Why I Bought a Laguna Table Saw over SawStop!

today on shop nation we debunked the myth that thou must have a saw stop to be a serious woodworker i'll tell you why i went with laguna and specifically why i chose to go against the green back to the shop i'm travis this is shop nation and in this video i just want to talk about why i chose to buy laguna over something like a sauce stop that you probably see a ton of here on youtube so for those of you who've been following my story you know that i recently just moved my shop from texas to ohio and in that move i became table solace so the story actually starts back then when i had my delta 36-725 contractor saw which i loved and it pretty much built everything in my shop and at a price point of just 599 dollars i'd say that's a pretty tough value to beat now is it perfect absolutely not the sheet metal wings not so awesome the maneuverability could be better and the dust collection so bad just bad but again that saw is just 599 dollars so pretty tough to beat but as time went on as my skill set increased and as i wanted to do bigger and better things i knew i wanted to eventually progress to a cabinet style table saw now unless this is your first woodworking video here on youtube you are probably very familiar with sawstop it seems like part of the woodworking channel initiation rituals is to buy a sawstop and showcase it in every single video that of course is in addition to also calling one of your projects ultimate i mean come on who would do that he well shoot now listen i will be the first to say that sawstop makes an amazing piece of equipment no doubt even if you take away the crazy cool innovative safety feature the saw is just built extremely well and if you don't know what the safety feature is in a nutshell it's witchcraft the saw blade carries a small electrical current and when it senses a minute change in that current like when it touches moist human skin moist an aluminum wedge is driven into the saw blade which stops and retracts the blade in something like five milliseconds saving your precious finger or hand from certain disaster then to get back up and running you just replace the blade the cartridge and probably your shorts and you can just keep on building really freaking cool and i can totally appreciate the engineering design that went into that the problem is is that it's pretty expensive like really expensive and here's where the armchair economists are warming up their typing fingers can't you calculate the monetization of your fingers or what is a handworth or do it for the children man i get it honestly i do i actually spent most of my engineering career calculating risk and understanding failure the problem i have with that though is that risk is comprised of probability and impact now impact is tangible it would suck getting your finger or your hand chopped off probably wouldn't die most likely but the long-term effects would be huge just think about how hard texting would be or pointing at a bird in the sky or not being able to do fart jokes with maybe your grandkids one day i'm kidding of course i'm making light of something that's probably pretty terrible but the probability piece on the other hand is a little bit harder to quantify now i can make the argument for example that people have been using table saws for decades without any safety features with an extremely small incident rate i guess my point is it's not necessarily for me at least a black and white issue where it's either right or wrong there's plenty of people out there using non saw stop branded saws who are totally fine so i've come to the unpopular opinion and conclusion that the exorbitant price tag just isn't worth it which brings me to my first major reason of choosing laguna over sawstop which is price shocker so here's the problem as soon as you get past the contractor type saw like my old delta table saw the price actually starts to ramp up pretty damn quickly that's because you're making the jump into the cabinet style table saw now cabinet table saws are typically a lot beefier they offer cast iron table and wings better fence options more rip capacity and offer higher horsepower options now on the lower end of the spectrum you'll find kind of the grizzlies and the shop boxes which are basically the same saw and then there seems to be an enormous price jump between that and something like a jet a saw stop or a powermatic that is unless you find laguna now full disclosure after i did all of my research and came to this conclusion of my own i actually approached laguna about a partnership in which they agreed and although i'm not sponsored by them we did reach some favorable terms in exchange for my opinion on the saw and featuring it in some videos now a lot of you out there especially woodworkers probably know of laguna already but i would bet it's their bandsaws they make an absolute killer bandsaw that is pretty well regarded within the woodworking community as one of the better ones that you can get but laguna just recently released a new line of table saws called their fusion table saws improving on the previous generation which i'll admit didn't really know much about so i started doing some digging on the saws and i was honestly kind of shocked with how little information i found on them especially given their low price point which is what attracted me to them in the first place now everything i saw on the laguna website about this table saw told a pretty compelling case on how this could be a serious contender for a saw stop replacement but as soon as i left the website to somewhere like youtube seeking others opinions i just didn't find the volume of information you can obviously about something like a saw stop now i'll admit this was pretty concerning initially but the more i thought about it the more it kind of made sense you see the fusion line of table saws specifically are still really new so there's probably just not that many units out there sawstop on the other hand is everywhere so a lot of attention is going to be naturally diverted there now when it comes to price the fusion f1 which is their base model starts at 9.99 and the price goes up to 2499 dollars for the f3 with the 52 inch rip capacity now in comparison sawstop starts at 1 699 and that's for their contractor saw which is their base model and the price goes all the way up to 4149 for a comparable three horsepower 52 inch rip capacity saw like the f3 now in reality sawstop offers some much larger models at over five thousand dollars but to keep the comparison apples to apples i'm going to ignore those now i bought the fusion f2 which is kind of right in the middle of their lineup and my saw retails for 1 399. now if i was to buy the equivalent saw stop specced out the exact same the price point would be three thousand seven dollars so over two times the cost and after doing my research i'm just having a really hard time believing that i'm getting two times the saw by going with sawstop and that just gives me kind of a funny feeling which brings me to the second major reason why i chose laguna over sawstop and that is i just don't like being told what to think now i don't know about you but i've always found it pretty unsettling that to be considered a serious woodworker or maker you have to drop three thousand dollars on a table saw that's a ton of money and most average people in their garage are not going to want or are even able to spend that much money on one tool and i'll say it again it's a fantastic saw there's nothing wrong with it i just can't help but think that there's a better option out there or at the very least a formidable alternative and this is exactly where i think laguna is positioned really well now if a grizzly or a shop box just doesn't give you the warming fuzzies a laguna for not much more is going to get you a really high quality piece of equipment which brings me to the third and final reason why i chose laguna over sawstop and that is the features now one of the biggest reasons for me going with the fusion f2 model is that it's wired standard for 110 volts now to be fair to saw stop they do offer this option as well on their professional cabinet saw but at over two times the cost just hard to swallow you can also of course wire this saw as well as a saw stop to 220 as well if you wish which is something i may do in the future because they just run so much better on 220 but i love the option of just running this on a standard 20 amp circuit in my garage the fusion f2 as well as f3 models have cabinet mounted cast trunnions now this is a really big deal for smooth operation and accuracy one of the most common tests to showcase this is called the nickel test in which you start your saw with a nickel standing on edge and hopefully it doesn't fall over well this saw pass with flying colors but i wanted to take it to that next level and try a quarter test which it also passed but my fingers were so damn cold it took forever to get the quarter to stand up but needless to say really impressed now the cabinets are also single piece and feature supposedly great dust collection now i haven't tested that myself yet but if the internet says it it must be true now the fusion f2 and f3 also come with standard over the blade dust collection which i thought was pretty cool i obviously don't have it on the saw yet okay now the fence on any table saw is one of the most important features of the tool and the one on the fusion is actually pretty cool it's what they call a european high low design which was a new term to me this aluminum extrusion can be removed and configured in a couple of different ways one of which is the high configuration which is what it's in right now but you can also take this off rotate it 90 degrees into the low position what that allows you to do is cut really thin material even veneers i thought this was kind of a cool feature don't know if i'll use it a whole lot but knowing that it's there it's pretty handy one thing i also thought is pretty cool is you can actually slide this extrusion back on the fence and use it as a stop when you're cutting with things like a miter gauge now in my old table saw when i wanted to do that i had to clamp some scrap wood back here so knowing that the fence can just do that directly is also pretty cool now to be honest i'm not sure how much i'm going to use any of those features but it's nice knowing that they're there worst case i can just always leave it in the high position like a regular fence this fusion f2 also comes standard with a 37 inch rip capacity for the record by default the saw stop comes with 30 inches and lastly although this is truly a cabinet style table saw the base is actually mobile if you look closely in the back here there's actually two wheels integrated on the inside of the cabinet that can actually be locked in place with those knobs so moving this saw around your shop is actually pretty easy and you don't need one of those funky mobile bases that you see a lot of saw stops mounted to and with the f2 weighing in somewhere around 350 pounds you'll be glad you have the wheels and that's it hopefully that was a helpful take on why i did the unthinkable and bought a non-saw stop table saw now i have not put this saw through its paces yet and i look forward to fully testing it i do plan on doing a full review on the saw but like my other tool reviews i only want to do that after i put some hours on it only then do i feel like i can give you my opinion on whether it's worth anything or not so i'd love to hear your thoughts on the comparison maybe the saw specifically or maybe something i failed to mention or recognize when comparing with the saw stop maybe you want to write me a 12 paragraph dissertation on what the value of a single finger is i'm game to hear it all leave those in the comments if you enjoyed the video go ahead and smash the like button if you want to see me use this thing on future projects hit subscribe thanks so much for watching i'll catch you guys next time and as always continue to pursue shop greatness you

Channel: Shop Nation

Views: 142,993

Rating: 4.8963413 out of 5

Keywords: shop nation, shopnation, Laguna versus sawstop, Laguna table saw, Laguna vs Sawstop, Laguna Fusion, Laguna F2, best table saw, table saw comparison, best table saw 2021, Fusion table saw, Laguna Fusion F2, Laguna F3, Laguna F1, sawstop professional cabinet saw, sawstop pcs, Sawstop, Laguna, Garage shop, Garage Woodshop, Garage Workshop, shop organization

Id: 5D2GM_Xq7wA

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021