Be careful out there!

[Glen]

I just thought I would post a reminder to my rec. friends to think about safety. As some of you know I teach HS woodshop (greatest job in the world!). Our school is one of a decreasing number of schools in SoCal that have an outstanding voc. ed. program. We have (had) two wood teachers. Yesterday afternoon the other teacher was working in the shop cutting some stock for the new term. He is a nice guy but is somewhat complacent in his personal concern for safety. I have mentioned it to him a few times, but his answer was always something like, "I know this isn't the best way, but I'm in a hurry. Besides, I know what I'm doing." Well, to make a long story short, he was ripping a short board (wider than long), guard removed and no pushstick. The board kicked back and his right hand continued forward into the blade. He lost about

3/4 to an inch of his middle finger (can't be reattached) and about two inches of his pointer. The did reattach it, but they are doubtful about if it will keep.

Here is a guy, experienced, but over confident who will have a long time to think about safety every time he looks at his hand. Please, guys, as I tell my kids, never rush. Be safe!

Glen

[BobMac]

Who was it that said, "If you get hurt it's not because your hand was in the wrong place, but because your head was?"

rm

[Tominama]

[Roger Shoaf]

This reminds me of a movie they showed in every shop class I had taken. IIRC it was called the ABS's of Hand Tools produced by GM. It featured a little cartoon caveman named Primitive Pete. The narrator would say something like "Don't do it that way Pete, you could smash your knuckles!" and sure enough the tool would slip and ol' Pete would be screaming.

My Junior High wood shop teacher would explain that if a blade was spinning at 1750 RPM and the blade had 80 teeth that would be 2333 teeth per second so if you only tapped your finger on the blade for one second and each sharp edge only shaved .001" inches of flesh or bone you would be all the way through a 1/2 inch finger in less than a 1/4 second. Then he would show the pictures of wounds and say this guy was fast, but not fast enough.

Junior High shop was 1973 and I still remember this. I can also attest to the fact that setting the blade only high enough has saved two of my fingertips.

[Lee Michaels]

I had a high school shop teacher who was a safety fanatic.

I thought he overdid it a bit. But all my fingers are still intact.

I thought that all high school teachers were safety fanatics. Apparently not.

He has no legitimate excuse for what happened to him. He is supposed to be teaching shop safety. And practising it as well.

Reminds me of the guy they sent around every year to the grade schools who lectured on never picking up blasting caps. He had almost no fingers. It made an impression on me. I can still see his mangled hands today.

[CW]

I had completely forgotten about that. Seems that, during the 60's, they even had a TV commercial about the dangers of blasting caps. Must have been a lot of them around, I guess.

[lwasserm]

I had a drafting (For some reason it was called "mechanical drawing") class in Junior High. I'll always remember the teacher holding up his right hand, which was missing most of the index and ring fingers, and saying, "I used to be a wood shop teacher until this happened..."

[Swingman]

I was working in the shop today with a guy who had NO fingers on his right hand. He is employed on the cornice crew working on a house I'm building, so there is little doubt where those fingers went. I was adding "laps" to cedar planks using a dado set on the table saw and, although I started out in a hurry, I kept seeing that hand with no fingers saying "here's what being in a hurry looks like".

[marc rosen]

[Mark & Juanita]

Just curious, how was he able to teach drafting yet not be able to continue to teach woodshop? ... or was it that he no longer wanted to have anything to do with woodshop after the accident?

I ask because it seems that a significant amount of manual dexterity is required for good mechanical drawing work.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Leuf]

Try holding a pencil with it between your index and middle fingers and hold between your thumb and middle finger instead of the index. I'll bet you'll find it not very difficult to get used to. It gets a little bit harder with the ring finger instead of the middle, but again, you'd get used to it.

Interestingly, I've actually sometimes seen my penmanship improve by holding the wrtiting implement in a little bit of an odd way. It forces you to think more about what you're doing. I used to amuse myself sometimes during school doing that sort of thing. Now a cut on my index finger isn't an issue.

With drafting though you're pretty much always following some kind of aid to make a straight line/arc/whatever so I can't really see it being much of an issue.

Typing on the other hand (no pun intended), you're screwed.

-Leuf

[lwasserm]

That's the one! I know you! I lived accross the street from you. Your brother Larry is my age, in fact if I remember right, he is exactly one day older. (I remember because of the draft lottery)

Small world, huh? How are you doing?

[lwasserm]

He never explained that, but I really don't know any reason he couldn't have continued to teach wood shop. He still had one hand intact. Maybe he wanted to quit teaching wood shop while he still had enough fingers left to switch to drafting!

[Puckdropper]

Leuf wrote in news: [e-mail]:

*snip*

There are one-hand keyboard layouts there, as well as typing with one hand on QWERTY. It'll take some to learn, but you can do it one handed.

Puckdropper

[arw01]

When the school board gets the workman's comp. claims, the program will be lucky to survive. The medical claims could be half a million easy.

He should have been fired when you noted the safety violations, schools can no longer afford such luxuries with the massive lawsuits the ambulance chasers will bring.

In the immediate budget should be a sawstop, period. Our poorest local school district is buying two for their highschool program.

It would be hard to fathom that a grant cannot be found for schools to purchase them.

Alan

[Joe Bemier]

Frankly, I would not want young kids learning on SS. I believe it would result in a complacency that follows them to an accident later on.

Instead, I would teach safety and procedure for use of the machine. When operated properly a TS is *not* a dangerous piece of equipment.

J

[Upscale]

Sorry, don't agree at all with that statement in conjunction with people. No matter how well you teach someone to use a tool, there are always going to be those individuals that insist on doing it their own way. It's exactly the same with driving a car. Put someone through the most rigorous driving examination and testing procedures and you're still going to get some people that are bad drivers. Seat belts, saw stops, whatever, additional safety features are going to save body parts if not lives. That's not conjecture, it's proven statistical fact.

[Steve W]

I don't know about that. Personally, if I made a mistake on a SS machine and nicked a finger or two, knowing that it could have been a more serious injury would have the same impact on me as a crippling injury. In fact, I think I would be less likely to quit working with wood.

-Steve

[Joe Bemier]

Your point may be correct but it does not address the issue of teaching kids -at a very impressionable stage- on a piece of equip that cannot hurt them. While certainly there is a safety benefit provided as long as they are using the schools saw, dont you think they will have a higher probability of injury when they move to the real world?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I have to agree. When I was teaching my kids to drive, I did not let them wear seatbelts and I disabled the air bags. They also became dependent on the power brakes, so I adjusted them so that they barely held when the peddle was down to the floor. It did make them more cautious and kept them from speeding.

My nephew is an electrician apprentice. They never turn the power off on jobs he is doing. That forces him to use a meter and check to see what is live and what is not and exercise care. A couple of zaps makes you think. Complacency is such a bad thing.