Table Saw Safety

It depends...

Is your dust collector grounded?

Barry

You could ask Carnac, but he's dead. Not sure if Miss Cleo is outa jail.

- Doug

My dust collector stayed out a little to late last night so I grounded it for a month.....I also took away the chip collector

oh crap - I think I just got sucked in...

Mike, where do you get wood that has no internal stresses? Have you never ripped a piece of wood and had the kerf close up tight behind the blade? The splitter is intended to keep the wood from clamping shut on the rising teeth of the blade.

If you like the idea of taking a piece of wood into some soft part of your body, please, by all means, continue to leave the splitter in the drawer. If you value your internal organs, ribs, face, etc., put the damn splitter in.

Just because you've never had it happen before doesn't mean it won't. It's like saying, "I've never had an accident before so I don't need a seat belt."

I don't use a blade guard but I take other precautions to prevent my digits from getting nibbled on by the blade. I refuse to wear plate armor in my shop so I do use a splitter. Mine is a homemade one in a zero clearance throat plate. I bet you don't have one of them, either.

Yes - I have encountered that. I use wedges to keep the wood open in that case. Just like a splitter but not part of the saw. I don't disagree with what a splitter does, it's just that my saws don't have them so I use other techniques. Having said that, I looked at my saw recently and think I have come up with a way to build a riving knife for it that I will probably do. It's a bit down on my priority list right now since I have to get the car that I've been working on for the past 4 months out of my "shop".

You didn't read what I wrote. I said the saw did not come with a splitter - it's not in the drawer. And... there are ways that are equally effective to keep the wood from twisting back into the blade. I never mentioned that I did not understand how wood moves and did not take actions to accomodate that. There really is more to using a table saw than only using those devices you are familiar with. It pays to understand what is happening with things like kickback and to take measures to avoid it. I do this. You jumped to a bad conclusion.

I never said that and that is an alarmist cry. Equally, with your plastic guard and your pin splitter, you are equally vulnerable to an accident. My point might even be that many put too much confidence in pieces of plastic and feel they are past the point of danger driving awareness.

So - you take the course of employing intelligence and alternate methods to accomplish what a blade guard attempts to provide, but you post this stuff dumping on me for doing the same? You would not know what I have because I never gave out enough information for you to arrive at a conclusion. You jumped again because you wanted to get up on a horse and you are completely wrong in your assumptions. I never said a splitter was useless, I never even mentioned zero clearance plates. It seems like you really wanted to get up on a soap box with this post but you should have made sure the soap was dry - the box is slipping out from under you.

=8^0

having learned on and used saws with no safety equipment at all for the first 20 years or so of my woodworking carreer I have in the last few years started using a splitter. I'm using a zero clearance insert mounted one, and I'd say it has increased my margin of safety a bit without creating any hassles.

guards won't keep you from getting hurt if you behave stupidly enough, and lack of them won't automatically cause injuries. in some cases, the standard US safety equipment is poorly enough designed to create significant hazards of it's own. I have heard speculation that the poor design is deliberate- the machinery is barely useable with the factory guards installed, so the vast majority of users remove them, which gives the manufacturer an argument to avoid liability.

snipped-for-privacy@windwalker.net wrote in news:cy2Td.20931$ snipped-for-privacy@fe06.lga:

There was a series on tablesaw safety printed up in ShopNotes a while back.

Should I make you a pdf copy, and post it on ABPW? ;-)

Patriarch, (who is DEFINITELY joking...)

"Mike Marlow" prophesized in message>

confessed in message

I'm not goin'.. Get yourself one of these to help you. But YMMV. Some smaller versions even have a magnetic base. I have one on the dashboard of my truck.

====================================== As far as I am concerned you ....are nuts...and lucky....

I always use a splitter...(although it is only a Nail tightly inserted in the zero clearance inserts I use)... yes a nail...

I purchased and installed an over head guard on my saw over ten years ago....and looking back it has been one of the best buys I have ever made.. I use it all the time .. but like the seat belts in my car.. have never needed it...

Bob Griffiths.

Mike Marlow, it sounds like you took it a little more personally than it was meant. Especially since I wasn't replying to you in the first place. I think you can smooth your hackles now.

My reply was to the other Mike who wrote: "A safety question for all of you experts: "The first thing I did when i got my Powermatic Artisans saw was to remove the splitter blade assembly. Never replaced it..."

Dave

Are you trying to turn this into a serious conversation? As long as we don't take it seriously, we won't pissing contest 101 come out of the woodwork.

Bob

AFTER reading your reply which gave your experience level I say "if it works for you then go ahead on". For a newbie reading this thread, please check out this stuff BEFORE you do what an "old hand at woodworking" does. There are a lot of things that can go wrong when using a table saw. Understanding which ones can hurt you and WHY may help when doing your own risk analysis.

Me, I've got a riving knife, push sticks (the GRRRIPPER is great for controling short stuff), Draw-Tite magnetic hold downs/hold against the fence - and no blade guard. I also have the TS-Aligner Jr. Delux and use it to make sure my saw blade parallels the miter slot and the fence as well. A bad set up can be a major source of grief. Better to know the set up's right than to assume it is when in fact it isn't.

Horsepower is nice, but knowledge, when used properly, is more powerful.

BTW - when a mortising chisel gets stuck in a mortise - DO NOT have your forehead (or in my case a 5 or 6 head) in it's exit path. You WILL actually "see stars". Same goes for removing a stuck tenon.

charlie b

Here's an inexpensive idea for anyone wanting to add a splitter to their saw. I'll be picking one up later on today. At this price it's a no brainer.

Ok. Hang on a minute... (spitting in hand and stroking gently from top to bottom...). There - all smoothed now. A bit wet, but all smoothed.

I'm sorry Dave. I jumped out of instinct of some sort I guess. Or for some other equally brain dead reason. My bad. Please excuse my reaction.

No worries, Mike. Apology accepted. Hatchet buried.

I've got one of these and it works great. The only thing I regret is that it won't work on any angle other than 90°. It took me a few minutes to set up the first one but once I figured it out, making new holes for the splitter in other inserts only took a second. They can't help it if I'm a little thick at times.

I take it you're not in the market for a SawStop table saw?

--RC