Andy..
First things first… no need to apologise… Your post fell a long way short of offending me. Pushed a few buttons, granted, but it takes a hellova lot more than that to offend me…
Re double deep ripping.. I DO take your point on board.. it reinforces my own risk assessment prior to the few times I’ve tried it for myself. While I recognise the dangers you’re pointing out, to date I’ve managed to negate them through EXTREMELY fussy stock selection. I make a point of only using quarter sawn stock in any project. When milling tennons, bridle joints or indeed resawing, I go one stage further by making sure the sticks being milled are from boards that have proven to be stable. To date, test cutting boards has prevented at least a half dozen potentially ugly incidents.
Forgive me if I waffle a bit here… but I feel there’s a need to draw another point from what you’ve said. I’m not a gambling man by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d be willing to bet that all the incidents you outlined to in your post took place in either a commercial or industrial shop. A shop where operatives felt a pressure to meet a deadline; where keeping overheads to a minimum may have resulted in less than optimum stock being used for any particular task. I’m familiar with the exact same pressures, but not… and I STRESS NOT in MY workshop. Cabinet making, for me is a hobby, something to challenge both my physical abilities to turn my hand to a new skill or technique, and challenge my mind, creating designs to meet a requirement, creating jigs to hold a piece of stock to enable one or another process. It is NOT an environment where I feel pressured into meeting deadlines. If for any reason I’m unhappy that I’M physically or mentally able to focus entirely on the task at hand, I walk away, close the shop door and go do something else instead. I understand FULL WELL what can happen with a second’s lapse in concentration. I apply the same stipulations to my stock selection. I ONLY buy kiln dried quarter sawn locally grown and produced hardwoods, NOT for any kind of snobbery, far from it. Simply because it’s the most stable stock I can get my hands on. I stand to loose too much if apiece of stock is used for a process it’s not ideally suited for.
Like I said above.. I DO take the point you’re making onboard, and I applaud your efforts to teach an appreciation of how quickly things can go wrong, and it’s consequences when working with machinery. However, rightly or wrongly, I honestly feel that permanently handicapping an extremely versatile piece of machinery by the permanent fitting of an improperly thought out guard system has more than a passing resemblance to shooting ALL horses larger than a Shetland pony simply because riders occasionally get hurt.
Safety is a subject I feel passionately about, not simply because it’s in my own best interests, but because every instinct I have tells me that the current “fashion” in legislation to slap arbitratory bans on machines, tools or practices is just plain wrong. Legislating in a manor that treats hands on operatives as if they had the IQ of your average pot plant is to my mind, utterly deplorable. IT HAS to mean more than simply taking the lowest cost option out of a problem. I already carry a permanent daily reminder of the consequences of half ass’d solutions to a problem; there HAS to be a better way.
Last point… I’ll make a deal with you… I’ll accept your apology unreservedly… if you’ll accept mine…. Writing anything before first regaining control of my temper is something I shoulda known better than to do…. I apologise unconditionally…
Wiggling all eight fingers and both thumbs…. For test purposes…
