Index finger vs. table saw [Archive]

bkhooper

Mar-18-2008, 8:04pm

This past weekend I was ripping a fairly narrow piece of spruce for some dreadnaught X-braces on my table saw. I was using a push stick from the back side with my right hand and steadying the side of the wood with my left hand. I was concerned about making sure that the small piece did not kick back and for some stupid reason moved the index finger of my left hand into the blade. Luckily, I had set the depth of the blade properly and it just cleared the stock so the cut wasnt nearly as bad as it could have been. A trip to the emergency room, 7 stitches and a lesson learned, I am back in the shop but I just wanted to post this as a warning to all the builders on the cafe.

Like most of you I am sure, I have grown up around woodworking machines and was taught by my father and his father that they must be respected. I believe however its possible to create a very dangerous situation when you fall into a comfort zone with your machines and then become careless. This is without a doubt what happened to me.

The picture I have posted is of a small drop of blood on my workbench that is directly behind my table saw and will be left "as is" in my shop to serve as a reminder to me in the future. I thought perhaps the picture may also remind some you folks to also think twice before flipping the "on" switch.

thks, ken hooper

MML

Mar-18-2008, 8:10pm

Glad to hear you still have all your digits. Thanks for the words of advice. For me all power tools are scarry, I like using hand tools whenever possible.

sunburst

Mar-18-2008, 8:11pm

Glad you didn't get it worse than you did!
A "wood shop" teacher once told me that the two groups of people most often injured by power tools are the young and inexperienced, and the old and experienced-to-the-point-of-carelessness.
After setting up a tool for a job, I often stop and count my fingers, make the cut, then count them again. It's just a way of keeping myself thinking.

Doug Edwards

Mar-18-2008, 8:12pm

I feel your pain, having just recently been to the ER as well. I did not cut it on a machine this time, but it was from a stupid mistake. Short cuts and not taking time to think things through will always catch up with you sooner or later.

My ER trip was $852. Maybe that will be a good reminder.

MikeEdgerton

Mar-18-2008, 8:19pm

A "wood shop" teacher once told me that the two groups of people most often injured by power tools are the young and inexperienced, and the old and experienced-to-the-point-of-carelessness.
I'll say Amen to that. My step-father was a cabinet maker. He preached safety to me every time I was doing anything on any of the tools in the shop. One day he rushed in and needed to use a table saw that I was using. I shut it down and moved away and then I saw him reach down and try to stop the blade with his fingers like he was a human disk brake or something. He pretty much took the ends off two fingers. He would have killed me if he'd seen me do something like that.

Eric Hanson

Mar-18-2008, 8:20pm

Ken and Doug
Sorry to see the results of not paying enough atention. I did the same back in Dec. with a screwdriver in my palm. Definitely a leason to be learned in paying close attention to what we do and not allow ourselves to be distracted when working.

John
The same can be said for flying R/C planes. I was told the two times you will crash is when you are first learning, and when you get better and get too confident. Like so many other things in life, the situation may be different, but the story stays the same.
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif
Eric

arbarnhart

Mar-18-2008, 8:26pm

I respect that tool more than any other. I always aim it where any kickback would do the least damage and then I don't go there. I have had that same impulse (to grab the off cut) many times and just remind myself I can cut more but I can't grow more. I am of the "raise it high" school, BTW. A blade that cuts through the wood at sharp angles and is only near parallel high above it is far less likely to kickback. John has it right (as usual). The two tools that I injure myself the most with are the two I am most comfortable with - one is hand held blades and the other is the scroll saw (oddly, I don't own one right now). There are some cuts I have done so many times that letting the blade brush a finger is no big deal until I am off on the approach angle ever so slightly and @#$%^! that hurt...

bobbyD

Mar-18-2008, 8:54pm

Glad to hear it didn't come out worse. It's a scary thing. I cut my left index finger right down the middle on a table saw a year ago. Wood kicked back and pulled it into the blade. It's still crazy to me how the human body can bounce back from those things. I thought my guitar (at the time) playing was over for good. I'd like to see pictures if you've got them? I know, I'm a freak. dylanscott@hotmail.com

John Kasley

Mar-18-2008, 9:23pm

Always heed that inner voice that says "this is not quite safe" because when you hear it, it speaks the truth. It may take longer to figure out a safer procedure, change the setup or build a jig, but it's always worth it.

JEStanek

Mar-18-2008, 9:37pm

I'm glad you're not hurt as bad as it could have been. I also hope you heal fully and quickly. I'm not a handy builder guy, although I'm fascinated by builders and their skills. Your blood drop warning reminds me of a funny/serious sign I saw outside various spectrophotometry labs in school and at NIST, "Don't look into laser with remaining good eye."

Jamie

Magnus Geijer

Mar-18-2008, 9:44pm

I spent a whole afternoon at the basement a couple of weeks ago, cutting blocks and sides and molds and all sorts of things. I finally decided that it was time to stop, as I was getting tired and it was taking a lot of effort to keep my focus. I was all sorts of proud of myself for doing the responsible thing. Then half an hour later I chopped the tip of my index finger off while cutting up potatoes for dinner.

I put the flap of skin back on and it healed underneath it without stitches, but it's still too sore for me to be able to fret with it. Sure made my finger hurt, but that's nothing compared to the beating my ego took.

/Magnus

sean parker

Mar-18-2008, 10:01pm

thanks for that reminder ken. glad to hear just a few weeks back, someome was cutting braces in the bandsaw behind me so i didn't see, but i certainly heard what happened. it was pretty awful. a fellow luthier was cutting braces, the wood wouldn't give, and then whoosh! it went through taking his hand along for the ride. as i've read all over this thread, he was actually the most experienced of all in the shop, a cabinet-maker and teacher.

we were all shaken up. there was blood on the shop floor and in the band saw. he escaped with 10 stitches, but that's 10 stitches too many for me. i catch myself sometimes, zoning out cutting something. it's so dangerous to get comfortable or bored for that matter.

i did a really dopey thing a month ago, idly chiselling something, paying no attention whatsoever, i dog-chiselled my thumb. man, it killed. tiny cut, but really deep. a fraction from my tendon apparently. thumb still hurts. i was having a daydream.

Antlurz

Mar-19-2008, 12:01am

Like Andy, I usually keep my blade high because of the much lessened kickback tendency. That, and the fact there are far less teeth engaged in the wood at any given time, so less strain, more power in the cut.

Yup. It does take special concentration to do and I can't always do it that way, but whatever.

Ron

JeffD

Mar-19-2008, 12:49am

Hey, lets be carefull out there!!!

David Newton

Mar-19-2008, 7:29am

There is a saying for sailors, that I've adapted:

"eternal vigilance is the price of safety"

We must all remember to say this, along with a prayer, as we enter the shop.

That said, I've cut myself many more times in the kitchen.

oldwave maker

Mar-19-2008, 10:03am

Waiting to buy a tablesaw till you're a paranoid 50 yr old is a goood way to be safe, I have an assortment of 2-3 foot long push sticks after having played with several retired contractor OT fiddlers who were missing parts. Fiddlemaker Charlie Kennedy from Az sawed of a couple of tips several years ago, it actually improved his fiddlin since the eraser tips partially corrected an intonation problem and he actually practiced once in a while!

james condino

Mar-19-2008, 10:31am

All of those tablesaw stories make my gut cringe!!!!! I've only got one reponse: SAWSTOP! SAWSTOP! SAWSTOP!!!!! I had one of these in my old shop and am getting another one soon this year. Not only do they have an amazing protective mechanism against table saw incidents, but I'm of the overall impression that they are a superior machine. I traded my powermatic 66 for one( the big boy with the 5 hp motor and all the upgrades) and felt I made a great choice.

You can read a full review I wrote on one of these machines in American Lutherie magazine from about two years ago. Not only did I put it throught the paces hard, but I also set it off during the review and still have all of my happy digits!

j.
www.condino.com

PaulD

Mar-19-2008, 10:35am

I'm glad your injury was minimal... good job keeping the blade exposure down. There's nothing like that sick feeling you get when you feel that buzz of a saw blade against your finger tip. Luckily for me I've only done that once a long time ago and it just barely nicked the tip. It scared the hell out of me, and I've since seen some really ugly shaper and jointer injuries since then, not to mention taking a kid to the hospital with broken ribs due to a kickback.

I like making pushsticks from scraps of wood rather than buying commercial plastic or aluminum gadgets because I don't worry about running them through the blade if that's what I need to do to hold the work. The style I use on narrow stock is basically just a narrow board that rests on top of the work and has a stop on the near end to keep the work piece from sliding backward. It's low enough that I can hook my pinky and sometimes ring fingers over the top of the fence so if things go flying I will (hopefully) have my weight on the fence.

From your description it sounds like you may have been trying to keep the far end of the work against the fence. Using a feather board is good for that, but I'm usually too lazy to set one up so I keep a second stick on hand to hold the far end against the fence. Of course a blade guard is a good idea, but like most folks mine is not on my Delta saw because for most operations I find it so cumbersome to use that I just leave it off... not good. I could definitely improve my work hold downs on the machines.

I hope your finger heals up quickly and completely.

pd

gregjones

Mar-19-2008, 10:39am

I saw a safety poster in a warehouse quite a few years that has stuck with me. It was about wearing safety glasses. It said, something like, you can eat with false teeth and you can walk with a wooden leg----but, you can't see with a glass eye.

bkhooper

Mar-19-2008, 11:31am

Thanks guys for all the well wishes on my recovery. Surprisingly, it isnt as sore as I thought it would be and I should be back picking my mandolin in the next day or 2. Im planning on taking the stitches out Friday or Sat.
I believe this post has accomplished one good thing and that is to create so much discussion on Shop Safety and I personally have gotten alot out of the suggestions made so far. I am seriously going to check into the SAWSTOP as Mr. James Condino mentioned...

ken

arbarnhart

Mar-19-2008, 12:20pm

My last trip to the ER for stitches was from a hand saw (Zeta blade from Tashiro; man those things are sharp!), late at night after my daughter had told me it was getting too late and I needed to come in before I hurt myself. She has never let me live that down. They really like it when they are right and you are wrong...

Anyway, I sometimes think hand tools have a greater risk of incidents happening (event though they are likely not to be as severe) because we aren't as fearful of them.

PaulD

Mar-19-2008, 12:25pm

I am seriously going to check into the SAWSTOP as Mr. James Condino mentioned...
The SawStop saw is very cool technology. I'd like to check out one of their saws. I wish you could buy the mechanism as a retrofit for other tools, but last I saw you could not. I think it would be pretty hard to retrofit anyway to make it as effective, but I'd like to see it on a jointer.

pd

8ch(pl)

Mar-19-2008, 12:28pm

Don't get compacent around bandsaws either. I did a nice job with one on the end of my right thumb about 20 years ago. I sliced it right to the bone. Stitches took care of it, but fast reflexes on my part kept the tip of my thumb from being removed.

arbarnhart

Mar-19-2008, 12:45pm

Don't get complacent around bandsaws either. #I did a nice job with one on the end of my right thumb about 20 years ago. #I sliced it right to the bone. Stitches took care of it, but fast reflexes on my part kept the tip of my thumb from being removed.
Last night I took my little 9" bandsaw to a Y-Guides meeting so the dads could cut out wings and beaks while the boys painted their blocks for our tribe totem pole. Some of the inexperienced guys were scaring the heck out of me. No one got hurt, but one guy came really close. He kept binding and trying to back out and pulled the blade off track 4 or 5 times. I told him about stopping it and using scrap to hold the blade against the guides while he backed it out. He tried that the next time except he forgot the part about turning it off, so as soon as he had backed it up enough to unbind, the blade started moving again and cutting into the scrap. He pulled away in time(popping the blade off the track again), but the scrap was cut almost the way through; the blade had come within maybe 1/16" of his thumb.

David Newton

Mar-19-2008, 12:53pm

We have two Sawstops in the shop where I work. They were bought as the result of a close call, cut finger, but not too bad, and nothing lost. One of the sawstops was activated about a week after installation, to the great relief of the worker.

I don't have a table-saw in my own instrument shop, don't want one either.

mandoboy07

Mar-19-2008, 1:17pm

So happy to hear you got all the digts. Scaarry..

Martyweir

Mar-19-2008, 2:51pm

http://www.sawstop.com/how-it-works-videos.htm

Pretty amazing technology. Hope i never need it!!! That blade sends shivers down my spine to think about getting a hand in there. I agree it would be a great to have a retrofit option available for some of the high end saws - unisaw, etc. The system works on voltage drop detected by the blade - you'd have to basically swap out everything inside the cabinet...

mandolinplucker

Mar-19-2008, 8:57pm

Stuff in a wood shop that you never thought of will get you. I was cutting a piece of cherry log on the band saw to turn a bowl on the lathe. I had the wood on the table with my hands on both ends and my hands well out of the way of the blade. When I pushed the wood into the blade, instead of cutting a slice it spun the log towards the blade and crushed my wedding ring finger between the saw table and the wood. Hurt like hell. I didn't consider getting hurt that way. My finger healed with it being "fatter" on the end than it was and it sort or gets in the way when I play. I notice it more on guitar than mando. I have a 40 year old 3/4 size gibson with a narrow neck that I have played and enjoyed for 40 years and that fat finger makes it hard to play now. Everything in the shop can and will hurt in obvious ways or something that you never thought of. Be careful, think it through, and don't get in a hurry. That said---S%^t happens.

Antlurz

Mar-20-2008, 1:38am

Thoughts go back a few years to a snowy day when The old Allis Chalmers was humming away with a big leather belt spinning a four foot buzz saw cutting firewood.

A neighbor was attracted to the sound and came over to check it out. Complete with a bottle almost empty of Jack Daniels and a whole lot of staggering. After about stumbling into the sawblade three or four times, we convinced him we had all the help we needed. Still cringe thinking what that spinning 4 foot blade would do to a human torso.....

It would cut a 12~14 inch log in two about as fast as youi could feed it into the blade.

Ron

wdrysd

Mar-20-2008, 7:33am

All those shop teachers, and the many pages manufacturer's warnings, do not sufficiently describe how painful it is to cut your finger with a table saw. You should also know that you will have very little control over the depth or direction of the cut once the blade has your finger.

Be careful out there. Spend more time planning not to get close to that blade.

Wilson Drysdale

Chadmills

Mar-20-2008, 8:27am

arbarnhart

Mar-20-2008, 8:57am

No criticism intended, just a different way of doing things, but from this side of the Atlantic it makes me cringe to see pictures of table saws in the US without crown guard/riving knife etc. #Over here in the UK those are almost always in place, though I appreciate the loss of function.
Tom
Well you have to understand that over here we don't need safety equipment because we have so many lawyers to keep busy. If you stick your hand in a tablesaw, that's probably Delta's fault. If you lose in court then your lawyer obviously didn't know what he was doing, so you ire a second one to sue the first one... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

kestrel

Mar-20-2008, 12:53pm

Just a little different take on the subject of blade/crown guards and splitters/riving knives. Thirty-years had my own shop, and never had a guard on my table saw. After a seven-year hiatus, I started up shop again, and decided that not having a guard was reckless, and just asking for trouble, so I bought a good guard, and mounted it on my table saw. I shortly realized that I was catching myself doing strange - and dangerous - things to get around the cumbersome nature of the guard. The day my push-stick became wedged between the bloody guard and the fence, and the piece I was ripping, went flying past me and put a dent in the wall, twelve-feet behind me, the guard came off the saw, and will never go back on. And, IMHO, the guy who originated the idea of setting the height of the blade to just clear the top of the board being ripped - for safety's sake - was an idiot. That's great, if want to assure yourself that the velocity of the board, as it passes you, during a kick-back, is at maximum. I want as few teeth buried in a board as possible, when I'm ripping. Hey folks, that blade is in the middle of the table; the saw isn't likely to move around the shop, while you're cutting; it's whirling around, and it is dangerous, but it doesn't come after you. Before I make a cut, I kind of do what John Hamlet says he does. I look at my hands, and realize that I want the same number of fingers when I've finished as I have when I start. I then do a dry-run in my mind of the entire cut, all the way through, 'till the parted board leaves the table. If the slightest detail even smells iffy, then I re-do the plan. When I'm satisfied - then - I'll turn on the saw. My wife , a nurse, recently told me about a guy who came into the hospital with three fingers and half of his thumb in a Zip-lock bag. "I was tired, and had only one more cut to make..." It ain't worth it folks. You just gotta be smarter than the saw.

As to a splitter? To not have one on your table saw is fool-hardy. Without one, sooner or later, you will be eating a board - or worse.

Gene

jim_n_virginia

Mar-21-2008, 3:16am

Glad you still have all your fingers. I have worked in woodshops and used woodworking tools most of my life. I have witnessed perhaps 3 or 4 horrific accidents on shop equipment. All but one of them were on a table saw.

I have had the unpleasant experience of picking up a co-workers thumb and putting it in a cup of ice and sending it and him to the hospital. The attachment operation didn't work. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif He was using a big industrial table saw.

Juat like in handling guns most time there are no accidents... just negligence.

It's so easy to get comfortable on our tools at home and at work. So far I've been careful and lucky once. I was working in a truss plant and using a big pull saw and the blade snagged the glove I was wearing somehow and almost pulled my hand into it. It tore the glove and just scratched the top of my hand. Scared the heck outta me.

It happened SO fast it was like BAM and I'm standing there with a rapid heart beat!