Totally up to the wording of the law. If you read that one, it specifically forbids "selling or offering for sale"- it says NOTHING about using, making to use, importing for use, etc. There MAY be a law on the books banning that as well, of course.

I think the sale of petro-based compound is banned to keep it out of the landfills. We could make our own compound, but then we'd have to dispose of it properly -- it can't just get chucked into the trash. The PCA actually says you can burn it in an "approved burning device", which is pretty easy (http://www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/w-hw4-32.pdf). Waste-oil forge, anyone?

waste oil forges don't tend to do well with sawdust.... although there are blast furnaces using powdered fuel, the junk from the floor is NOT going to improve burn quality, and gonna offgas some nasty stuff.

so, unless we wanna come up with a more "natural" product to use ourselves, i think it's gonna be easier and cheaper to buy.

Ummm, sure, but I'm thinking many won't understand it's a "lesson" and might just think "oh hey, let's chuck some things into the wall, someone else did it."

This is a fine-line, gray-area type thing, but I agree. It'd be different if somebody mounted it ON the wall, as sort of a trophy, y'know, because hey look, we WORE OUT a carbide-toothed sawblade. Pounding it INTO the wall sends a different kind of message.

Say we had a camera crew come in to do a segment on us for a local TV news bit. How would it look then?

wearing out a carbide tooth blade is rarely something to be proud of. outside of a professional daily use tool it tends to mean it's been abused, which this particular blade probably was.

it was abused (or the saw failed) in such a manner to seriously damage the safety mechanisms of the saw such that it could have injured someone operating or near the saw when it happened. while it's improbable that the blade could come free and imbed in the wall, carbide chips moving at thousands of feet per second were ejected and that's a bit less obvious to leave stuck in the wall.

Um, not sure what your point is, here.

TC Maker / Hack Factory isn't "professional", you know, we're all enthusiastic amateurs. We make, we share, we learn. And yes, there's plenty of learning to be done.

My point was, I don't think it looks good to anyone who might not already be "one of us" to walk in and see what appears to be somebody's dangerously reckless temper tantrum. It looks thrown, ninja-star style. I know that's NOT how the sawblade ended up in the wall, but only because I had the gall to ask, and luckily somebody who knew the circumstances happened to be there to answer. (And I believed them.) If it was the property owners, or Kare 11, or somebody from Springboard, or the City of Minneapolis... what kind of impression are we trying to make?

If you want it to stand as a reminder of what not to do, how not to treat a sawblade, then heck, frame it & add a cautionary plaque.

If they want to know they can ask, it makes a good ice breaker.

Let's not be nannies.

It might be more poignant if we had a bust statue or something and put a saw blade in that, with a cautionary plaque.

Why don't you start a committee to work on that.

Members are allowed to add character to the space, do we need to correct everything?

I think a saw blade sticking in the wall is pretty freakin' poignant, the controversy is part of it. It's a hacker-space, not kindergarten.