Kickback scare

[Peter Aeschliman]

http://www.grizzly.com/products/10-2...ng-Knife/G0661

I think most of the contractor saws (and soon all of them) come with riving knives, like the one above. Although I'd definitely recommend saving a while longer for the few hundred bucks more to get a cabinet saw... smaller footprint, better dust collection, heavier duty, etc.

[ian maybury]

Good to hear you're OK, and a sobering video Phil.

I guess the bit we don't intuitively grasp is just how much energy there is wound up in a spinning blade and arbour assembly - even if it's quite a small saw. Most times if we get some sort of kick there isn't a truly efficient transfer of energy from the blade to the flying piece. It's probably a bit like baseball though - if it does manage to really hook up that piece (as the video shows) can really can fly....

ian

[Keith Pitman]

I had almost the same experience a couple of years ago, although with less dramatic results. In my case, I made the mistake of having the narrow side of a cut next to the fence. A piece about one half inch square launched itself from the saw, and penetrated and imbedded itself in a half inch sheet of melamine board that was standing about six feet behind the saw. Fortunately I was standing to the left of the blade. I left the rocketed piece imbedded in the melamine sheet for a long time to remind me to work safely.

[Chris Kennedy]

I am glad you escaped injury. I cannot stress enough the importance of not standing in the path of the blade.

A number of years ago, my wife and I were working in the "shop," which was the basement in our townhouse. I had configured it for one person to work in because it was usually just me. My darling wife was down there working on a set of shelves while I was working on a bench I was building. The main workbench was in direct line with the tablesaw -- why would it matter -- I would never be at the tablesaw and at the bench at the same time, now would I? I was working and my darling wife needed to crosscut a piece of stock. It didn't even dawn on me or her about the risk. She powered up the saw, made the cut and the saw threw the off cut. I took it to the chest.

I accused my darling wife of a diabolical level of passive-aggressiveness (once I was able to breathe again ). To be honest, I am amazed I didn't break anything. It wasn't like I was cavalier with the saw prior to that, but ever since, I have been far more aware.

Chris

[Phil Hughey]

Larry, thanks for the heads up on the cord, I usually try to run it to the side of the saw but another thing that's easy to careless about. Maybe I should take up a safer hobby, like maybe, ultralight flying?

[Troy Turner]

The more of these kinds of posts I read, the harder I look to find the missing pieces for my blade guard/splitter. I have a mid-80s Craftsman belt drive, but for the life, can't find what I'm looking for.

[Jacob Reverb]

Somewhere I heard about a guy who was cutting real thin strips on a TS and had one kick back and it went all the way through the tailgate of his truck!

So no standing behind the blade, and no blade guards for me!

Thanks for the post Phil. We could all use the reminder.

[Phil Hughey]

Hi Ian, I did a rough calculation for a 10" blade turning at about 3400 rpm's the teeth on the outside are moving at about 150 feet per second. If the blade does really "hook up" as you mentioned, with the mass of a red oak board at let's say a pound, that board could potentially reach a force of 350 foot pounds, which is somewhere between the force of a 38 special and a 9mm. We don't think about that enough.

Troy, I'm on that same kind of hunt now. Just learning about them but am definitely going to do something. There have been some good suggestions given here but I have to make sure they'll fit my saw because it is so old. I had one of those older, cast iron craftsman for years. That thing came in handy so many times. My wife agreed to let me upgrade if I promised to always use a blade guard on my next saw. I do use it religiously, only removing it when the cut will not allow me to keep it in place.

Jacob, I never would have believed the story about the tailgate of the truck until I saw that piece of plywood with the rectangular hole in it. Now I believe you. I do have to say though, I would not be too quick to rule out a blade guard. I love mine. It keeps me so much safer by having something substantial between my hand and the blade. With a proper splitter or riving knife in place it would have kept the blade guard from pushing the piece down into the blade. I don't know about you but I do enough stupid things, often enough that my blade guard is one of my favorite table saw accessories.



Jacob,

[Peter Aeschliman]

Well, when you're ripping thin strips, the blade guard can actually cause the thin piece to be forced into the blade... this is what happened in the situation I described in my earlier post, when I had another kickback recently... although I definitely saw it coming and had plenty of time to make sure I wasn't in the path of destruction.

In the case of ripping thin strips, would I say that you should remove the blade guard? No. I'd say you should find another way to do the operation... I.e., use the bandsaw to rough cut the strips then run them through a drum sander to get your final thickness.

I think the tablesaw's versatility is both a blessing and a curse. Since you can use it for so many vital operations, and so many "tips and tricks" are written about them in the magazines, people view it as the ubiquitous tool in the shop... and perhaps it tends to make us forget about the special things other machines in our shop can do more safely.

I think one of the key safety rules in on the tablesaw should be: if you can't do it with the blade guard in place, find another way to do it. I'm eating my own words here by the way, because I remove my blade guard all the time for non-through cuts. And the only way to have a blade guard in place for a non-through cut is to use an overhead/overarm blade guard.

[ian maybury]

Ta Phil, scary numbers indeed. I raced motorcycles for years, but it applies to cars too - it's scary to think there too just how much energy you're carrying at even fairly moderate speeds.

On legislation. It's amazing the variety of technique that informs the use of apparently identical pieces of woodworking machinery in general - it's no wonder any given guard or safety system causes problems for some users - no matter how carefully it's designed.

Trouble is it moves the issue into the same place as lots of law - as in the one size fits all solution that any law is is inevitably highly sub optimal. That's not to say that equipment shouldn't be safe, but legislation and/or regulation quickly head into the realms of the inane if they go too far.

As I've posted before - you can't by legislation or regulation make a person that's not switched on and taking responsibility for themselves safe. At least not without huge on cost. Not only that - if it's overdone it may actually increase risk by switching people off and creating a culture of inattention and victimhood...

ian