how easy their new guards are to use. Whereas during the last 13 years I’ve covered the industry, usually the guard was discussed like this: “And there is a clear plastic guard.”

Those old guards, which were required by government regulations, were practically useless (as we all know). And they’re rarely used. Heck most people probably couldn’t find their table saw’s guard hiding somewhere in their shop.

But now suddenly a safe saw is a selling point. Wow. That’s a big change. As I began to look around a bit, I realized that many European-style tools are now infiltrating our American shops. Don’t believe me?

In the last three years Festool has gone from being a niche toolmaker to a company that makes the tools that everyone wants to beat. The Festool Domino, a feat of European engineering, is probably the most visible evidence of this. But you also see other clues: DeWalt is introducing two plunging circular saws to compete directly with the Festool TS 55 EQ.

Last year Jet Tools introduced a new European jointer/planer , and this year is introducing another version of that machine with a helical cutterhead. SawStop has always used European guarding on its saws and has successfully used safety as a selling point , and the company just continues to expand.

Even Grizzly Industrial , long a mainstay of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturing , has been putting down some Teutonic and Italian roots. Parts of some of Grizzly’s sliding table saws come from Germany and Italy. And right now, there are four Grizzly products that are made in Germany, including a sliding table saw and a wet sharpener. Plus the company is introducing more European-style machinery that is designed in Germany but built in China.

So what does this mean for U.S. woodworkers? Good things, for the most part. I’ve seen what Festool is planning on introducing to this country in the coming years, and a lot of it is exciting stuff. Plus, I’ve been in European workshops and can say they are safer and healthier places to work.

But the tools are more expensive (usually because of the quality). And I find that many of their machinery setups are more complex than ours (mostly because they use the guards properly).

So as the DeWalt’s new table saw guard clicked back into place onto the top of the saw I concluded a couple things: American woodworkers are due for some changes in the way we work. But I also bet that as Americans, we’ll find a way to mix the Budweiser with the Beaujolais to suit our tastes.

– Christopher Schwarz