Safety-Guard SACRILEGE.

[Jay Pique]

Ok I pretty much lurk here except to milk you guys for information once and a while, but the SawStop posts and safety debates have piqued my interest. I work in a shop with about a dozen other guys and we've got a couple sliding table saws, a couple Unisaurs and a couple of the big 12-14" Deltas too. The only saw that really ever has the blade guard in place is the Altendorf slider, and that's probably on 1/3 of the time - when someone's breaking down a pile of plywood for cabinet box parts. And then it's really only used for the dust collection. In the 5 years I've been at the shop we've had exactly one hand injury from a table saw, and that was a guy doing a groove in a very small part that he admits he never should have done anyway, and couldn't possibly have done it with the guard in place. (He basically put a little groove in the tip of a finger - two stitches.) When I go over to the slider, for example, and I need to rip a strip of plywood for say a stretcher, if that guard is in place I push it right out of the way. I just don't like reaching my hand around that big plastic thing wondering where in the heck the blade is - I like to be able to see the spinning blade (through my (almost) ever present safety glasses) so I can keep my hand away from it. I feel like those guards might actually make things more unsafe WHILE CUTTING. Now if someone's going to walk by a saw and slip and fall into a spinning blade, well..what in the hell is he doing anyhow? I mean seriously - if you can't walk around your shop without falling into the top of a table saw, you've got bigger issues to address than a blade guard. And in the case of the whole Whirlywind versus SawStop debate I'd have to come down decidedly on the SawStop side of things - if it was a choice between one or the other. (But there's not much chance of me buying a $3000 saw any time soon...and if I were I'd be getting a really nice used Tannewitz with a feeder or something along those lines.)

So I guess I have no real point other than to say that I think safety in the shop is at least 95% using good commone sense and keeping your eye on things. Feeling how the wood and the saw are responding is key for me. Proper technique and feed rate are key. A splitter is absolutely a great thing. Guards? I'm just not a fan.

[RicodJour]

Ask people about their opinions on seatbelts or airbags or any other safety device. Separate the answers into two groups - Safety Device Kept Them Kicking vs. No Personal Experience With It. See if you notice a correlation between a positive opinion on the safety device and which group they fall in.

I understand your point, and agree that a lot of safety devices require an adjustment in use/behavior, but you obviously have never been injured so the topic is a theoretical one for you.

Ask a guy what he'd do if he caught his wife in bed with another guy and then _have_ him catch his wife in bed with the other guy. My suggestion, regardless of the guy's answer to the theoretical question, don't be the other guy in the second scenario.

R

[WW]

I don't use that guard as most of my cutting can not be done with it on. However seat belts are a different thing. Save me 3 times as I could maneuver with out sliding on the seat an losing control. 1 a large dog at night that could have been a child, hard to tell with oncoming lights. 2 a deer that came out of the brush fast. 3 a idiot that came on the highway with out stopping I was able to go off road and back on with good control.. Had a friend that refused to use seat belts, was injured because of this in an accident. Second time he was killed when a drunk hit him and as the car rolled he was ejected an car landed on him. His wife had belt on and received a cut finger. WW

[SonomaProducts.com]

=A0A splitter is

I think most pro shops do eventually take off all the guards. I think as a pro you do somehwat repetitive processes and become aware of safe vs non-safe motions. Regardless, while your experience has been very little blood, the national statistics are pretty clear and hundreds of people loose digits and worse every year.

Here is a quote from a lawyer who takes saw injury cases.

"Every 9 minutes a person in the United States is injured using a table saw. Ten people everyday suffer amputations. "

Every nine mimutes. Wow, I would not want to be that person or one of those other 10 people. You think they would become more careful after a while.

And then seriously another study by Science Daily says "A recent study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that from 1990-2007, an estimated 565,670 non-occupational table saw- related injuries were treated in US hospital emergency departments, averaging 31,500 injuries per year."

Again note: "Non-occupational" I think pros are more careful.

[Swingman]

Take such statistics with a grain of salt. Operative word is "related".

Injuries are routinely classified as "table saw related" even when involving a table saw without a blade attached and/or not plugged in.

DAMHIKT

[RicodJour]

My question is if 31,500 went to the ER, what did the other 534,170 (estimated) people do (assuming one injury each!) and how did the study know how to estimate it with that degree of accuracy?

I've injured myself a whole bunch of times on jobs with 'only' two visits to the ER, and I never reported the other times to anyone. Am I in trouble?

R

[DGDevin]

The problem is perception, people who are doing unsafe things often perceive they're in no danger. That guy next to you on the freeway who has a cell phone in one hand and a coffee in the other, steering with his knee--he thinks he can get away with that because in his view he's a good driver--that something is about to happen two cars ahead that he hasn't foreseen doesn't enter into his perceptions. The same thing happens in the shop, like a hidden knot in a piece of wood that is about to cause a power tool to do something you didn't expect. I agree that paying attention and proper technique are vital to safety, but sometimes things happen that aren't necessarily your fault, and then it's nice to have a backup that keeps the blade out of your hand.

[DGDevin]

How many? 50%? 5%? Makes a big difference, just saying some accidents didn't involve a spinning blade doesn't give us useful information, it's like telling someone to wade across a river with an average depth of only two feet.

[Father Haskell]

In 40 years, I've seen lots of kickback, but never anyone getting bit. Not sticking your fingers into the blade is the best protection against having to relearn how to pick your nose. Splitters and pawls are a big help against kickback. So is keeping your machine tuned up -- a blade that heels in against the fence is liable to grab and fire a board like a rail gun.

[Josepi]

You probably have nbo idea how many more times seatbelts have saved your life or prevented injury to you.

You forgot to mention the guy, in the other car, wearing a seatbelt, that stayed behind the wheel, and controlled still his car, after being hit or sufferring another incident to dislodge his driving position.

[DGDevin]

When I was a kid we didn't have bike helmets. But when my wife and I got mountain bikes some years back they came with helmets so we wore them. It didn't take long before my wife took a fall that split her helmet in half, but she didn't have a scratch on her. Needless to say we replaced that helmet before we went riding again. Today I wouldn't dream of riding a bike without a helmet--as you say, I'm in the Now We Know group.

[mdavenport]

His point was NOT is not claiming how MUCH to adjust the numbers as to the "related"...just that there IS an adjustment to be made. The fact is that it's kinda like when MADD "cites" teen alcohol related accidents...if a PASSENGER in the OTHER car was drunk, MADD will still use it as a teen+alcohol=BAD things accident.

That is one reason why I'd like to see MADD just go the hell away

[WW]

In 40 years, I've seen lots of kickback, but never anyone getting bit. Not sticking your fingers into the blade is the best protection against having to relearn how to pick your nose. Splitters and pawls are a big help against kickback. So is keeping your machine tuned up -- a blade that heels in against the fence is liable to grab and fire a board like a rail gun.

Been there. Kickback with a 3/4 inch plywood about 16 inches square. Caught between fence and blade took off spinning and peeled a finger down to the tendon. Could watch tendon move as I bent my finger. 7 stitches in ER. THEN I bought the set of 2 pawls that hold wood down. Works great. WW

[RicodJour]

That's curious. And by curious I mean stupid and myopic.

You've never seen something the person driving hadn't? When I'm in the 'nervous seat', as my brother and I call it, I'm paying at least as much attention as the driver.

R

[Upscale]

Yeah, that reminds me of the time when I dropped the tablesaw on my foot. The hospital gave me a crutch and called the sore foot a table saw injury. :)

[Upscale]

I've done that too, especially if they're a mediocre driver. There's several people I know that I now refuse to get in the car with if they're driving. Fortunately, my closest friend whom I happen to ride with the most is an excellent driver.

[DGDevin]

Without knowing how much of an adjustment it's kind of pointless, what if it's .05%?

Their shift to being almost a temperance organization is what caused the group's founder to leave. They've become one of those self-contained bureaucracy-religions that serves itself more than a public need. They absorb a lot of the money they raise too and get poor grades from organizations that rate the efficiency of charities. Too bad, they did good work once upon a time.

[Doug Miller]

I'm a firm believer in seat belts. Some years back, there was an accident on one of the country roads a mile or so from where we lived at the time. Someone crossed the center line, not sure which driver, but the result was a head-on collision at some 50mph each between a full-size pickup truck and a compact car on the order of a Fiesta or something similar. The seatbelted elderly couple in the Fiesta had ankle injuries. The UNbelted 30something driver of the pickup was pronounced dead at the scene.

[Doug Miller]

LOL! I remember one place I worked at in the 90s... a group of us would go out to lunch together from time to time. Two guys pretty quickly found out that they were the only ones in the entire department who would consent to be a passenger when the other of the pair was the driver. Lots of people rode with them once. I don't think anybody ever rode with either of them twice.

[Doug Miller]

I think you missed the point: 565,670 injuries in an 18-year period is (approximately) 31,500 *per year*.