Throwback - You Never Know - Not OT

[Tom B]

This AM I was finishing off an outdoor project - little foot-stool to go with an Adirondack chair I'd built. I needed (or wanted - for purposes of over-engineering) a couple of 45 degree angle braces to control racking stresses. Grabbed a 24" long, 4" wide, 7/8" thick hunk of white oak (my preferred outside furniture wood) scrap, set the mitre gauge and ran it through the saw to get a 45 degree triangle. Next cut was to be a 90 degree cross cut of the rest on the board to get the second triangle. First cut was absolutely normal through blade exit and then, BAM! The offcut triangle headed to the rear of the saw at impressive velocity (I never saw it), hit the front apron of my bench and landed on the floor.

Rurned saw off! Checking the cut on both pieces (offcut and main piece), showed nothing strange, no burns, saw marks, gouges, no nothing - just a fractured 45 degree corner where the offcut triangle hit the bench.

Somewhere in this NG I read the suggestion (now a BIG RULE), that says no body part shall ever be in the offcut throw zone. I've tried to follow that rule as a religion and am damn glad I did so this time. That hunk of WO would have hurt! I have no clue what happened to cause the throwback, but am damned glad I wasn't in the way!

Be careful out there, bad stuff happens (as my old NCO used to tell me just before the s#$% hit the proverbial fan).

Regards.

Tom

[Lew Hodgett]

SFWIW, the above is why I use a sled where ever possible, especially miter cuits.

Lew

[mac davis]

Ahh... you mean "kick back"...

I thought you were talking about a cave man or something.. lol

It's very much like a fire fight... You don't want to be in the place the shit is heading... Glad you were out of the "line of fire"..

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Jeff Gorman]

"Tom B" wrote

Presumably, the offcut touched the uprunning teeth.

A riving knife (splitter) is supposed to prevent this.

Jeff

[BobS]

Tom,

Jeff Gorman answered what most likely caused it - but now, how to prevent future mishaps is the next step. Having had this happen to me (and had the bruises to prove it...) I found that the main cause for this is that the wood slipped just enough (a thousandth of an inch is more than enough) to cause the cutoff to be pulled into the blade. This piece is now setup to be grabbed by the teeth on the rear of the blade, flinging it up and out - rather quickly as you noted.

Get some stick on sandpaper and put about 1/2" wide strip of that on the front of your miter gauge and on any extension fence you may have on your miter gauge. I have 3 Incra's and they all have a 1/2" high strip stuck to the face of each. There are certainly other things you can do to prevent this but hand-holding a piece of wood, especially at an angle is inviting the wood to slip.

Ed Bennett's new site

would be a good place to include these type of safety tips for future reference. I'm plugging his site because I have used his TS Aligner JR since they first came out, his DVD and site tutorials are excellent and Ed has been a long time contributor to this newsgroup and mostly because a well aligned tablesaw is a big step towards working safely.

Bob S.

[Glen]

With most safety rules I have to go over them time and time again to get my kids to practice them. Even with that, I still have to remind them "Where is your eye protection" and "Where is your push stick." The lesson about standing in the kickback zone I only have to cover once. What I do after explaining what kickback is and the potential speed of a kickback (Someone once told me it can be over 200 MPH. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I use the figure anyway.) I stand behind the saw and lay a board on the table. I move the board back slowly to show where it would hit if the board went straight back. Then I repeat, "Imagine this board hitting you here (with the board strategically placed into my gonads) at two hundred miles per hour." At that point I drop two ball bearings on the floor and watch them slowly roll away. Every kid in the class winces and I can see their knees coming together in an reflexive, protective manner. For some unknown reason they ALWAYS remember that rule.

Glen

[Upscale]

Considering the number of women that are getting into shop class these days, I'm wondering what kind of reaction (after the initial laugh) you'd get out of them?

[Tom B]

Thanks for all the ideas.

Mitre sled is probably the safest way to go - time for me to build one as I only have a 90 degree cross cut sled today.

My mitre gauge (an Incra 1000 SE) has sandpaper on it, but that is also a good idea.

I also have Ed Bennet's TS Aligner and whole-heartedly agree that he's a good guy and sells a good product.

After much thought I can only guess that vibration or a tiny movement of the wood I was holding as the cut finished caused the kickback/throwback (I'm not going to argue which it was 'cause I don't have a slo-mo video of the action). In any case it was a bit more exciting than I prefer when in woodworking mode.

Regards.

Tom

STAY OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE, EVEN IF THE WEAPON IS "EMPTY" (ain't no such thing!)