Tool Safety -what happens when you forget

SteveA · 2011-02-01T02:49:06+00:00

Group,I feel compelled to write this post, as a lurker of this newsgroup for some time, a poser of questions, a relatively newbie to serious woodworking and as someone who has survived a career in heavy and highway construction for 37+ years I had remained unscathed, until now.After work ended today, (I am currently a instructor for our craft as well as Safety trainer for our membership), I ended up working in my shop area to cut and bevel some 4" oak pieces so I could join them to form a 4" leg for a mission style table that I am currently working on. My tool of choice is my PM 3000 with a just sharpened WWII blade to put the 45 on both sides of these boards to I can start gluing them up to form the leg. I pulled several boards that were previously jointed and planed to size and started cutting them down into a more manageable size, closer to the final lengths thinking it would be safer working with smaller pieces (31"+/-).After running the 16 pieces through the saw the first time, I noticed that a couple of them appeared to be a bit wider, because there was still a flat spot on the bevel side. At this point I must tell you, this saw scares the sh*t out of me every time I use it, I have the utmost respect for its ability and maintain the area around it free an anything that might impede the work going thru. At this point, the easy answer was to take a 1/8 of the dimension, and run them through again to remove this flat spot and complete the bevel. I got through all but a couple, when for no apparent reason (I am still trying to figure out how this actually occurred) my thumb came in contact with the blade. Having seen all of the video's on the subject posted on the web some of them I actually use when teaching tool safety, I was very much surprised with this momentary contact with the spinning blade. Pulling my hand back and after a fast look at the cut and then immediately squeezing my thumb with my other hand I was again surprised with first the lack of blood...