Resawing on the shaper. Yes, it can be done.

[Kent Fitzgerald]

That had to be done in two passes, no?

Yup. Good thing he didn't have a 24" blade handy, or he probably would have tried it in one pass.

[Jason Roehl]

It's all about what you're comfortable with. I'd do it. The safety/non-safety here is where your hands are, not in the setup itself. If you think that setup is intrinsically unsafe, you should quit driving a vehicle on U.S. roadways...

Jason

[Michael Schwartz]

This could make for a great Red Violin part 2.....

I have actually seen that movie

[Gary Keedwell]

I just saw this for the first time and think it is a great idea. Try thinking outside the box a little. The table is actually being used as the fence and the fence is actually the table. When you are sawing a tenon on a TS your relying on the fence to guide the board thru the blade. Riding the board on the table is more STABLE then a fence.
I do agree that his method for resawing needs a little refinement, but for sawing tenons I think it is a great idea. By the way: I have put blades in a vertical miller (Bridgeport) and sawed steel in half. The right speed and feed together with the right set-up and there is nothing unsafe about it. It sure beats driving in downtown Boston.
Gary K.

[Randy Denby]

I dunno...his cut-off is on top of the blade when completed. Still scares the crap out of me. As well as his fingers are behind the board and one misjudgement of how far out to hold that board will mean adios manos!

[Jason Roehl]

I'd do it like he did, maybe with a safety mark or piece of tape to mark blade depth. Now, if I were going to do a bunch of it, I'd probably make a push shoe with a kerf for the offcut to sit in. Kind of an 'F'-shaped affair, with the top of the 'F' on top of the offcut and the bottom horizontal of the 'F' going in the kerf to support the offcut and help hold the bottom piece down, and the leg of the 'F' giving sideways pressure into the (non-table) fence. Then, some sort of handle off to the side attached to the leg.

[Rod Sheridan]

The argument that the table on the shaper is the equivalent of the fence on the tablesaw is certainly stretching things.

Tenons on a table saw should be made with a tenon jig that rides in the mitre slot, or straddles the fence so that the work is prevented from moving closer to, or farther away from the blade.

Resawing with a circular blade requires a splitter, which wasn't used, a guard that wasn't used, and/or a stock feeder that doesn't require your fingers to be anywhere near it.

When I worked for a molding manufacturer, we had a big circular saw that did resaw work. 25 HP main motor, another drive motor, no fingers anywhere near the sawing end.

If that guy using the shaper to saw the wood had it pinch or bow, he could easilly have lost fingers or hands.

For us mere mortals, a band saw is far safer..........Rod.

[Greg Funk]

I agree with Jason.

Other than the back half of the blade being exposed this isn't really a lot different than using a tablesaw. I think there is less opportunity for a kickback than a tablesaw. The cutoff on top of the blade is not much different than a cutoff beside a blade on a tablesaw. The teeth on the side of the saw extend very little beyond the body of the blade so they cannot apply much force hence the cutoff sitting on top of the blade is easy to remove.

Greg

[Jason Roehl]

Rod, he was re-sawing. That generally means thin sheets, which won't be able to pinch the blade with any significant amount of force--too flimsy. Guards and splitters have their place and can be useful, but most of the time they are not necessary.

If I could afford a 25HP table saw, I'm sure I could afford a power-feeder, and would want one as well. The only reason for a motor that big would be to maintain a high feed rate that a human could not.

Jason

[Jason Beam]

I personally wouldn't want to fight the odds of a spinning blade AS WELL AS gravity at the same time.

Do what you want, it's yer shop.

I think it's irresponsible to advocate the safety of this operation on a forum that has a varied audience such as this one. Newcomers should not be encouraged (implied or otherwise) to perform an operation with so many factors to consider.

I contend that if the stock pinched the blade, no matter how thin, at the very least you're going to get wood thrown back at you. It may be small (splinters as the offcut explodes), it may be large (the whole piece), but you WOULD have wood coming back at you. That's a kickback. Add such a distraction onto having to contend with a very deep cut, gravity acting on the offcut piece, keeping your fingers out of the path of the blade ... I'll stick with a bandsaw.

It's not safe. Your opinion is just as valid as mine, so we can leave it at that.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Jason, I think you are 1/3 correct.

Yes, the thin resawn piece couldn't provide much pinch.

The other thicker piece, trapped between the table and the blade, that's a completely different issue. The piece could warp upwards, contact the trailing edge of the blade, and you have the classic kickback accident.

As for your comment about guards not being required, they aren't, except for the most awfull 3 milli-seconds of your woodworking career.

I've never been able to figure out which 3 milli-seconds I'm going to need the guards, so they have to stay on all the time the machinery is running.

Call me chicken, but you won't call me stumpy...........Rod.

[Gary Keedwell]

I personally wouldn't want to fight the odds of a spinning blade AS WELL AS gravity at the same time.

Do what you want, it's yer shop.

I think it's irresponsible to advocate the safety of this operation on a forum that has a varied audience such as this one. Newcomers should not be encouraged (implied or otherwise) to perform an operation with so many factors to consider.

I contend that if the stock pinched the blade, no matter how thin, at the very least you're going to get wood thrown back at you. It may be small (splinters as the offcut explodes), it may be large (the whole piece), but you WOULD have wood coming back at you. That's a kickback. Add such a distraction onto having to contend with a very deep cut, gravity acting on the offcut piece, keeping your fingers out of the path of the blade ... I'll stick with a bandsaw.

It's not safe. Your opinion is just as valid as mine, so we can leave it at that.

Please...nobody is advocating anything. All were doing is dissecting the milling operation that we seen in the video and commenting on it. Under the right conditions , sending stock thru a horizontal blade is just as safe as sending stock thru a vertical blade. It is done every day in a safe way. Picture a blade running like on a router table. Pushing the stock thru the blade with the assistance of a miter gage and feather boards holding the stock down on the table sounds reasonable to me. Try picturing your table saw doing the same operation tilted 90º. Would that look safe to you then?
GK

[Greg Funk]

Hi Jason, I think you are 1/3 correct.

Yes, the thin resawn piece couldn't provide much pinch.

The other thicker piece, trapped between the table and the blade, that's a completely different issue. The piece could warp upwards, contact the trailing edge of the blade, and you have the classic kickback accident.

When a board pinches the back of the blade on a tablesaw the result is generally that the board lifts up and rides on top of the blade which is travelling in the wrong direction at 100+MPH. Gravity holds the wood on top of the blade and you get a kickback. In this case if the wood moved away from the fence there is really nothing to hold it against the tips of the teeth so the board would just be flung away from the fence but it wouldn't kickback in the same way as a tablesaw.

Greg

Note: I am only making these arguments as an intellectual exercise for fun as I don't think any newcomers are realistically going to rush out and buy a shaper and sawblade to start resawing...I do think it is worthwhile to understand why and under what conditions accidents and kickbacks occur.

[Jason Beam]

Please...nobody is advocating anything. All were doing is dissecting the milling operation that we seen in the video and commenting on it. Under the right conditions , sending stock thru a horizontal blade is just as safe as sending stock thru a vertical blade. It is done every day in a safe way. Picture a blade running like on a router table. Pushing the stock thru the blade with the assistance of a miter gage and feather boards holding the stock down on the table sounds reasonable to me. Try picturing your table saw doing the same operation tilted 90º. Would that look safe to you then?
GK

Gary,

I don't disagree with your example of the router table. One piece in results in one piece out. In this video, though, there will be two pieces, one of which being forced onto the back of the blade by gravity. I don't see any way to prevent that unless you fashioned a riving knife sort of device to hold the offcut up off the blade.

Rod made a good point about the lower piece warping up into the blade. Who's to say the board won't cup, catching the ... hmm ... effectively the "top", i guess ... of the blade (rather than the back) - the teeth in that section of the blade COULD throw the board back at you, rather than away from the fence.

As an intellectual exercise, I agree with dissecting the physics involved. I don't think we always realize that we implicitly advocate positions by simply stating our opinions on various matters. Of course nobody's going to run out and buy a shaper and a saw blade ... but they might be led to wrongly equate other operations to this one due to their limited experience.

I'm glad that the conversation is coming from an objective level and that there are enough of us arguing both sides of the argument - which was really my original intent. I should have said that up front and I apologize for not doing so. My intention was to be sure that ALL sides are explored objectively and we're doing that.

[Lou Pole]

Every time something like this comes up there are always some people who say it's perfectly safe and that it's all about "what you are comfortable with". Anyone who would call an operation like this "safe" should stay away from machinery.