Originally Posted by
Martin Wasner
Being that there's been a glut of people being dumb with sharp spinning objects lately, it got me thinking how to quantify the number of cuts I've made in my career, versus the number of injuries more serious than a bandaid.
I've been hurt pretty good twice. Once with a bandsaw being stupid and cut into my thumb and earning a half dozen stitches. The second time was with a tablesaw and while I really mauled my thumb, there was no point in going to a doctor. They weren't going to do anything I couldn't do, and weren't going to tell me anything I didn't already know.
I've been at this for nineteen years. Day in, and day out. Most of that has been while self employed. I work way more than 40 hour weeks, but I'll just use 40 since that's probably an accurate number for in shop hours. So 2080 hours per year times 19 years for a total of 39,520 hours.
While it really depends on what I'm doing, there's almost no chance I make less than 20 cutting operations in an hour. In some cases I'm betting it's more than 200 per hour on the high end. To be conservative, I'll just use 60 as an average.
At sixty cuts per hour over the course of 39,520 hours, that's 2.37 million cuts in my career between tablesaw, cut off saws, panel saws, rip saws, jointers, shapers, etc. 2,370,000. With two significant power tool injuries. Those are educated guesses on the number of cuts, but it's gotta be in the ballpark. Say it's half and 1.19 million. That's a .00000168% failure rate. Go with the original number and it's .000000843%
I'll take those odds.
I don't use guards on a tablesaw
I believe push sticks to be dangerous and a last resort.
I don't use a splitter
I don't use a riving knife
I adhere to strict operational guidelines and maintain a razor sharp focus. Why? Because that tool cuts through wood like butter, and won't even notice my meat going through it.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Flesh sensing technology isn't making you safer, it's allowing you to slough off adhesion to safety and making you complacent. Sorry, but only you are responsible for you and I'm not trusting a widget.
