Blade Guard on a Table Saw?

With all due respect to your experience, good quality hearing protection will allow you to hear far more audio detail than without protection.

As the overall sound pressure level goes up, your ears become less sensitive to certain frequencies, and the overall level will mask the problem. You may already suffer from hearing damage due to your years of exposure to site and shop noise, so your personal experience may differ.

I can hear chip out, cracking, binding, etc... much sooner when I'm wearing good muffs than without.

Reply to
B A R R Y
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Isn't that pretty much what I just said?

Isn't that pretty much what I just said?

Add to that the further stipulations that the operator is fully knowledgeable of proper operating procedures, and is using all appropriate guides, guards, hold-downs, pushsticks, etc. -- *and* that the wood being milled contains no hidden defects that could cause unanticipated problems -- and we're close to being in agreement.

I hope you're right about your level of discipline and attention. Fact is, though, all of us are only human, and IME most of us are not as good at anything as we think we are. That's why there are guards on machines.

Let us hope that full undivided attention never wanders.

And on *that* point we are solidly in agreement.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Why do you want to see it?

A *lot* of people have said that, but nobody has explained why. And at least one person has pointed out that you *can't* see the part of it that's going to bite you while it's moving... so what purpose is served by being able to see the blade?

Reply to
Doug Miller

Do you really need to question the number of injuries. If you really want some idea just have a look through this ng and other woodworking forums to see the number of posts about near misses and not so near misses. I see a posting about an injury/near miss at least twice a week. Now take into account the the vast majority of woodworkers who do not have internet access or subscribe to this ng and the number of injuries grows quite considerably.

Reply to
Paul D

considerably.

Twice a week? You must look at a lot of other forums besides this one. I sure don't see that kind of frequency here. What are you calling injuries and near misses though? Many of the things that have been posted here about problems people have gotten into would not have been eliminated by a blade guard.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

You better knock on some wood. ;)

Reply to
Locutus

How much it matters turns on the antecedent for 'they'. if 'they' are people who make the news by winning trivial cases then I was right and you presented a reason why I was right. If the antecedent for 'they' was all of the people who filed, then I was wrong for the reasons you presented.

I apologize for the ambiguity.

Now, you are also concened with the trangential issue of importance to the defendant, right? This is tangential to the discusison, because it is achange in direction of the discusion, not because it is unimportant.

Here is one way 'it' matters to the defendant: It affects the dollar amount at which the decision is made to defend rather than to settle. The more likely it is that the defendant will lose, the more that defendant will be willing to pay to settle out-of-court.

That is why limit on punitive damages encourage insurance companies to lowball legitimate claims. The statutory limit on punitives limits their exposure if they act in bad faith. And companies who act in good faith can thereby find themselves financially uncompetative with those that do not.

OTOH, companies that justifiably fight fraudulent claims to the bitter end rack up legal fees that also make them financially uncompetative.

Beter enforcement of the prohibitions on perpetrating a fraud on the court would help but that's a difficult area.

The question you pose above is about a different aspect of the subject than were the statements you challenged. I don't dispute the veracity of your points, I just observe that they are not contradictory with mine.

You questioned two statements.

One, was that the frequency of table saw accidents was probably much higher than the frequency of lawsuits stemming from such accidents. The other was that one seldom hears about plaintiffs with seemingly trivial complaints winning large judgements because such cases are rare. I already addressed the second above.

Now back to the first:

You ignore the possibility that most _accidents_ never got your attention in the first place. THAT was the point I was making and as you will recall, expressed thus: "For every meritless suit there may be ten or more equally injured people who lack the chutzpah to sue."

That is based on four tablesaw injuries with which I am personally familiar and several that have been related here--none of those involved a lawsuit.

Correct me if am wrong but you were not in a position to know how many people were injured, only how many sued, right?

Reply to
fredfighter

Well that certainly qualifies you as an expert on the two points I make.

The first is that in this thread and others, I strongly suspect, that certain individuals are posting information about their personal knowledge or involvement with table saw hand injuries that, when projected to a total population of table saw hand injuries is significantly more than the reality. The posts, I believe, are in many cases, simply trolls. They are generally posted with no authentication. I believe I'm right on this, and I sincerely hope I'm right.

Secondly, I indicated that you were in error in your statement about the population of suits and who might have the propensity to do so. I will offer no more information about what I know to support the statement for reasons previously mentioned.

You certainly may hold and post any opinion you wish. And those that haven't become completely bored with this thread and continue to follow it may draw their own conclusions.

Frank

Reply to
Frank Boettcher

When I cut my thumb in 1989 the ER doctor indicated that he saw TS injuries at least daily.

Reply to
Leon

I like to see the blade so that I can align my mark up with where the teeth are "actually" cutting when cross cutting. Aligning with a stationary tooth does not always result with a dead on cut. All teeth cut a bit differently. If you ease the board and mark up to the spinning blade you can see where the cut begins in relation to the mark. Other wise it tends to be a bit of trial by error.

Additionally, I have seen small pieces of cut off waste apparently get bound up between the guard and blade and come shooting out. I personally feel better with out the guard than with and I have been injured after the saw was turned off. Guard or no guard, you still have to be careful and still stand the risk of being injured with any tool regardless of your experience.

Reply to
Leon

Actually I find a majority of the injuries could only be eliminated by a Idiot Guard. They are mostly results from ppl trying to do things they shouldn't be doing on a saw, or doing it the wrong way.

Reply to
Paul D

Screw a sacrificial fence to your mitre gauge/crosscut sled, then cut a kerf in it with the blade you're going to use. The edge of the kerf is where your cut will be.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Friesen

I use the stock Jet guard whenever it is physically possible - which is probably 99% of the time. Before the guard comes off, I will try very hard to find some other method or tool to make the desired cut. If the guard absolutely HAS to come off, I use feather boards and push sticks to ensure that I do not need to place flesh in harms way. Replacing the guard and checking the splitter alignment takes about 45 seconds, substantially less than the healing time for any injury I can imagine.

Reply to
Larry Kraus

If it doesn't, you need to use better blades, or a saw with less run-out.

Again -- if there's so much difference between the static position and the actual cut, you need better equipment.

Yep -- I've seen that too. I've also seen offcuts walk into the blade from vibration and come shooting out when there was *not* a guard in place. Not a valid argument for removing the guard IMO.

Thank you.

No argument there.

Reply to
Doug Miller

You can do that too. I prefer my method.

Reply to
Leon

Not necessarily so. Proper alignment of the blade to the miter slot is to use a single tooth tip to take front and back measurements. Teeth are not always in perfect alignment with each other. I use WWII's and a relatively new Jet cabinet saw with .0005 run out at the arbor the last time I checked. I get really smooth/burnished cuts.

Nope. Not all teeth on blades cut on both sides of the kerf. I simply like to use the actual kerf vs. picking out the tooth that will establish the particular kerf edge that I am looking for

Not saying that cut offs may not walk back into the blade however I have never seen one being thrown back with much force unless it was in a bind. That would be your classic kick back. I have had plenty of pieces walk back into the back end of the blade after the cut but if there is nothing to hold the scrap against the blade, there is not as much chance of the piece being forcefully thrown back at you. I am not saying to not use a guard, I am only saying that with any tool, a guard is not a guarantee and accidents can still happen. With the guards that come standard on MOST saws, I view an equal to more risk of injury from flying debris. AND, while I believe I learned many years ago to wait for the blade to stop spinning before making adjustments I realize an accident can still happen. If I feel the need for more safety equipment I might go with the Bies style guard but probably will move up to the Saw Stop.

Thank you Doug, I think we covered both views pretty well. If a user has the guard and feels better using it I certainly do advise using it. The less you worry about during the cut, the more attention you can pay to the cut.

Reply to
Leon

Absolutely correct. But, us show me a person that is incapable of making a mistake or doing some something stupid and I'll call him God.

Reply to
Leon

Same here on all counts. When I'm cutting to a pencil mark, I routinely line up a single tooth against the mark (with the saw off, of course) -- and I have

*never* observed the actual cut to deviate from that position. If that *does* happen for you, your saw has more runout than you think, or there's something wrong with your blade.

Yes, I know that.

I repeat: if there's so much difference between the static position and the actual cut that it becomes a trial and error process, you have an equipment problem.

Reply to
Doug Miller

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that I do not want to spin the blade to get to the tooth that is going to establish the side of the cut that I am referencing.

Then you can understand why I do not rely on using any tooth that is in position to align my mark.

No equipment error, I just like to be as exact as I can be to start with. The difference is very slight between the tooth that cuts the left side of the kerf and the tooth that cuts the right side of the kerf and for the most part is probably immesurable however this is the way that I have ended up aligning my cuts. Years ago I used to align marks with reference marks on my insert and that worked pretty good however I progressed to seeing the cut as a reference. It's a touchey feeley kind of thing.

Reply to
Leon

And the point that *I'm* trying to make is that if you *need* to that, you have an equipment problem of some sort: excessive runout, bent arbor, bent blade, or teeth that aren't set uniformly. In my experience, *any* tooth that's set to the side where the pencil mark is will work just fine to establish the cut line. Given that none of the equipment problems I cited above exist, that is.

No, I'm sorry, I can't understand that.

Blade will have teeth set like \, |, and /, right? So if your pencil mark is left of the blade, align it to *any* tooth that's set like \ . That's all. There's no need to rotate the blade any more than two or three teeth to get one that's set in the proper direction.

OK, fine -- are you telling me that aligning a pencil mark that's left of the blade, to the point of a tooth that's set to the left, isn't "exact"??

I wouldn't call it immeasurable; it's probably at least 1/32". Of course, I haven't been talking about aligning the pencil mark to just any random tooth, either.

So, tell me, how do you align your pencil mark with the spinning blade?

Reply to
Doug Miller

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