Your kickback experience

[Mike W.]

Before you read this, please understand I am not asking if it's OK to be unsafe and have a kickback incident, I just want to know what really happens to us all.

A post about a year ago from me describes a kickback incident I had that hurt pretty bad. The board didnt break the skin, but blood finally made it to the surface of my gut the next day. I never want to have that happen again, but a recent post titled 'Table saw wood splitter/anti kick back question' made me wonder what people are actually referring too when they say stuff like "it'll eventually get you".

How many people here have had a significant kickback incident?

How bad was it? Was it just a 'put a bandaid on it and get back to sawing' incident or a 'Im not sure I ever want to touch a tablesaw again' incident? Was it really a life threatening issue?

Mine was a 'put a bandaid on it' (plus a new pair of undies) incident. A year later and I'm still ultra careful and hate to think what would have happend had my gut been my head in that instance.

Thanks,

Mike

[Glen]

The worst I remember (thank God not first-hand) was about 40-45 years ago. I was just a kid. A friend of my father owned a lumber yard and his kid (the lumber yard owner), a teenager, helped out his dad on the weekends. There was a kickback on the RAS and it killed the kid. I really don't remember much more than that.

Glen

[Dave Balderstone]

I had a 1x1 piece of hickory kick past me 12' to the wall, put a 1/2" deep dent in a solid-core door leaning there then bounce back, hit the opposite wall 25' feet away, and land on the floor in front of the saw.

I've never been hit, because I never stand in the kickback path.

djb

[Steve]

[Mike Pio]

So this piece traveled a total distance of 37 feet? It traveled 12' in one direction, hit a door, turned 180 degrees and traveled 25 more feet??? Was the second leg of its trip mostly sliding on the ground? How powerful was the saw and did the piece fly off at face level?

[Robert Allison]

In my 35 years of using table saws, I have had a couple of kickbacks that hurt. Once I was cutting some wood that was warping as it was going through the blade and kicked back driving a splinter through the skin between my thumb and forefinger. The splinter was about 3/8" diameter where it met my skin. That hurt. Another time I had completed a cut but hadn't pushed the pieces past the saw blade and was moving the cutoff (widest piece) off of the table and came into contact with the piece between the blade and fence. It bound up and kicked back into my hip. That hurt quite a bit also and left a bruise that stayed for about a week.

We set up a piece of plywood in front of a table saw once and drew a target on it. We would leave the fence slightly loose, run a piece of 1x4 through the saw (to make a 3/4 x 3/4 piece), then push the fence into the piece and send it flying back (intentional kickback). You can put a 6 foot piece of

3/4 x 3/4 pine about 3 feet through a 3/4 inch thick piece of plywood from 15 feet away that way. Really makes you respect the power. Love those Powermatics!

In those 35 years, I have never used a table saw with a blade guard, splitter or anti kickback pawls. But this is what I do for a living, so I guess I am just used to saws that way. Haven't had any other harmful kickbacks. A few kickbacks, but none that have hurt me. I always stand out of the way.

[Greg G]

And that is a sobering realization that most do not comprehend until it is too late.

I've seen chunks of wood hanging from a hole in a concrete block. Not in my shop, fortunately...

But it's the little things that will get you. Ripping 10' x 10" x 2" lumber, never had a problem. You KNOW this is a tough job and to keep your wits about you. It's that little piece of hardboard your going to shave a 1/4" inch from the edge of that'll get you in the end... DAMHIKT

Greg G.

[Leon]

Hummm.. The kick back path is anywhere behind the saw. I suspect you have never been hit because you have been lucky also. I have had a kick back go out over the fence and to the right side of the saw.

[Chris Ross]

When I was a junior in high school, a senior got a nice kickback that sent a 4 foot long piece of 3x3 stock into his chest like a javelin. Bruised his sternum and knocked him about 4 feet back. Dude had a 65 inch chest, so this was no willowy kid.

I had already had a few kickback experiences before that happened. The first one occured when I was in junior high school screwing around with my old mans table saw. I was pulling something through the back side with the blade guard off when it twisted and threw my finger into the blade. I cut halfway through the first digit of my left hand middle finger. It was cut exactly halfway through and if the blade had been any higher than a half inch above the thickness of the stock, I would have lost the entire tip of the finger, which incidentally would have made my index finger, middle finger, and ring finger all exactly the same legnth, lol.

The other one happened my freshman year of HS when I got a kickback on the big old 12 inch RAS. Somehow it managed to kickback away from me and flew into the wall behind the RAS snapping off the wooden fence and makign a hell of a boom.

[Mike Fairleigh]

That is one magic piece of hickory. (Apologies to Oliver Stone).

Seriously, I don't doubt it. My one experience was a small piece of pine,

1x2x~6", that would have taken off a piece of my cheek, lip, and ear if I hadn't had on glasses and ear muffs. About half my face was numb for two days. I now wear these things not just because of the danger of flying particles and hearing damage, but also for the physical protection they afford. Oh, and I also traded my Craftsman contractor's saw in for a new Unisaw, in hopes that the fence will stay in adjustment (it has now, for 10 years).

[Mike Marlow]

Hmmmmm... My compound bow will launch an arrow at somewhere above 240fps. That translates to around 160mph if I do the math correctly. It won't come near to putting an arrow through a 3/4in piece of plywood from any distance. I have to confess, I've never tried to put it through a piece of wood at 5 yards, but I have hit a target frame or two over the years at 20 yards and penetration is only an inch or two. A six foot piece of 1x1 will surely have little enough spine to distort upon impact and just makes me have to question its ability to penetrate a piece of plywood any amount at 5 yards, let alone penetrate it three feet.

Likewise, I've never used a guard or a splitter or pawls for roughly the same period of time. It's not that I wouldn't use them, but I've never had a saw with them. Kickback is a very real consideration, but I have argued in the past, and continue to believe that kickback is something that should be understood in order to be dealt with, and not something that one attempts to avoid by blindly placing faith in adjuncts. We see enough posts here on a regular enough basis, where the author is saying "gee, I had all of the safety equipment in place and I got a kickback - what happened?". Sometimes we get complacent with the gear that is on the tools and we let our guard down when it comes to the basics.

[Mike Marlow]

You too!!!???

[Greg G]

Yep, it left a small cut, but a large bruise on my hand. Must have hit pretty hard, cause there was bleeding under the skin, and it hurt like the dickens for weeks.

The cut was through - but I let the piece _just_ kiss the back of the blade. And it'll never happen again, if I can help it. It was one of those _What If_ moments, for sure.

Greg G.

[Mike Marlow]

It only has to happen one time and you quickly figure out that the slight "swishing" sound you hear is a precursor to a very bad thing. And to think - it's such a gentle little sound...

[gfretwell]

I shot a little block of wood out of my garage, 35 feet to the street,

25 feet across the street and plugged it in the sod, about 10 feet in the neighbor's yard. A couple of these and you will build a sled with clamps on it ;-)

[Greg G]

That is probably one reservation I held for a while about a more powerful saw - what if it had been 3HP instead of 1HP.

On a lathe, you can leave the belt a little lose to help cushion the response to a catch, but you still have to deal with the kinetic energy contained in the rotating object. On a 3HP table saw, that isn't an option - it doesn't jam and stall, it rips it outta there and sends it flying, continuing to merrily spin along, never skipping a beat.

When I first purchased a WWII table saw blade, that thing was _SO_ freaken sharp it was unnerving. It was like 40 little well formed, scary-sharpened chisels all vying for a piece-o-me. Granted, the blade's sharpness ultimately means less than it's speed and energy - they'll all cut your fingers off just as quick - but that thing just made it seem so ... scary ...

Greg G.

[Upscale]

Unless it's a particularly big and heavy piece of wood caught in a kickback scenario, I wouldn't expect HP to make all that much difference. It's likely that RPM would be similar between different HP ratings.

[Greg G]

I've been known to rip 2 1/4" strips from 8 foot 2x10 SYP boards. Built my workbench this way, cut them apart, glue them back together. (Sounds crazy, I know.)

the amount of reaction wood contained in these 'veneer cores' was amazing. Big, sappy, pinching things. They did smell good when cut, however - kinda like Christmas. Didn't try letting the blade burn, or I could have had a forest fire odor as well.

My wimpy little saw barely cut it, much less left enough power to throw it too far. Two more HP would have made a different in this scenario, I fear.

On the average furniture project, no, it probably wouldn't have differed a whit.

Greg G.

[Ba r r y]

I had ONE, when I was a beginner, on a CROSSCUT! 8^(

I had recently learned how to use the fence as a gauge for multiple crosscuts. The correct way to do this requires a stop block clamped to the fence that ends well before the front edge of the blade.

A few weeks later, I used the technique again, but forgot the stop block. An approximately 8" long x 1" x 4-5" wide piece of 4/4 red oak got fired into my kidney area.

The initial pain was so bad, I though I would die within the hour. I've taken ridiculous mountain and road bike spills, played organized, full-contact hockey, totaled cars and trucks, put my hand through 12" radio control propellers... NOTHING hurt like this. They didn't even make me wait to be examined at the emergency room.

Fortunately, the wood had hit my right hand (which took a few more minutes to start to hurt) on the way to my body, so no permanent damage was done. I don't want to think about what a direct hit might have done.

Always think through a cut...

Barry

[George]

Those of us who learned to stand out of the way when ripping and to let it fly when in doubt have had few, if any injuries, I'm sure.

Now the wall has suffered a few indignities from ripping poplar (real poplar) and wood from right at the heart of the tree, but not even my wooden fingers were damaged.