I would like to know if what I am doing on a table saw is safe. I have ripped a board to 4" in width. I then have a piece of 3/4" plywood that is approximately 5" X 5" and I would like to cut this to 4" wide to exactly match (in width) the first piece I ripped. I am sliding the 5" X 5" plywood through by hand holding it tight to the fence. Pushing it through with a push stick does not "feel" safe to me. There is plenty of clearance for my fingers when I slide it through. However, since the board is only 5" across, it also does not feel safe to me to have the plywood fully behind the blade with nothing on eiter side as I am sliding it through. Miter saw would liekly be safer, however, I am trying to exactly match the first board I ripped.
If your hand has to go between the blade and the fence, it is not safe with that narrow of a cut.
You should be using your miter gauge or a miter sled to cut the 5" square piece of wood. Any piece of wood that is being cut with a fence and is close to being square increases your chance of kick back. The smaller that pipe of wood or panel the more likely.
That said, wood can be cut successfully in many unsafe ways but you need to be aware of the risks associated with those ways and let your gut over ride any thoughts if tells you that you about do something unsafe.
I see nothing wrong with the operation and do similar operations routinely -- the bearing side against the fence is long enough that the prohibition against crosscutting w/ the fence in place isn't a problem; you're actually making a rip cut albeit on a (relatively) short piece of stock.
If you're uncomfortable w/ doing it by hand and/or w/ a conventional dead cat, I'd suggest making a wide push stick (say 3") that would give more stability. The commercially available "Gripper" would be a model...
A while back I attempted something similar with a small piece of wood, - had done this many times before, - this time I nicked the end of my middle finger on my left hand on the saw blade. Still too sore to fret a guitar string. Laziness and stupidity on my part.
I would not feel comfortable making that cut, I'd use a sled. If the piece has to be *exactly* the same width, cut it a tad over sized and use a hand plane to trim it to width.
Pushing it through by hand? Not safe in the least - major clenching of the sphincter muscle. The "Gripper" is a great tool for this operation, and I've used it to make many cuts similar to the one described and it's been a breeze. I'd still be sure to use a splitter or riving knife though, and keep constant pressure downward and towards the fence until you've made it all the way past the blade. One of those long and tall push blocks with a through handle and a good clean rubber mating surface would be decent second choice. A push stick would be out of the question; I hate those things.
From your discussion it sounds like you were using the most important piece of safety equipment, your brain. All the trinkets in the world will not prevent an accident if you don't think and understand what your doing.
While there may be other ways of doing what you did, you completed the task with no bad consequences. However if you were going to make many cuts like this there are better ways.
I would have to agree with Leon on this, it is not a safe operation. I have the same problem quite often and solve it this way:
Take the miter gauge and attach a long strip of wood to it, long enough to be cut by the sawblade. Take your ripped board and place it against the sawblade opposite the fence, and mark the miter gauge board to the width of the ripped board. I usually put a stop block on the miter gauge at this point. You can now cut the pieces to the proper size, A hold down on the miter gauge is quite helpful.
Not safe. You may get away with it 500 times, but it may also bite you the next time. Too close for me.
What you need is a better push stick. Or should I say, push "device".
I have no trouble at all putting that through using my push device that has a long flat bottom to hold the wood in place. Picture the handle of a hand saw withthe hand grip hole. I traced the saw handle on a piece of 3/4" plywood, made a flat bottom about 6" long with a 1/2" catch on the back. Good grip, good control, lots of safety.
If it doesn't feel safe, don't do it. I personally feel comfortable with much narrower rips. The fingers that have no room ride on the fence, gripping it and guiding the rest of the hand. They're not going anywhere. I know that the entire saw, blade, and fence are aligned, adjusted, and tuned. Nothing's coming lose or going to jump out to bite me. All the same, the danger comes when you lose your respect for the saw's power to maim.
Why is your guard not installed? It contains the chips and improves dust collection, and would have negated your need to ask this question. Don't hesitate to install it, if you've removed it, when there's any question at all about safety. Better still, leave it installed.
Maybe I'm not visualizing the cut the right way... the end piece will be that plywood piece 4" by 5", right? In general, it sounds like a cut I'd be comfortable with. I've also made pushblocks like the one Edwin described, with sacrificial surfaces that could be sawed into. The main thing is to either have the surface glued on, or screwed in a way such that it is not in line with the blade.
There is no such thing as a safe cut on the table saw. This one doesn't have particularly more risk than any other. If I have room I will always use my hand, much more control that way. You can easily have the guard in place and use your hand on this cut, so why people think this unsafe I have no idea. How did you rip the other piece to
4" wide? I don't understand why you felt that cut was safe but this one is freaking you out.
Ripping a narrow board and cutting to length a short piece of wood are two different matters. He simply used the wrong procedure to shorten the piece of wood. Any time the wood is almost as wide as it is long and use the fence you run the increased risk of the piece binding, for what ever reason, and being thrown back at you. The guard "will not" prevent this, guards "do not" prevent kick back when short pieces are being cut.
I don't know what the hard and fast rules are for clearance/distance of hands away from a cutter.
But I know that a lot of it has to do with your body's reaction time, for when a slip or kickback occurs which may push or pull your body or body parts a certain direction.
Have you ever been watching a baseball game and seen a batter check his swing and think he didn't "go," only to see the slow motion replay and realize the bat traveled a much further distance that what appeared to the naked eye?
There are times when we "think" we have plenty of room for our fingers to clear, but when there's a slip or kickback, our body parts travel much further than we think they would, before we have the ability to check our swing.
If the piece is substantially wider than it is long, then absolutely that is a high risk cut. I was watching the show "Holmes on Holmes" once, and they were cutting short lengths of the wood I beams to use as blocking. So they wanted to notch the top and bottom to fit between the joists without any gaps. They had the new guy doing it, and he was doing it with a circular saw. And Mr Holmes wasn't satisfied with the results, so he shows the new guy how to do it. So he proceeds to go to the table saw and run them vertically through with just the fence. So, 1.5" against the fence, 15" or so wide. And of course standing right behind it. How this guy still has all his body parts I don't know.
But a short piece isn't by definition unsafe to run through the saw. People make it less safe by using a push stick and give up a lot of the control they would have had with their hands. A 5"x5" piece is no problem to keep tight to the fence. In this case we are talking about a piece of plywood, so it's not going to warp and pinch the blade.
I do often use a procedure for narrow short pieces that would get people even more freaked out. I bring the blade all the way up, go in half way, back out, flip end for end, finish the cut, back out again. At this point you're going "No no no! never back out of a cut!" but the problem with backing out is that you're bringing the wood back into the back teeth of the blade, begging it to pick up the wood and have a kickback. But with what I am doing the back teeth are never involved in the cut at all, which for these small pieces I would just as soon avoid entirely no matter what device you have to help you. When you get into cutting narrow strips the wood wants to bow on you at least a little bit an awful lot of the time, and I don't want that happening beneath a pushing device where I can't see it. I watch what the wood is doing and if it starts to warp I just kill the saw and wait for it to stop. I have a backwards push stick I use to pull the wood straight back. By never involving the back teeth at all I feel it's safer.
If it's safe to do so, there is reason to prefer to use the setup that's already dialed in and locked on the saw. There is a point where it's too skinny, too short, or the unguided cutoff is too long. 5"x4" with a 1" cutoff doesn't ring my alarm bells. Somewhere in between is the realm of self-fulfulling prophecies. It won't bind if it's well controlled and held firmly to the fence. If it doesn't bind, it won't kink into the blade and kickback. If you can control it well enough with a pushstick, use the pushstick. I think you'll agree that the hand has better grip, feedback, and control than the stick. If that weren't the case, we would all use a pusher even on 30" or wider rips.
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