Table Saw kickback and trimmed finger (Graphic description & images)

[Against_The_Grain]

I've never seen one like it anywhere.

Then perhaps you should cut one out and try it instead of decrying it vehemently with no real experience, it's been the industry standard in wood machining for decades.

 

[Luckosaurous]

Funny thing is by the time the brain has registered to quickly pull back your hand, the accident has already happened and the damage been done.

Worked out in college once. Think about the fastest you could touch something, and pull away. 1/10 of a second ?
So look at the speed of a planer block ,well say 5000 rpm. so in one second dividing 5000 by 60 =83.3 rps. finger comes into contact with cutter block for 10th of a second, so divide 83 by 10 giving us say 8. Now as there are 2 blades, that number is multiplied by 2 giving us about 16
So in that single quickest you can do the touch, the blades have taken 16 slices from your finger tip.

Probably not entirely true.

…I imagine there’s no finger left to slice after about 5 or 6

 

[TRITON]

Probably not entirely true.

…I imagine there’s no finger left to slice after about 5 or 6

Pretty much yeah ,you'd be down to the knuckle.
While scrounging scrap timber off a big cabinetmakers bitd, i was talking to the bloke who sweeps up. He was a cabinetmaker and had fed one hand into the surfacer losing all 4 fingers by half. The company kept him on to sweep up but he couldnt work at anything else because of the damage done.

 

[Jacob]

Then perhaps you should cut one out and try it instead of decrying it vehemently with no real experience, it's been the industry standard in wood machining for decades.

 

[Jacob]

Then perhaps you should cut one out and try it

Have tried lots of variations

instead of decrying it vehemently with no real experience,

Have quite a lot of experience

it's been the industry standard in wood machining for decades.

News to me. Is there an industry standard? How come nobody copies it in plastic or supplies anything like it with machines etc?

Looking at the regs again (not really regs just safety advice) maybe the crown guard is relatively new idea as they only show those overhead mounted guards which also have problems (and advantages) of their own. Main prob is people trying to DIY them but not very well - have been known to cause accidents themselves. Best to buy a ready made sturdy industrial model if you must, but they are not cheap. Crown guard a much better idea. Keep it simple!

 

[TRITON]

In the real world, you need a variety of different shapes for whatever you might be cutting, and even a push stick in the right hand and a push stick with a steel spike in the end for control in the left hand is ideal for a lot of work.

I'd agree with that, and the spiked one would be very handy for fighting off the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal.

 

[BarbaraT]

you're also missing the fact that if the teeth are large enough, and they smash through your finger with enough force after only a few hits, it might transfer enough energy to throw your hand clear of the blade and into the fence leaving a red mark.

All before you realise what's happening.

 

[Luckosaurous]

Pretty much yeah ,you'd be down to the knuckle.
While scrounging scrap timber off a big cabinetmakers bitd, i was talking to the bloke who sweeps up. He was a cabinetmaker and had fed one hand into the surfacer losing all 4 fingers by half. The company kept him on to sweep up but he couldnt work at anything else because of the damage done.

I’ve recently started watching a YouTube channel for ‘sawyer design’ and he makes some nice stuff, but he has some of the most sketchy practices and he almost celebrates it. He started a catchphrase of “not your fingers, not your problem” and has been trying to sell T-shirts on it.

It baffles me how ignorant some people are to the danger they are in.

Like I get how a sawstop could breed complacently with a table saw in America, but in one video he pushes a tiny piece over the planer with his bare hands. He also does a lot of sketchy cuts on the table saw, but he has a Harvey rather than a sawstop. It’s a matter of time before they aren’t his fingers either i guess, and just like your guy, I imagine that will end his (YouTube) career

 

[TRITON]

it might transfer enough energy to throw your hand clear of the blade and into the fence leaving a red mark.

I came into contact with a router cutter once. Using it, then laid it down in front of me on the bench, and a few moments later reached forward without looking and my thumb found the cutter as it was still slowing down.
It was a larger straight cutter and wasnt going fast enough to vapourize the flesh, but it knocked my thumb out the road and left a series of 10 or so parallel cuts along it. The first few really drew blood, but the rest got more minor till the last few were like a paper cut. LESSON LEARNED

Hows the throbbing coming on ? Painkillers doing the job ?, maybe ask/plead/beg tearfully for some oramorph off the doctor.
A small sip of morphine certainly helps you get to sleep or when you waken up to find you've been sleeping on it

I’ve recently started watching a YouTube channel for ‘sawyer design’ and he makes some nice stuff, but he has some of the most sketchy practices and he almost celebrates it. He started a catchphrase of “not your fingers, not your problem” and has been trying to sell T-shirts on it.

It baffles me how ignorant some people are to the danger they are in.

Like I get how a sawstop could breed complacently with a table saw in America, but in one video he pushes a tiny piece over the planer with his bare hands. He also does a lot of sketchy cuts on the table saw, but he has a Harvey rather than a sawstop. It’s a matter of time before they aren’t his fingers either i guess, and just like your guy, I imagine that will end his (YouTube) career

Yeah well complacency is the cause of most accidents i reckon. He'll continue on till the surfacer kicks the small board backwards and he feeds his fingers into the cutterblock. You cant tell folk like that.

 

[Dabop]

I been lucky so far (touch wood) but I did get a rather bad cut needing stitches from a bandsaw... and it wasn't even running...

Putting a new blade on it, and it came packaged in the usual fairly tightly wound loop, started cutting the plastic ties holding it in that nice tidy circle and it sprang out, catching me on the back of my hand, opened it right up and almost cut a tendon to boot (they stitched it back together until it healed as it was very nearly cut right through)

So running equipment isn't the only thing that can hurt you...

(I thought I was safe, still had several ties to cut, but as I cut the second of the five or six on it, obviously the tension on the blade became too much and the teeth cut through the remaining ties by itself)

 

[Against_The_Grain]

Have quite a lot of experience

Ah, so you have also worked in woodworking factories pushing thousands of metres of timber through various machines on a day to day basis? If you had, you would’ve seen this style of push stick on practically every machine, you even see that particular design in old training manuals.

As said, it doesn’t serve every purpose but it does cope with most work perfectly fine whilst achieving its main objective which is to reduce the risk of an operator coming into contact with something sharp and fast.

 

[TRITON]

Ah, so you have also worked in woodworking factories pushing thousands of metres of timber through various machines on a day to day basis? If you had, you would’ve seen this style of push stick on practically every machine, you even see that particular design in old training manuals.

As said, it doesn’t serve every purpose but it does cope with most work perfectly fine whilst achieving its main objective which is to reduce the risk of an operator coming into contact with something sharp and fast.

I've never seen one like that either, most ive come across constructed by someone else are the long straight type with the birds mouth end.
That said, the cheapo plastic things mimic the curved handle, though they too seem to favour the birds mouth variety, so maybe its been a combination of both.

"Pushing 1000's m's etc". come on be fair, feeding that much its one after the other with the next component pushing the one in front and in industry they tend to favour power feeds. Maybe the very very last one you'd use a push stick.
But again its probably the individual operators preference and what he's been shown to make while apprenticing. One of those triangular ones or curved or straight, I dont think theres any definitive shape, size or length. Whatever you feel comfy with.

How about one shaped like this

 

[Chris Harris]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Since I started using my table saw last year I have always endeavoured to treat the saw with the greatest respect. This is a sobering reminder for me not to allow any complacency to creep in. The HSE guidance appears to cover all the key basics and a good starting point. A key point I think is always carry out a mental 'risk assessment' before making cuts.
On a slightly tangential issue wrt safety on the table saw I have a slight issue with my saw. When I first got it I was mainly doing cross cuts. More recently I started to do some rip cuts and found the timber was binding on the rip fence on the final push out. This caused me to recheck all the alignments. After a a few tweaks I was confident I had the blade and fence correctly aligned and parallel, at least to a few 100th's of a mm. This improved things however I still felt the timber binding on the run out. I then found that the riving knife was toeing out from the blade, effectively pushing the cut timber towards the fence. I checked this by passing a cut piece back through. The work piece was free running between the blade and fence up until the piece gets to the riving knife. At this point you can see the work piece starting to deflect the knife and then spring back once it passes right through, I would say about a mm. I can see no way of adjusting the riving knife independently.
I would very much like to hear any thoughts from the more experienced members on this. I.E. is this normal. a safety risk etc. Obviously even more wary now.
The table saw is a Charnwood W629.

Check the thickness of the riving knife and the blade. If the blade is thinner than the knife it will bind. In use this appears to the eye as a mis-aligned knife or fence. Check the knife is not bent. I don't know your saw, but usually you can fit shims into the fastening box for the knife to move it sideways or align it with the blade. It is a safety risk. Apologies if I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.

 

[Jacob]

Ah, so you have also worked in woodworking factories pushing thousands of metres of timber through various machines on a day to day basis? If you had, you would’ve seen this style of push stick on practically every machine, you even see that particular design in old training manuals.
.....

That accounts for the very high accident rates then.
I blame the tiny birds-mouth. With a bigger mouth you effectively hold the workpiece rather than just push it.

 

[Spectric]

Does the push stick shape really mater, I would have thought the important aspects of it are that it is not to short, has a decent notch to catch the workpiece and in use has a sensible angle to the table, if to much of an angle then a lot of effort will be pushing the workpiece into the table rather than forward through the blade. I also avoid the plastic ones because they can shatter. But really any pushstick is going to be better than none.

On another topic, watching a tv program whilst having breakfast about a salvage firm in the states where they were puting full sheets through a table saw with no guards and then using a dado cutter with the guys hand holding the wood as it passed over the cutter.

 

[Agent_zed]

Funny thing is by the time the brain has registered to quickly pull back your hand, the accident has already happened and the damage been done.

Worked out in college once. Think about the fastest you could touch something, and pull away. 1/10 of a second ?
So look at the speed of a planer block ,well say 5000 rpm. so in one second dividing 5000 by 60 =83.3 rps. finger comes into contact with cutter block for 10th of a second, so divide 83 by 10 giving us say 8. Now as there are 2 blades, that number is multiplied by 2 giving us about 16
So in that single quickest you can do the touch, the blades have taken 16 slices from your finger tip.

yeah that was the part where my brain had to do a check and work out whether I was missing something, after the withdrawal.

I have had my finger pulled into my table router when I was doing a test cut on a scrap piece of wood. It caught the end and pulled my hand around before I could even react. I did the same pulling back but this time I knew I'd been cut but just held my hand for a few seconds whilst I worked out how bad. Thankfully it just did a small amount of damage to my fingertip and I just have a small scar to remind me not to be an silly person.

I think it also doesn't help that each machine has its own unique way of wanting to get you. I 'think' I am more safety conscious now and it's a lot easier to find videos now showing the dangers than when I started.

 

[Jacob]

.... I also avoid the plastic ones because they can shatter.

Some cheapo plastic ones may shatter though I've never seen it happen, but they don't as a rule. They just get nicked and cut quite safely.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

"Pushing 1000's m's etc". come on be fair, feeding that much its one after the other with the next component pushing the one in front and in industry they tend to favour power feeds.

Thats certainly the case now, but you would be surprised how many large scale operations are run like it’s the dark ages, there were very few powerfeeders in the Jeldwen factory for example even up until recently when they closed down. The overwhelming majority of the timber was ripped through a Wadkin BSW circular saw bench with push sticks, with someone on the outfeed side pulling through.

 

[imageel]

Probably not entirely true.

…I imagine there’s no finger left to slice after about 5 or 6

That's pretty much the case - I dipped the tip of my left ring finger into my surface planer - complacency is most likely reason as the piece of timber was quite thick and didn't really require push sticks however I'd inadvertently let that finger dangle as I guided the wood through, and possibly I also could have set the fence closer to minimise the amount of exposed blade.
It cut the corner down to the bone way before I felt anything and I remember at casualty the doctor spending a long time poking in the wound with tweezers fishing out shavings of the nail and bits of bone so as to maximise the chances it would heal properly. It was surprising how many fragments were deposited onto the gauze pad where my hand rested..
Luckily I made a good recovery with only a slightly misshapen nail after it grew back and the only long term effect is the nerve damage - which paradoxically makes me even more safety conscious since I know if I did it again I would likely end up with more severe damage before I even felt it!

 

[Jacob]

That's pretty much the case - I dipped the tip of my left ring finger into my surface planer - complacency is most likely reason as the piece of timber was quite thick and didn't really require push sticks

Er - hate to say it but obviously it did require push sticks!
They are fail safe so even if you have missed out with other safety measures your fingers are still well out of the way. Should be a default routine every time, with any decision not to use them only after being carefully considered.