A Hard Lesson Learned!!!

[Glenn Samuels]

Last night, I was flattening wide boards of rough mahogany on my jointer and took off the guard following a suggestion in one of the prestigious wood magazines (it talks about flattening boards up to 50% wider than your jointer. Mine is 8") . Unfortunately, I did not build the supplemental fence that was suggested. The glove on my left hand got caught in the spiral cutters and I ended up in the trauma unit at Duke. I lost part of 2 fingers.
** I now know that wearing the gloves was a mistake. Was trying to protect myself from splinters)

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't take short cuts when it comes to your health and well being. I'll be paying for this lack of judgement for a long time.

The reason I am posting it under Neanderthal as I am seriously thinking of switching to primarily hand tools.

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks for posting this Glenn. Too often people think, "this won't happen to me," then it happens."

I was lucky when my lathe grabbed my gloves and pulled my hand into the work. It was a loud wake up call.

Sorry to hear of your accident.

[Phil Thien]

Sorry for your misfortune, Glenn. I hope you have a speedy recovery.

One of the reasons I sold my jointer and I now use my planer w/ sled for face-jointing is the threads about accidents with jointers. I think I've seen more jointer-related injuries than table-saw.

Thanks for sharing. These threads should be required reading.

[Patrick McCarthy]

Glenn, so so sorry to hear of any injury, and especially one like this. Wishing you a speedy recovery, Patrick

[Mel Fulks]

Take care and thanks for the reminder .I writhed as I read.Wishing you quick healing.

[Adam Cruea]

Youch! :(

Thanks for reminding me why I use hand tools. The worst thing I've done is just cut my thumb down to the bone cramming a carcass saw into it. So while you can still hurt yourself, you just have more time to react and chances are, you'll stop before doing extensive damage. :)

Hope you have a speedy recovery!

[Pat Barry]

Sorry Glenn, I hope you heal up quickly. For me, there is no scarier tool in the shop than a jointer. Running it without the guard would have me s---ing my pants.

[Tony Shea]

That really is terrible Glenn. I hope that you heal quickly and without too much permanent damage. Thanks for the healthy reminder.

In a power tool workshop my biggest fear lies with the jointer. I've seen too many mangled fingers that are caused by these tools. But as Glenn pointed out they are almost always due to improper use.

The other tool that scares me is the router. I've had too many close calls with this tool (all due to user error) where my hands have bounced off something in which I thought for sure was the spinning bit. It's amazing how fast power tool accidents take place.

[Jim Neeley]

Glenn,

I'm sorry to learn of your injury. :-( You're certainly welcome here! :-)

There's a number of us who use both power and hand here but mastering the hand tools (and getting them performing correctly) gives a viable alternative when we don't feel comfortable using a power tool for an operation. The silence is wonderful too!

You'll find proper hand tool work goes a lot faster than you'd probably imagine.. often comparable to power when you add in the proper setup time.

Jim in Alaska

[Bob Glenn]

A tough lesson to learn, sorry for your injury. I was demonstrating making chairs at an eighteenth century reenactment and a gentleman walked up and held up his hand. He had three fingers missing and a mangled thumb. He said he lost them when a table saw kicked back and dragged his hand into the blade. He said it happened is less than a second. That's why I use hand tools when ever possible. It takes me a lot longer to hurt myself really badly.

[Chris Fournier]

I hope that you heal quickly!

Why people use the woodworking processes that they do is up to them. Hand tools are very enjoyable to use while working wood but I have rarely been motivated to use them because I thought that power tools were dangerous. You have had an accident and you have already begun to analyze what went wrong. Machinery can be used safely. I hope that you don't turn your back on machinery because of this accident, instead I hope that you get back on that horse as they say. If everyone who fell off a bicycle stopped riding bicycles we'd all be walking!

Again I hope that you heal quickly and return to woodworking soon.

[Ed Looney]

Hi Glenn

Sorry to hear about your accident. Years back while in high school I lost a 1/2 inch off the end of my left ring finger in a jointer accident. It happens way to fast, and is all because of a momentary laps in judgement on basic safety. Thank you for telling us about your incident hopefully it will prevent others from making the same mistake we did.
I just have to have to add that power tool accidents hurt like HE!!. For weeks after the accident my finger throbbed every time my heart beat. Even months after the accident bumping the end of that finger would make my break out into a cold sweat and turn white as a sheet.

Ed

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Wow, scary... glad you are alive and mostly well.

That is one reason that I own a sawstop.... Had a few kickbacks with a saw with fewer safety features, then I met a bunch of people in a short period of time that had all just recently had table saw accidents.... My table saw is still "scary", but probably my scariest tool is now the router followed by the chop saw.

I will admit, however, that to date I have drawn the most blood from my chisels; the worst was when I dropped one. It was so sharp I did not even know that it had left a very deep gash in my calf.... until I wondered where all that blood was coming from :eek: