Accident free question?

[Jim Schmoll]

What do you think is the most dangerous machine in the shop and why. Not looking for gore here, just food for thought.

Radial arm saw = plumbers have no thumbs

Jim from idyllwild CA

[Cliff Newton]

I've read that statistically the bandsaw is the most dangerous machine in the woodshop. Personally, I fear the jointer the most. I've met a couple guys that sheared their knuckles off and it looks plenty painful.

[Kirk (KC) Constable]

Most dangerous machine/tool is the one you're operating at the moment...no matter which one it is.

KC

[Frank Pellow]

I fear the table saw the most. The main reason for that fear is kickback (something you don't get on a bandsaw).

[Steve Ash]

I feel the same as Kirk....I have a friend who lost fingers on his left hand from a miter saw and another who lost fingers on his right hand with the jointer. Any machine can be dangerous I have another friend who lost his index finger in a snowblower. I am always cautious and careful with every tool, but I guess I would be most fearful of the jointer.

[Dick Parr]

Use to be the jointer, now it's the bandsaw. :o

[Maurice Ungaro]

I'll take Dick's endorsement. As for other machinery, remember this:

IT"S HARD TO HIT YOUR THUMB WHEN YOU HOLD THE HAMMER WITH BOTH HANDS

Maurice

[Kurt Aebi]

From my personal experience, it would be the Table Saw, since it nearly took my thumb.

Radial Arm saw would be next and than after that the Miter saw.

Kirk actually has the correct answer for everyone. Powered or not it is the tool you are presently using or reaching for. Always use caution around power tools and sharp instruments, just ask Jim Becker about his accident - which didn't involve any power equipment at all.


When working at anything, keep your concentration at the THE TASK AT HAND and work at a safe speed and above all, if it looks too scary for you, then don't do it!

[Chris DeHut]

From my personal experience, the only tool so far to send me to the emergency room is the ordinary bench chisel - 10 stitches. This occurred while filming the clock stories for issue #10. The cameras were not running and we opted to not start them to show the audience the problems. While the little voice in my head said "do this differently", the other voice inside said "gotta get this done as we are behind schedule". I will try to remember which voice to listen to from now on.

Frankly I think just about every tool out there can put you in the hospital. The table saw gets plenty of "press" because of the accidents people have with them - many very bad.

Having been around machine tools my entire adult life, I have learned to respect them for what they can do to me, but I refuse to be scared by them. Fear just seems to fog up logical thinking (as anyone with a fear of heights can tell you), so I would rather respect the tool.

Some of the machines I have been around are so big you could park your car on the machine's table (Bullard vertical lathes). Everytime I get near a tool or machine, I know the risks I am taking. I don't doubt for a minute that any tool or machine can make the "red stuff leak out". If I don't consider that the shop (and all of the tools in there) is a dangerous place, then I am just kidding myself and setting myself up for another trip to E.R.

Chris DeHut

[Keith Christopher]

I'm with the concensus here. Misuse or carelessness on ANY tool can lead to an injury. On a wood carving forum I was on a guy was carving and the chisel slipped and went right through his hand at the meaty part of his thumb. The faster it spins/moves the more potential for a more serious injury, but Bob Smalser likes to remind people a sharp chisel that slips out of it's handle can take a toe off or if it falls from above. . . *shudder*



Keith

[Rob Russell]

While I agree with all the comments about "any machine can be dangerous", "the one you're using" and/or "turning off the machine between your ears" - I feel the single most dangerous machine in my shop is the shaper.

The main reason for that is the energy associated with a shaper cutter. Granted, I have a larger than normal shaper for a home shop, but even a Delta 3 HP shaper will spin a panel raising cutter that weighs a couple of pounds. Shaper cutters spin faster than saw blades and, because of the mass of the cutter - have a lot of energy out at those cutting tips. There are also times when there are good reasons to "climb cut" with a shaper, which means feeding stock in with the cutterhead rotation instead of against the cutterhead rotation. That means the workpiece is being sucked into the cutterhead. FYI, climb cutting should only be done with a power feeder that can control the stock and keep hands away from the cutterhead.

Shapers have the power to explode pieces of wood if they jam against the cutterhead and I don't think many other machines can do that.

[Charlie Woods]

"Most dangerous machine/tool is the one you're operating at the moment...no matter which one it is."

KC

I agree with KC. There are times that we can get overly comfortable with a particular machine, forget safety, and loose focus. Thats when the machine becomes dangerous. I have seen and heard about enough accidents with equipment( Terrible to see what some farming equipment can do to someone) to know that every machine is dangerous.

Now to be more specific, I think the table saw is probably the most dangerous, since it is used most often by woodworkers and easiest to remove/adjust safety devices and do without. ( Saw a guy wearing a long, heavy gold chain get it caught in the blade of a contractor saw. I swear his head was maybe 1" away from slamming onto the spinning blade when the chain snapped:eek: ) He did not want to take it off. He did not come back to work for a couple of days.)

[Bruce Page]

I don’t fear any of my machines but I have a healthy respect for all of them. The one WW machine I do not own for safety reasons, is the shaper.

[Michael Perata]

Anything with moving parts close to your body.

My last nick came from a jigsaw bouncing out of the kerf. My last significant nick came when I laid my hand down on the scoring blade. Fortunately it was only a 1/32" above the surface.

[John Shuk]

I would say the tablesaw. I think it could have the most devastating effect after an accident. You could go from a small cut, to an amputation, or a blunt force injury very quickly. Many machine we us can be dangerous but I think of this as about the worst with the Shaper/Router table next.

[Donnie Raines]

Without trying to sound mucho..or stupid...

I don't fear any of them. I am fully aware of their ability to bite me, particularly when you least expect it. So I respect them all. But, if you find yourself worried over top of a cut...it's likely to late any way. The old saying if it don't feel right(safe)...don't do it applies here. I could not imagine being scared over top of a cut or whatever....it would take all the enjoyment out of woodworking.

But I do respect the tools.....

[Steve Clardy]

I don't fear any of my tools, but I do have a little more respect for my 3hp shaper, and a overarm router, 20,000 rpm, 7hp.
Both of these can send a chunk of wood flying, and you can hear it hit something before you realize it's happened.

[Jim Becker]

The lathe. It's the safest DEADLY tool in the shop. Many folks will scoff at that, but a spinning hunk of wood that comes loose really can kill you.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I think there are two dangerous tools in your shop. (1) The one you are currently operating. (2) The one you take for granted.

I started working on oil rigs at age 15 for my father. I've worked in steel mills, glass factories, Army ammunition factories and furniture factories. I've hung off the mast of a US Navy ship working on navigational radar. Daily I currently work with voltages in access of 140KV DC and with cryogenic liquids and gases. I work with machines continuously spinning 1200 lb. frames 360* in less than a second and super-cooled superconductive magnets that have a magnet field strength 25,000 times the Earth's magnetic field strength. The very few times I've been injured it was due to a safety device malfunction or I overlooked a potential danger or I took something for granted.

Example injuries:...I've had a 2 1/4" staple penetrate both of the 1st two fingers on a hand and attach that hand to a hardwood furniture frame. The stapler bounced...the "nose contact safety" hung and the gun fired again because my finger was still holding the trigger. In 30 years of working with high powered electronics (radar, x-ray equipments, CT scanners, high powered communication equipements) I've only been shocked a couple of times.

Everytime you start something, the first step is to decide how to do it safely. There's only one way to do something.....safely. If it's not safe...it's time to find an alternate method.

[Chris DeHut]

Hi Jim,

While I have not seen any serious accidents on woodworking lathes, I have seen too many of them on CNC metal working machines.

One example was when an 8 pound part came out of the chuck at about 1500 RPM. Nocked the door off the machine, I heard it and looked over there. By that time, the operator was walking away from the machine - flying right behind him was the door and the part in mid-air. No one got hurt, but it sure got everyone's attention.

In another even more dramatic case was when an operator chucked up some steel bar stock in a CNC lathe. This lathe did not have a bar feeder (work support for long bar stock) and the operator had loaded the bar from through the spindle into the machine. About 5 feet of the bar was projecting out of the headstock of the machine without being supported. This steel bar was about 1 1/4" in diameter as I recall. As you can imagine, when the machine started up, the bar began whipping like an airplane propeller. In just a couple of seconds, that bar bent over, ripped and shredded a bunch of sheetmetal off the machine. That made more noise than I ever heard in a machine shop (and I have been in many of them). The operator didn't lose his life (didn't even get hurt), but he did lose his job. The really crazy part about that accident was that the operator ran from the machine, the machine kept running and flinging material around until the foreman ran over and hit the E-Stop button.

Then there are the fires I have seen - oh boy those are exciting! Magnesium makes for a really intense fire inside a lathe when not cut properly. Then there was the one machine that had a grinding post on it and it used a light oil type fluid (not water based oil, and not normal heavy cutting oils). Anyway, the machine had a mist sucker on it - similar to our dust collectors only with more power. Well, something went wrong, the grinding wheel generated a little too much heat, ignited the oil, which in turn was sucked into the mist sucker. Then the metal exhaust ducting blew off the mist sucker which made it operate much like a jet engine. That was a very exciting few moments watching that mess - it did have extinguishers on it which put out the fire - again, no one got hurt.

It a dangerous world out there!

Chris DeHut








The lathe. It's the safest DEADLY tool in the shop. Many folks will scoff at that, but a spinning hunk of wood that comes loose really can kill you.

[Jerry Clark]

I believe the Radial Arm saw is the most dangerous, if you try all the cuts they demostrate it can do! I just use it for cut-off work and respect it!

[Scott Parks]

My scariest shop moment in my life was from the LATHE... Harmlesss? Ya right... Thank God I came out of that one with out a scratch. I wrote about it here: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=12286 see post #10.

My only shop injuries were when I was a young lad, I got hold of a lathe gouge so I could carve my own baseball bat. It only took about one stab at a peice of wood to "gouge" my finger. Next, I cut my thumb on the bandsaw when I was about 10 or 11. I don't exaclty remember how it happened, except that I may have not had my peice supported properly and pushing it through too hard. The peice kicked out, and the force I was applying to make the cut was too much and I pushed my thumb into the blade. Luckily it was just a surface wound, and I still have my thumb.

[John Shuk]

Just think about getting something caught up on a work piece and wound up on a lathe. I know of some phone linemen who were pulling cable with a Hogg-Davis reel carrier. One guy got caught on the cable and was crushed and killed instantly as the cable wound onto the reel. I think about that every time I go near the lathe. Gotta keep those sleeves short.