How not to start your saw

[EWCM]

guy has an olf Craftsman saw with a bad starter cap. Watch him flirt with disaster as he starts it.

[Max]

And the chance for disaster continues with his practice of crosscutting with the board against the fence. Dumb & dumber.

Max

[Leuf]

I hope he's at least had the foresight to teach his daughter how to dial 911..

-Leuf

[Doug Miller]

No ear or eye protection either. Wearing sandals besides.

What a dummy.

[Ed Walsh]

Hopefully the daughter is not in the same room with him and the table saw. Its so bad I wonder if its an act and he's just trying to look dumb/dangerous and stir up some reaction !

[Toller]

Why would he post the video? Is he proud of his accomplishment?

[Leuf]

If you look at his other videos you can watch him try to frame a wall. He's apparently just recording the progress of his project, but in video instead of the pictures.

-Leuf

[Don Dando]

That idiot is fortunate beyond belief! Good thing the cut off piece didn't jam between the blade and the fence fly back and knock his daughter out cold!

[Mark & Juanita]

Let's look at this a little closer.

First, his starting method -- it ain't pretty, but I think you are assigning way more hysteria to it than the situation warrants. Possible failure mechanisms? 1) bucket falls down, motor falls onto belt, motor fails to start. 2) foot slips on outside shaft -- motor fails to start 3) He screws up and pliers hits pulley, pulley pulls pliers away from him, smacks plier inside table saw. Of all the scenarios, this has the most possibility for disaster by having stuff thrown back at him, but that's pretty low probability. The way his is holding the pliers shows that he isn't going to get grabbed with the pliers, they will be pulled from his hand. As I said, it's not pretty, but it's not going to turn him into a quadrapalegic either.

Second, cross-cutting with a rip fence. If this were a higher powered saw, there is absolutely no doubt that the danger of kickback and other disaster is way high, especially with no splitter. However, this is a small, 40-year old Craftsman table-top table saw (My dad has an equivalent

60+ year old Wards PowerKraft saw). These saws are tremendously low-powered, as you can hear as he is trying to cut that piece of plywood. Kickback is highly unlikely -- what is going to happen is he is going to jam the blade and stall the motor. One of the dangers of these small saws is that people get used to using them with all of their warts, including stalling the blade when doing something dumb. Then they buy a higher-powered saw, use the same techniques and wind up with real kickback. That said, for this particular case, this is really not going to result in bad things happening on *that* particular saw as long as the guy maintains a strong grip.

Finally, yep not using hearing protection is a bad idea, and he will most likely pay for that down the road. OTOH, there are car stereo systems out there that put out more dB sound than that tablesaw.

In short, this video is certainly not a safety campaign poster example, but it is not the spinning blades o' death folks are making it out to be. Would I do those things? Nope, nor would I recommend them. However, I'm not going to get spun up in a tizzy over them either.

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

[Leon]

Snip

Wrong! Just as likely as with any other saw used in this manor. Power has nothing to do with the likely hood of kick back.

[sweet sawdust]

[Mike Marlow]

It looked to me to be a Craftsman Model 10 which is neither small (10"), nor were they under powered, even with the original motors. That said, I largely agree with the intent of your post Mark. As I watched the video, it just was not clear to me that the plywood was up against the fence. Just could not tell from the video. If it was, it's unlikely the cutoff would have simply laid there as it did. I suspect the fence was over to the right side of the table and the wood was not really up against it.

I'd disagree with you on this point Mark. Kickback could be very likely even with an underpowered motor. He never stalled the saw and as long as the blade is spinning at speed or near speed, kickback from pinching the wood into the rising teeth is likely. That said - I'll repeat myself by saying I'm not sure that was really a problem or a potential for this fellow.

[John Grossbohlin]

I wondered the same thing about the fence. However, the way he had to pull the piece off the end of the saw after the cut made me think he was up against the fence... the whole thing was pretty dangerous. As was his other clip with him sitting on top of the wall with the circular saw held between his knees and then on top of a ladder holding the wall with his left hand behind and his arm under the saw while cutting. A kick back there would have sent the blade right through his forearm...

John

[REMOVE]

I think he should just crank the blade all the way up, spin it as fast as he can by hand then kick in the motor. If it doesn't catch, he can keep spinning until it does. If he's pretty quick he shouldn't lose too much blood and meat.

[J. Clarke]

He should just hit the power _then_ give it a spin. (How did I _ever_ survive my youth?)

[George Max]

This guy is going to have a very serious accident in the not too distant future. He must be bucking for a Darwin Award.

[George Max]

Thinking back, how did *any* of us survive our youth?

[Swingman]

At 64, it's too early to be making predictions.

[Bruce Barnett]

While there, I noticed this one on a guy assembling his own Stonehenge using no machinery - not even a pulley - solo.

[J. Clarke]

Hell. Did you check out his Web site ?