Cutting up some 3/4" plywood on the TS into 16" squares for a daughter's school project. Absentmindedly, I ran a piece through using the fence - for a crosscut. The blade picked that sucker up and tossed it at a hundred miles an hour into me (well, it felt that fast..). Hit me in the lower left abdomen just inside from the hip bone. Got a big nasty bruise and two bloody scrapes. I had jeans on, and it ripped a hole in them. I shudder to think about the damage to me if it had hit a little closer to center.......
My very adequate crosscut sled was leaning against the wall 6 feet away....
Glad to hear you weren't hurt worse, but I'm a little confused on what you consider "cross-cutting" on plywood that is 16" square. Sounds like you were either working without a splitter or standing in the wrong place.
Bob I think you might want to brush up on your technique. You should have not have had any problem making that cut. I do cuts like that all the time. You must be sure that the piece stays flat against the fence and that you hold the piece down. Anyway it is good to hear that you came through OK.
I agree with the others here. It isn't the cut that caused this. It is either the table saw or the tool operator. Check everything for square on the saw, and otherwise brush up on your technique. There is nothing wrong with using the fence for cross cutting per se, but when also using the miter guage to make the cross cuts then it becomes a good idea to avoid doing so.
I think he is fessing up to opperator error. I let the wood twist a hair at the end of the cut (without a splitter and without anything pushing down on the wood) and the blade caught the board an threw it back at me. It not only hurt, but I had a lot of work to do to replace the ruined board. Now I use either a splitter or a Gripper; either would have prevented the accident.
...and without even picking up that crosscut sled, all you had to do was remove or simply move that rip fence away from the stock. Rip fence and crosscuts are a guarantee of a kickback. Shame on you.
At least your daughter had the chance to change her school project to "Rendering First Aid In The Home". And what were you doing there to begin with. It was HER school project. :)
I stand off to the right as well, but the power switch is on the left. Sometimes it's awkward to turn off and on. I actually thought about trying to move it.
? Unless I misunderstand your OP, something doesn't add up with your original statement of a 16" x 16" workpiece?
The rotation of the piece into the back teeth of the blade is undoubtedly what caused your missile ... a splitter would almost certainly have prevented this with a workpiece that size, regardless of how small the "cutoff".
You state "Just pushing it through". Without being there, One can surmise that 'act' could have been the root of the problem.
Maintaining "control" over the piece being cut, _throughout_ the cut, is as equally important, if not more so, than safety devices like "push" sticks, splitters and guards.
I've seen "push" sticks/devices get folks into trouble, particularly with ill setup equipment, because the act of 'pushing" is not necessarily the same as "controlling" the piece throughout the cut either by hand, or with a properly designed "push" device.
A properly designed push device that allows you to push, exert downward pressure on the table, and lateral pressure against the fence, all at the same time and _all the way through the cut_, along with a splitter, will almost guarantee your chances of a safe cut on a piece of that particular size.
Don't mean to preach, but the risk of sounding that way may prevent a future mishaps due to not fully understanding the causes of same.
Consider: a 10" saw blade has a circumference of 31.4 inches. Spinning at, say, 3600 rpm, the tips of the teeth are moving at (31.4 / 12 * 3600 ) = 9420 feet per minute = 565,200 feet per hour = 107 mph.
Yeeeowch! Sorry to hear about that...
Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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Free hand cuts would be even more dangerous. There is no mention of a miter gauge being used. Again, what constitutes "crosscut" on a piece of plywood?
You are correct in that I assumed he meant he was using both the miter gauge and the rip fence. That owes to what I hear people here refer to as a cross cut - cutting with a miter or a sled. There was a discussion here not so long ago that created the impression that the use of that term implied using either a miter gauge or a cross cut sled. The OP even mentioned a cross cut sled so, I just merrily followed down that path. Simply using a rip fence to perform a cross cut (assuming a piece of wood that *can* really be cross cut) does not pose an inherent problem.
I always stand to the left of the blade and that is the way I was taught. Now I'm wondering why you both stand to the right? The switch in on the left on my Delta ts, too. A buddy's Dad also stood to the left and had his emergency switch on a pole to the left as well. I wonder if he was a Lefty? I'm not.
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