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View Full Version : Had a pretty good kick back today. Woke me right up.



Peter Quinn
03-21-2009, 8:22 PM
I'm making some passage doors for the house this weekend; my wife is due with our second child in May and it turns out she thinks we ought to have a door on our new daughters bedroom! So I figure if I'm going to make one, I might as well make several and replace the last few hollow core doors in the house while I'm at it.

Anyway, I'm spinning a 7" donut on the shaper, I can't get rid of the snipe using the stock fence (not a great idea to have a 7" fence opening anyway though I have been doing it for years) so I decide to finally make a much overdue panel raising hood and do it right. Hood works great, takes up more of my valuable time than I would like but once done was worth it. I run a test piece, I need to add .005" to the panel tongue so I step up to the TS to quickly rip off a half inch or so for another test.

I get about 4" into the cut when WHAMMO. I'm diving to the right, the panel is flying over my left shoulder, and now I am wide awake. I had been using the TS as an assembly table to dry fit the door frame for panel measurements, I had taken out the bies splitter and not replaced it, my focus was on the shaper set up and new fence/hood set up. I was in a hurry and wasn't really pushing the rip through correctly. The perfect storm. Lapse in judgement, lack of focus, bad technique. If I were at the TS thinking TS I would have processed the cut differently and doubt this would have happened. But it did.

In any event I survived unscathed save a small nick on one finger where the sharp edge of the flying panel glanced me on its way by. I felt for a split second that something was going very wrong and in that split second I started to dive for the floor. I knew instinctively that I had lost control of the stock and had better let go and move like heck. I got lucky basically. The panel was a mess. It looked like someone had tried to freehand scribe a curve with a sazall along one edge, and there were several chunks missing from the back that looked like someone had run it over with a roto tiller. I guess the panel got hung up once or twice on the blade which bought me just enough time to dive right.

My first reaction was to shut off the saw once I knew it was clear of wood. Then I looked up at the ceiling for a few long seconds and wiggled my fingers one at a time to see if they were all still there before doing a visual inspection for bodily damage. It all happened so fast I had no idea if I was hurt or not. The realization that I had through my own bad judgement placed my self in such great danger that I had no idea whether I still had fingers was extremely humbling and unnerving. I took a few minutes to mill around and clean things up a bit, replaced my splitter, made a new test piece and processed my panels as planned, this time with considerably more focus on EVERY aspect of the work.

Don't do what I did. Please keep a minimum safe distance of at least 5" between head and buttocks at all times when using the TS. Scarry stuff, thanks for listening.

Neal Clayton
03-21-2009, 8:42 PM
well you had the presence of mind to let go. everyone i've ever heard of or seen get hurt are the ones who try to hold on. worst i ever saw was a piece of 3/4 ply go halfway through a metal garage door in high school. that guy also had the presence of mind to let go, thankfully, or he'd be a few fingers short on one hand.

David DeCristoforo
03-21-2009, 9:14 PM
Wahoo! Nothing like a little kickback action to liven up the day. After checking for the integrity of all exterior body parts, don't forget to make sure the heart slows back down to normal speed. Also, it's stuff like this that inspired me to add an extra pair of shorts to my first aid kit.

Peter Quinn
03-21-2009, 9:20 PM
Wahoo! Nothing like a little kickback action to liven up the day. After checking for the integrity of all exterior body parts, don't forget to make sure the heart slows back down to normal speed. Also, it's stuff like this that inspired me to add an extra pair of shorts to my first aid kit.

Sir, you have me laughing again out loud. I hadn't though to even check my shorts till now!

Gary Chester
03-21-2009, 9:27 PM
[quote=Peter Quinn;1087862]Please keep a minimum safe distance of at least 5" between head and buttocks at all times when using the TS. quote]

That's what had me laughing...

Glad you're OK...

Michael Parr
03-21-2009, 9:30 PM
Part of the reason why I bought a track system. There is almost no cut I cant do on it and pulling out the router and using the track to do Datos means I can be exact. I used a table saw at the woodshop to rip down a full sheet and it turns out that 4 of 5 pieces where off by 1/4 of an inch. I will stick with my track and just use the Deadwood concept and not worry about kick backs.

Neal Clayton
03-21-2009, 9:39 PM
actually there are alot of cuts you can't do on it, and i would suspect our table saws aren't off 1/4 inch, but thanks for the promotional material anyway/

Peter Scoma
03-22-2009, 3:22 AM
I can remember when I was in 8th grade and was given a delta contractors saw as a Christmas gift by my father. I was ripping a 2x4 for whatever reason when it bound, kicked back, hit the concrete basement wall behind me and split into 2 pieces!!!

Gave me instant respect for TS's and luckily haven't had a similar experience in the last 20 or so years.

Glad you are ok

PS

Dewey Torres
03-22-2009, 3:34 AM
Here is a few minutes you wont get back!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePiYPqcIOos

J. Z. Guest
03-22-2009, 8:20 AM
So what exactly caused the kickback? Was the board bound between the fence & blade, or was it a little warped, causing it to lift up a bit mid-cut?

Peter Quinn
03-22-2009, 12:09 PM
So what exactly caused the kickback? Was the board bound between the fence & blade, or was it a little warped, causing it to lift up a bit mid-cut?

Jeremy,

The material was 18MM Truppan MD Lite, 24 1/2" X 24 1/2" blanks, cut on a slider at work from a full sheet to make two panels each for paint grade 5 panel doors. They were dead square and pretty close to dead flat with a fresh sawn edge riding the rip fence. Doesn't get much easier to cut than ultra lite MDF. I can blame only operator error. I was ripping off 1/2" or so to remove the panel tongue and run the test piece again on the shaper. I was pushing too close to the rip fence and pushed the leading edge closest to the blade toward the blade, let the panel come off the fence in my haste. Operator error, zero tolerance from the saw. It went pretty much like that recent FWW video on kickback, except I wasn't using styrofoam!:eek: This is not my first experience with kick back, but it is my first with sheet stock, and the first in which tension in the wood was not a factor. Basically i turned my cabinet saw into one of those baseball pitching machines.

Dewey, That video is the new top of my list for "Stupid things done on a TS". i can only hope my son never tries that with my saw.

J.R. Rutter
03-22-2009, 12:49 PM
Here is a few minutes you wont get back!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePiYPqcIOos

Dad: Son, you have to be very careful of kickback on the tablesaw.

Son: OK

2 weeks later:

Dad: The quality control at Forrest must really be slipping, this brand new blade cuts terribly!

Peter Quinn
03-22-2009, 8:48 PM
Here are a few pics for the curious. I did use the piece in these pics as my test piece after ripping off the damaged end. Looks like the panel took a left turn then a quick reverse. Those gauges are very nearly through the other face of the MDF, and the curve happened after I let go and dove for it. I remember hearing a sound that didn't seem right, feeling the panel heading in a direction I was not pushing it. Whammo. Here are the results.

David DeCristoforo
03-22-2009, 8:54 PM
Oh yeah... that's the stuff Peter.... You are lucky you still have your... umm... well never mind...