Stupid Stupid Stupid !!!

[Tullie Templet]

That's what I was calling myself all the way to the emergency room this morning. I was cutting a piece of luan 12x12". I made the first cut with the rip fence for width. The piece was 4 ft. long so I turned it and was going to use the mitre guage to cut it to length so I used the fence to set 12" so it would be square. Well like a DUMMY I forgot to move the fence before I started cutting and well I guess you figured out what happened next. Piece got caught between the blade and fence and shot that sucker like a rocket. It grabbed my right pinky and ripped it open basically from where it attaches to my hand, down both side to the first joint. Peeled it to the bone. It was pretty ugly but luckly it didn't cut any tendons so I can still move it. The piece shot so hard it somehow hit th mitre guage and turned the head from a 90 to a 45 degree angle and it was tight to. I was standing to the side of the blade behind the mitre guage, so it looks like the mitre guage deflected the wood away from my body and it shot all the way to the wall about 10ft. back. Now bfore I get any lectures I know exactly what I did wrong and it was very STUIPID and I hope this can be a lesson for someone else. If you still want to lecture and call me STUPID I'm OK with that cause I prolly deserve it. Just glad it didn't hit me in the gut.

[Aaron Wingert]

I took one of those in the gut once Tullie, and I know how hard things come out of the tablesaw. I was lucky not to get more than a bruise and a scratch.
Sorry to hear you got hurt but I'm glad to hear that you'll recover from the injury.

[Neil Brooks]

I won't be lecturing.

I WILL however, be:


wishing you a FAST and FULL recovery
thanking you for reminding us that -- no matter what we think -- it really CAN happen ... in the blink of an eye ... a moment's inattention ... that 15 minutes past "when you really should have called it quits," or....

[Chris Tsutsui]

Wow, I guess you can't underestimate working with luan.

Glad you didn't lose your digit completely... Thanks for sharing though, I think you convinced a lot of us never to attempt something like that.

[george wilson]

When I first started school shop,the teacher was doing a demonstration of cutting plywood. He was cutting an 18" square piece of plywood,using the fence to make the last cut. The saw flung the wood like a frisbee. The class was not in the way of the wood. he was puzzled,and did it again. The second piece did exactly the same thing !!!

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks. I sweat a little everytime I hear a story like this. I never think "how stupid". I think, "Damn, that coulda happened to me a million times."

Playing with fire...

[Van Huskey]

No lectures here, mainly cause I live in a glass house with all glass furniture! I for one am more scared of kickback than the blade (knock on some nice birdseye maple) I know where the blade is and is gonna be, wood from a kickback can end up ANYWHERE. Good luck and hope you have a full recovery very soon. Chalk it up to lesson "learnt".

[David Nelson1]

Wow glad your ok. I'll remember not to do that.

[Floyd Mah]

Years ago, when my table saw was just a Delta contractor's model, before all the add-ons, I happened to read an article online. The substance of the article was that the typical kick-back missile was a square piece of wood. It was basically the size that you described: 12" x 12". It described the usual situation, that many woodworkers would take the safety devices off (the blade guard and the splitter) and then neglect to restore them to the table because it was a nuisance. They would then cut a piece of wood. After the kickback, if the woodworker picked up the missile and and examined the lower surface, he would find saw marks in an arc, stretching from the cut edge to the trailing corner. This was the path of the saw teeth on the work piece. Usually the workpiece would bounce off the fence and then be caught by the saw teeth which would spin the wood, giving it the final Frisbee motion. In your case, you intended to use the miter gauge to perform the cut despite butting it against the fence, but in the usual situation, someone tries to cut the square piece along the fence without a splitter.

Anyway, the article scared the #$@#$ out of me, since I really didn't want to be engaged in a hobby that would try to maim me. At that point, I realized that the reason for not replacing safety devices was that it was difficult on my saw (I had to deal with two small, difficult-to-reach screws and nuts, get two different sizes of small wrenches and get into an awkward contortion to remove or replace the blade guard/splitter). I ordered a Delta blade overhead blade guard which came with an easily installed splitter. It made a big difference in my working safely. Last year, I came up with a riving knife retro-fit that has also worked well.

In my previous life, I worked in the operating room where things could happen unexpectedly. One of the most valuable things to do is to re-examine the mishaps and figure out how to prevent them from recurring. In your situation, you should see if there are things you could change with your saw or work habits that would increase your safety. I know there are those who seem to be proud of their luck working without safety devices, but that's like designing an ocean liner without planning for lifeboats. I think the lesson (for me) is that bad things happen without warning. As for those of you who don't use safety devices, I used to see people like you in the operating room -- as patients.

[Joe Shinall]

Caught a piece of 1 inch thick red oak in the arm one time from my TS from kickback. Hit me above the wrist. Chipped the bone and made my whole arm go numb from hand up to the shoulder for about 10 minutes. Nothing broke luckily, but i have a nasty scar from it.

[Mikail Khan]

Thanks for the reminder Tullie.

Hope you have a speedy recovery.

MK

[Bobby Thistle]

It seems to me that someone on here said something like this; "it's not IF an accident will happen - it's WHEN it will happen." These words stuck with me ever since I read them.

--Bobby

[Peter Aeschliman]

ouch! Sorry man. That sucks but I'm glad it wasn't a permanent injury.

Just to be sure I understand what happened, are you saying that you used the miter gauge and the fence at the same time?

[Terry Hatfield]

Will be praying for your complete recovery. Keep us posted on how you are doing.

Terry

[Lex Boegen]

Like I told my father when he fell off a ladder: "If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough!" ;)

[mreza Salav]

I hope you recover fast.

Just a question though: did you have a *riving knife* too that is properly aligned?

[Brendan Plavis]

And this is why I hate tablesaws....

I was talking to someone, and he asked me if I got kickback on a TS, I told him I dont use them, since they scare the **** out of me. He proceeded to tell me he was ripping a piece, and it kicked on him.... the piece of wood got him right in the....how to say this.... gananas..... he said he wasnt walking the remainder of the day....

My folks are afraid I am going to take a finger off.... I am more afraid of this kind of thing than I am the blade... the blade will take the finger off, and will make it go numb..... this wont nessacarily... but it will hurt like hell when you wish it just took the darned finger...

[Victor Robinson]

I hope you recover quickly Tullie. Sorry for the mishap but glad you weren't injured worse.

To everyone else: Do kickback pawls (if you have the guard on) prevent this kind of thing? I've never seen what happens to a kickback if pawls are there...

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Been there, done that. I wasn't thinking about the consequences and don't recall anyone telling me not to use the miter gauge with the fence. Luckily it didn't hit me but I have a cracked window across the shop that I leave cracked as a reminder. I will say this: Having it happen to you makes for a lesson that sinks in a lot deeper than reading about it. Now if that was just the only way to get into trouble. :o

[Bruce Mack]

I hope you recover well. Thanks for reminding us that the table saw can 'go ballistic' even when we are not reckless.

[Dan Karachio]

Thanks for posting Tullie, I hope you feel better soon. Gees, it sounds really painful.

I'm sorry to take advantage of this unfortunate incident for more knowledge, but can you or some of the other veterans here help us relative newbies understand this. Were you cross cutting the piece with the fence? Was that it? That the fence caused the piece to bind with the blade then result in the kick back? I think I understand that, but I don't understand what happened to your finger. This is one we have been taught to avoid, but I think people do it all the time.

Also, can you help me with a dangerous assumption? I sometimes find myself thinking that because I have a 1 1/2 hp contractor saw, kickback will not be as big of a risk as with a 3 - 5hp cabinet saw. I, of course, have had a few incidents where that attitude was proven to be stupid and naive.

[jim sauterer]

last july i had a 6 inch piece of ply kick back and caught my thumb ripped the nail right over .10 stitches later and 2 days of throbbing.it still bothers me.it happens so fast.hope you recover as quick as possible.i was gun shy going back to using the unisaw.but i try to do everything as safe as i can.best of luck jim.

[Peter Quinn]

A guy at work has a big bumper sticker in the rear window of his truck that reads "STUPID HURTS. That sticker is no joke. Now you are in the club. Of course you paid a higher membership fee than me, and for that I feel bad. Bright side is you will never be lonely in the stupid club, there are plenty of us members in it! Somehow my stupid TS move went wizzing just over my left temple and all that was lost was a good pair of trousers.

I wish you a speedy recovery, and hope not to see you at any more meetings.

[Terry Teadtke]

I'm not sure what hurt worse, the damage to my finger or the novacaine shot to the palm of my hand when I had my accident.

Hope you have some pain killers when the real drugs wear off. Ibuprofen worked for me.

Terry

[glenn bradley]

Glad that digit is still attached. I am wishing for a speedy and total recovery. No lectures here either.

I have a block that is a "known" 3/4" thick and a Rockler Universal clamp that hang to the right of the tablesaw operator position for just such occasions. I just set the saw 3/4" longer than the desired cut.

[Ramsey Ramco]

I don't know if I can call you stupid for a very simple reason. I don't know many of us who can say that even just once we didn't get careless. I had a board kick back at me once turned my hip, caught my whole right leg but fortunately missed something much more important, bruised leg for a month. Hopefully this doesn't scare you away at all. Keep on building! good luck

[Milind Patil]

So sorry to hear it brother ! I am praying for your fast recovery. Hopefully I will avoid this happening to me !

[Tullie Templet]

Yes I was cross cutting with the mitre guage with the fence set at the length of the cutoff. After the piece was cut free it binded between the blade and fence and kicked back. My intention was NOT to cut with the fence set. I was simply going to use it to set the cut distance and then move it away. I turned to set down my tape measure and turn on the dust collector. While I was looking that way I turned on the saw and then immediately started to do my crosscut forgetting to move the fence. When I passed the blade I removed the long piece from the mitre guage a realised what I had done ( the piece between the blade and fence) I kinda loss all ability to think straight. LOL !!! before I thought about turning off the saw or running it grabbed the piece and hurled that sucker like a rocket. Where my hand was and how it hit just that finger is beyond me. It all happened so fast it is hard to figure out.


As far as it discouraging me, I don't think so. When I got home I fired that sucker back up and cut the remaining sides of my box and finished it up with ALOT more caution. What's that old saying about "getting back on the horse."

Thanks guys for all the good wishes!!! Very much appreciated.

[Tullie Templet]

Thanks Glenn for the reminder about the block. I know about this method and should have used it but I was "only gonna measure it this way this one time" Careless is all I can say.

[Bryan Morgan]

For noobs such as myself, can anyone explain the mechanics of why crosscutting like this is a bad idea? Obviously the outcome here is the effect, but what of the cause? What is the more appropriate way to crosscut like this? I've cut things in the manner you did and I didn't have any issues.... but I have a riving knife, guard, and prawls... do those help in this situation or was I just lucky?

[John Coloccia]

re: kickback pawls
Won't do a gosh darn thing. They'll help keep the piece from coming straight back at you when the front of the blade grabs (not a big deal USUALLY, but these get out of hand too sometimes), but the kind of kickback we're talking about is when the wood pinches between the blade and the fence. It's like flicking a bottle cap. It's fast, amazingly violent, and will basically tear apart anything in it's way, although there are lots of devices that very much help prevent pinch in the first place (featherboards, hold downs, etc). I did a very quick, back of the envelope (practically in my head) calculation once on the forces involved, and I think it conservatively ended up being in the hundreds of lbs. On the other hand, the pawls are usually attached to a riving knife, or at least a splitter, which really does help. Especially the riving knife.


For noobs such as myself, can anyone explain the mechanics of why crosscutting like this is a bad idea? Obviously the outcome here is the effect, but what of the cause? What is the more appropriate way to crosscut like this? I've cut things in the manner you did and I didn't have any issues.... but I have a riving knife, guard, and prawls... do those help in this situation or was I just lucky?

The mechanism for this kind of kickback is that the back of the boards comes off the fence (or you have a piece of wood that warps as you cut it), and the piece makes contact with the back of the blade. The back of the blade grabs the piece and lifts it, simultaneously throwing the back of the board forward, with the teeth digging into the piece. Now the piece is trapped between the saw blade, that's dug in, and the fence, and the more the blade turns, the tighter the piece gets trapped. The blade takes this piece and flings it back, if you're lucky over you're right shoulder, at upwards of 100MPH, spinning at great speed like a frisbee.

The characteristic pattern of swirls on the bottom of the piece is the blade having it's way with the tossed object as it's spinning.

If you use a miter gauge to make the cut, there is nothing holding the piece tight and square to the fence. There is great danger of pinching the blade (which can cock the piece and force a kickback) or the back of the blade contacting the work after the cut is made since the off cut is not cleared from between the fence and the blade. Also, the wood is typically much wider than it is long, so under the best of circumstances you would have a near impossible time of controlling the cutting, with or without the miter gauge.

So standard practice is to use a sub fence clamped to the regular fence (say a 1" piece of wood), and to use that to setup your cut. This very short piece of wood will be cleared by the piece you're cutting well before you ever get to the blade. So you get the precision and ease of the fence, but the fence is gone by the time the wood hits the blade, making this sort of kickback impossible.

I don't know if this was posted yet, but here's what this one looks like:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/910584/table_saw_kickback_demonstration/

And when it goes straight back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcS0TAabedc

It's one of the things that makes the slider so attractive to folks like me that don't even deal with much sheet goods at all. No fence to deal with, no kick back, so one less thing to think about.

[William Duffer]

It's amazing that just the little things that you probably have done a million times the correct way and than one time you forget, Bamm. Hope you have a speedy recovery and never let your guard down.

[Igor Petrenko]

This is the reason not to choose motor with more HP if you dont really need it.

[Matt Meiser]

I have a block that is a "known" 3/4" thick and a Rockler Universal clamp that hang to the right of the tablesaw operator position for just such occasions. I just set the saw 3/4" longer than the desired cut.

+1 but I made mine from a length of 3/4" baltic birch and laminated some poplar to one side. Then I ran it through the planer and planed it to exactly 1" thick. I made the glue up long enough to cut into a short fence and sacrificial fence. and now know that I just need to add 1" instead of trying to calculate 3/4" + 9 7/16. Sometimes I even remember. :rolleyes:

[Mitchell Andrus]

Thanks Glenn for the reminder about the block. I know about this method and should have used it but I was "only gonna measure it this way this one time" Careless is all I can say.

It's all about creating a pattern of work and sticking to it. Every time I find that I forget to cut something to final length, miss a mark, make a poor cut, etc., it's because I deviated from the well traveled route.
.

[Tony Bilello]

Sorry to hear about your injury and I hope you heal soon.
Even intelligent people do stupid things. Some of us just get luckier than others. When I am on the table saw, I don't want anyone near me, talking to me or doing anything that can distract me in any way. I have even asked my helper to stop cleaning up while I am cutting. His movement about the shop was distracting. Distractions can also lead to 'forgetfullness'.

[Mark Visconti]

If you use a miter gauge to make the cut, there is nothing holding the piece tight and square to the fence. There is great danger of pinching the blade (which can cock the piece and force a kickback) or the back of the blade contacting the work after the cut is made since the off cut is not cleared from between the fence and the blade. Also, the wood is typically much wider than it is long, so under the best of circumstances you would have a near impossible time of controlling the cutting, with or without the miter gauge.

So standard practice is to use a sub fence clamped to the regular fence (say a 1" piece of wood), and to use that to setup your cut. This very short piece of wood will be cleared by the piece you're cutting well before you ever get to the blade. So you get the precision and ease of the fence, but the fence is gone by the time the wood hits the blade, making this sort of kickback impossible.


So, clamping a board to the miter gauge (left side of blade) and not using any sort of fence on the right can cause kickback? How is that more likely than with a subfence? It seems like the potential for the piece to move once cut is the same. I do left side miter (piece clamped or held firmly depending), no right side fence and have a riving knife and blade guard. I don't touch the offcut until the blade is off. Have I just been lucky so far? I do realize that holding the piece against the gauge is less ideal for wider cross cuts because of the tendency for it to move left/right and screw the cut up. I tend to hold it for smaller cuts.

[Bill Whig]

Tullie, Thank you for sharing your lesson! Wishing you a quick recovery!!!

Bill

[Floyd Mah]

The reason that there is kickback with a table saw vs. a bandsaw is that there are teeth that rise. With a bandsaw, when the cutoff piece is hit by the saw blade, it is forced down against the table and sustains a further cut, relieving the force. With a table saw, the cutoff is lifted up and then wedged between the fence and the blade. As the blade turns, it does cut off more of the wood, but the wedging causes the remainder of the cutoff to be fed into the rising blade, causing the wood to take off. With a short subfence, once you advance the wood beyond the subfence, you have space on the right side of the cutoff. If the cutoff should touch the rising rear of the blade, it is just brushed to the side instead of being clamped between the blade and the fence.

By the way, I neglected to wish you well with your recovery in my previous post, I know it will take a while to get back to normal.

[Bryan Morgan]

re: kickback pawls
Won't do a gosh darn thing. They'll help keep the piece from coming straight back at you when the front of the blade grabs (not a big deal USUALLY, but these get out of hand too sometimes), but the kind of kickback we're talking about is when the wood pinches between the blade and the fence. It's like flicking a bottle cap. It's fast, amazingly violent, and will basically tear ap <snipped for brevity>

Thanks for that great info! You explained it well! Seems like I have experienced this type of kickback and have taken a few small pieces to the chest... not fun. This was on an old table saw with an out of square fence. But I wasn't crosscutting at the time....

And to the thread starter, sorry about your injuries! Hope you can still work with your good hand! :)

[Tullie Templet]

Mark, mitre cutting without the fence is fine. If the cutoff piece hits the blade most of the time it just bounce backwards. With the fence against the cutoff it has nowhere to go so it binds between the blade and fence and that is what causes kickback. Go find a piece of small ply and set it between the blade and fence. Now take that piece of wood and turn the back corner into the blade an pull it forward with the other side still against the fence and feel how much tension is on the blade. I did this yesterday and was really amazed. Of course the saw should be off :D. Don't do it to hard cause you will bend the blade.

[John Coloccia]

So, clamping a board to the miter gauge (left side of blade) and not using any sort of fence on the right can cause kickback? How is that more likely than with a subfence? It seems like the potential for the piece to move once cut is the same. I do left side miter (piece clamped or held firmly depending), no right side fence and have a riving knife and blade guard. I don't touch the offcut until the blade is off. Have I just been lucky so far? I do realize that holding the piece against the gauge is less ideal for wider cross cuts because of the tendency for it to move left/right and screw the cut up. I tend to hold it for smaller cuts.

Sorry Mark. Maybe I didn't explain well. Just using the gauge by itself is perfectly OK. It's only when you have a fence there that kickback of the sort we're talking about can occur. The piece of wood has to be pinched between the blade and the fence. If there is no fence to pinch against, this sort of kickback is impossible.

If the back of the blade grabbed with the wood clamped to the miter gauge, but no fence, the blade would simply grab the piece and either push it back a little, make it chip, or push it out of the way. It's when the piece of wood can't do that, because the fence constrains it, that the saw can really bite down hard and flick the piece back at you with all it's might.

So the general problem crosscutting with a fence is that the piece is much wider than it is long and can easily pinch between the blade and the fence, no matter how you hold it...it simply cocks very easily. The problem using the miter gauge with a fence, regardless of the shape of the piece, is that you're holding the piece of wood to the left of the blade, for example, leaving a piece of wood completely unconstrained to the right of the blade, between the fence and the blade. Again this is a perfect recipe for a kickback. Crosscutting with a fence combines the two and practically guarantees a kickback, sooner or later (usually sooner). That's why folks use a subfence. It takes the fence out of the equation at the blade.

Hope that helps :D

[Mike Cruz]

No pics...didn't happen! Oh, wait, that's for gloats...

Get well soon.

[michael osadchuk]

[QUOTE=Tony Bilello;
.......Distractions can also lead to 'forgetfullness'.....[/QUOTE]

Tullie, I hope you heal quickly and regain full use of the finger.

While I agree with the need for knowledge of proper technique, following routines, alertness and other forms of 'active' safety measures by the user we are not infalliable (sp?), we will get tired, distracted, etc., and make a mistake.

Because I recently received an injury (from which I am almost healed) due to a moment of "inattention" , I suggest that the more frequently we can incorporate 'passive' safety measures - typically meaning equipment - the more likely these passive safety measures may save us from injury. That means proper fences, featherboards, setups, magnetic switches, proper wiring, etc.

Tullie, was a riving knife or splitter, in use at the time of the accident?


good luck,

michael

[Chris Kennedy]

Tullie,

I feel for you and I hope you heal quickly and well. I think your experience is just a classic case of human fallacy. We know there are so many things that are dangerous and we shouldn't do, but in the heat of the moment, thinking about all the other issues and concentrating on other matters, we do something we shouldn't do.

As I read your sequence of events, I could just see myself doing it. I usually use the trick of a stop block at the back of the fence, but for a single cut, I have done exactly what you did -- use the fence for the setting the length of the cut, clamped the stock down, and then moved the fence. I can clearly envision the same thing -- starting the DC, the saw, and be into the cut before realizing I forgot a step.

Don't beat yourself up and heal up.

Cheers,

Chris

[Tullie Templet]

Thanks again guys for the well wishes. And i am ashame to say that a splitter or riving knife were NOT used. It's and older model Grizzly that doesn't have a riving knife and the saw owner I bought it fom didn't have the original splitter/guard. I was supposed to order one or the other (Splitter or ****) and have been putting it off. Well for the cost of doctor bills I could have paid for one and it would have been alot less painful. Now I am fairly new to wood working and have only used smaller saws before my Grizzly, so my question is would a splitter or riving knife deffinantely prevented this or just had a better chance of it not happening? And also is the riving knife is deffinantely better than the splitter?

[Clarence Miller]

Tulie,

I am glad to hear that you are on the mend. There was a question as to what the physics behind the accident. I am not in anyway a physics guy but from what I have read and observed, the danger comes from board being cut wedging between the blade and the fence on the backside of the blade where the travel of rotation is going up (lets call this the launch zone). The blade turns toward the operator which put him/her into the strike zone. Holding onto the work piece allows for hands to be pulled with the piece being cut into the blade (letting go is hard to do). I had a similar experience when cutting a piece of delrin. TRied to rip it down (just kiss the blade to take a hair off) after I had cut it to the finish length of 2 inches using a push stick with a short notch for a hold down (I now use a pushstick that resembles a boot profile) Long story short the piece got flipped up of the table, busted through the plastic blade guard, bounced off my forearm (bruise) and hit me in the mouth. After some blood and profanity came out my mouth I counted myself as lucky that I didn't loose any teeth and a minimal amount of blood. The shattered blade guard did leave some scratches.
The biggest dangers in my workshop are hastiness and fatigue. My most recent incident had to do with a framing nailer with a bump trigger. I was marrying an addition to the rafters and the nailer bounced and bump fired another nail. After scanning the surrounding area for the nail, hoping it didn't mar up anything on the house I realized my thumb hurt. The nail went about 1/2 inch into the knuckle on my right thumb. I had borrowed the nailer from my father-in-law's shop so I didn't even consider changing the trigger to a consecutive fire trigger until after the incident ( it was less than $20 online and was purchased that night) I keep the nail as a reminder as pain has no memory past a few days and the "oh I'll be fine" mentality begins to creep in.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Tullie, hope you heal well, sorry to hear about your accident.

In answer to your question, either a properly fitted splitter, or riving knife would have provided identical protection in your application.

The riving knife or splitter perform two functions;

- they guard the back of the blade, preventing objects from being caught by the blade teeth rising out of the table

- they act as a wedge to reduce the chances of a cut closing up and pinching the blade

Riving knives can be superior in two ways to conventional splitters;

- they can be adjusted to the exact height of the saw blade, or slightly lower, which allows them to stay on the saw for non through cuts such as grooves and rebates

- they may be easier to remove and replace, leading to more consistent use (not left under the bench)

Note that a poorly executed riving knife may be inferior to a well executed splitter, the devil is in the details.

I've found that the best solution for a North American saw is an overhead guard such as the Excalibur, and a removable splitter such as the Merlin, or even better, a true riving knife.

The above combination allows your blade guard to stay on for dado, grooving or rebate work. That's key, never run with an unguarded blade, it only takes a moment of inattention to change the remainder of your life.

If you can't perform an operation on a machine without removing the guard, there are two choices;

- use the correct machine for the job, for example cut the rebate on the shaper which has a guard for that purpose

- purchase or fabricate a guard for the original machine that provides the required protection (The Excalibur guard for example or a home made equivalent).


Have fun in the shop................Regards, Rod.

[Noah Levy]

Get better soon!

A couple of people questioned or alluded to having a lower horse power saw and being safer. I doubt horse power makes any difference. The energy imparted to the wood is delivered via the spinning blade. At a nominal speed of 5000 rpm and the relatively small, lightweight piece of say 12"x12" plywood, 3/4 hp vs 5hp probably makes little difference.

And this is the problem I have with Saw Stop. Sure, you won't cut your hot dog, but you can still get FU by a nasty kickback. In fact, Saw Stop users need to be extra careful that they don't get lulled into a false state of overconfidence. The OP attributes this accident to a moment of inattention and resulting deviation from normal work steps. He forgot to move the fence out of the way, which could happen to anyone easily enough. I know I get overconfident and lazy with guards and splitters, and have always thought that this would tend to happen more if I had a Saw Stop. Lastly, for those of you who desire more info about safe table saw practice, I recommend reading Jim Tolpin's Table Saw Magic.

[ken gibbs]

In the spring when I start my summer tan, the place where the 3/4" plywood got me doesn't tan. It just turns red.

Right after my Unisaw taught me to always use feather boards and to use a safety guard, I got religion. You think you are fast enough to duck, but it isn't possible to get out of the way. To quote an old Navy expression, Hotel Sierra!.

[kenneth kayser]

For noobs such as myself, can anyone explain the mechanics of why crosscutting like this is a bad idea? Obviously the outcome here is the effect, but what of the cause? What is the more appropriate way to crosscut like this? I've cut things in the manner you did and I didn't have any issues.... but I have a riving knife, guard, and prawls... do those help in this situation or was I just lucky?

Never let a loose piece of wood stay between the fence and a spinning blade, or near the blade. After the cut is complete, push the piece well past the blade. Then turn the saw off.

In this case, even when using a stop block, the off cut should be pushed well past the blade. If the off cut is allowed to lay near the blade the piece can move from vibration to touch a tooth which may then bump the piece 3/4" into the fence and launch. I think this could happen with a splitter or riving knife, but not working pawls. Working pawls would keep the piece from moving at all.

[jason steele]

Never like to hear about accidents, but it's a good reminder not to let my guard down when operating machinery. Had one of those kickbacks once. Never forget it. Hurt like hell!! Still feel it. Wish you a full recovery.

Jason