Planer accident

[ujuy]

My uncle is a very experienced professional carpenter for over 50 years and recently he had an accident with his workshop planer with ended up with him having 18 stitches in his hand.

It is very unusual for him to have an accident of any kind and it is still a mystery exactly how this happened.

The accident was caused by a thin piece of wood which was fired back out of the machine as it was being planed.

I am just wondering if anyone has ever heard of this happening or can offer any possible reason as to why may have occurred?

 

[doctor Bob]

Was he doing 2 pieces at the same time or just a single piece?

 

[orchard]

There was an industrial fatality in the states and a youtube safety diagnosis of the event for public safety explaining how the kickback occured. I think this may be relevant, but don't know the url. Hope he recovers well

 

[Peter Sefton]

Was it on the surfacer or on the thicknesser? I hope he is back at the bench soon

 

[carlb40]

I have had something similar happen to me. No injury though. If i remember correctly i was using my jointer and tried to a slightly deeper cut than normal, and the timber ( pine ) splintered and a piece broke off.
Fortunately i was able to stop the machine before anything else happened.

Hope your uncle gets well soon

 

[ColeyS1]

Short grained timber or a loose knot perhaps? Usually you can hear if a piece of timber is behaving badly - particularly so on the spindle. Its usually followed by my workmate moving away from the line of fire (near his vice) then the short grained piece of wood on the end shoots off.

Hope he gets better soon :wink:

 

[ProShop]

Does his machine have an anti kickback device ??.

 

[custard]

The closest I've come to an accident on a planer/jointer was when edge jointing boards for a table top.

I was following the common practise of passing the first few inched across the blades with only gentle pressure, then bearing down hard until the last few inches when you ease up on the pressure again. Done this way there's a minute hollow on the edge of the boards, so that they have a "sprung edge" when glued and clamped. But in the centre of the board, bearing down hard, the board suddenly flipped and my hands plunged straight down onto the guard. Luckily I had the guard positioned right up to workpiece, but it still made an awful noise and gave me a hell of a fright.

 

[Wood Monkey]

Oh yes. I've seen it happen.

I'd cut some pieces on my bandsaw about 5mm thick, 300mm long and 100mm wide. I was running them through the thicknesser. I'd mounted them on an MDF carriage and they were going through lovely and then the carriage broke before I got to do the last piece. I thought I'd just run it through as my thicknesser has a 3mm stop on it so what could go wrong.

Well it came out the same way it went in at about 500mph and shattered to pieces against the wall. My guess was that the piece was slightly warped and it passed under the first roller it then curved up and the spinning cutter block fired it back out.

If my hand had been there it would certainly have had caused stitches or possibly even worse. I now treat the thicknesser with extra caution and respect.

Jon

 

[ujuy]

My uncle thinks he has figured out what happened:

One piece of wood was stuck still in the planner unbeknown by him so the feed rollers were still up at that thickness of that piece of wood.The second piece must have missed the feed roller as it was thinner so when it reached the cutter which turns the other way it spun it out the back at speed.

It has never happened before, he will not put thin bit of wood again and will take care not to have two pieces going through at the same time.

 

[AnselmFraser]

All thin pieces of wood going through a planer need to be put through with great care because at any time they can break up and be "spat " out at you at great speed and therefore causing the operator possible injury . So if you are doing this be "ready " for a possible problem .

 

[newt]

So it was a thicknesser.

 

[drillbit]

I gave myself a nasty fright using my jointer a couple of weeks back. I mitre glued a lot of small 80x200mm plywood drawers, and one or two came out slightly too large to fit. I thought I'd take off a couple of mm from the sides with the jointer.

Not very clever.

Half way through the first pass the drawer exploded and left me trying to guide thin air over the blades. Still not sure how my fingers didn't end up in the blades. Not something I will be repeating..

 

[Apache_sim]

I am just starting to use these machines in my home built workshop... certainly make me think about what I am doing