Closed the shop early today

[Lamar Horton]

After reading the recent "injury" posts and all the responses about them being a "wake up call" here is what happened to me (or what didn't happen).

I was breaking down a piece of 3/4 plywood for a drawer side when it skewed about halfway through the cut. Instead of it kicking back, it bound the blade and stopped it (unisaw w/3 hp motor). So there I am with my hands on either side of the blade pushing down on the table scared to let go and the motor humming trying to start back up. What do I do, I say to myself. I'm too far into the cut to try to back out and I don't want to "unskew" the piece for fear of overskewing the opposite way and losing control, but I have to do something. I can't just stay here forever. This was all of about two seconds that seemed like two days. Ater the two days the breaker tripped and everything stopped. I was very fortunate. It also got me to thinking. I reset the breaker and finished my cuts then had to switch to the dado blade the groove for the drawer bottoms. I unplugged the saw (SOP) to change blades and had to take a hammer to the wrench because the "incident" had torqued the arbor nut down so tight. I got the blade changed and my grooves cut without further incident. When I went to change back to the plywood blade I reached out to unplug the saw (SOP) when my hand slipped a little and upon my regripping the plug I noticed I had laid my finger across one of the progs of the halfway pluged in plug. Since I had already "been thinking" I said to myself "self, its time to close up." I finished unpluging the saw and walked out and locked the door.

I don't have an excuse for the things that happened today, I wasn't tired, I wasn't doing a lot of repetative work these things just "happened".

These recent posts have caused me to be more aware of potential accidents and I feel they are a good "tool" for us to use. I cannot say I would have stayed and finished the day had I not read the recent happenings but I can say these things being fresh in my mind helped make the decision to close up for the day.

To Shelly and Matt, I am very sorry to hear about your injuries and wish you both a speedy recovery. I also wish to thank you for your posts as they do help me to be more conscience about my surroundings.

Sorry for being so long winded, I don't usually like long posts but I thought I should share this.

Thnaks
Lamar

[Lars Thomas]

When things aren't going well, your best bet is to shut everything down. The same thing has happened to me and I did the same as you - walked away. Lars

[Don Baer]

Lamar;
Good for you. I'm glad you decided to call it a night. the shop will be there tomarrow and you'll be in better shape to tackle the challenges of wood working without having the distraction that you faced tonight.

I was tuning my new band saw tonight when I decided that I needed to call it quits when I found myself taking safety shortcuts when making mechanical adjustmets to the table. (Things like not unpluging the saw between reaching into the saw). I unplugged the whole thing turned out the lights and said good night saw.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Regardless of the cause of the close calls, sounds like you made the right decision by paying attention to that little voice inside your head. That seems to be one of the underlying themes of the "accident" threads lately: When the inner voice says don't, then don't.

Don't know the details of your saw or where you were standing, but my first thought when I read about your stuck blade predicament was that I'd be bumping the Off switch on my TS with my left thigh if I was in a similar situation. (My TS has a pretty big paddle-style switch...pull out to start and push in with any blunt object to stop.) I tend to turn the saw off with my leg more often than with my hand.

Glad to see you didn't lose anything more than a few drops of sweat, Lamar.

- Vaughn

[Tim Armstrong]

Lamar, it certainly sounds like you did the right thing I would like to jump on board with your sentiments about the value of the recent discussions on safety and accidents. As a new woodworker, I still have a lot of fresh respect (read: fear) for what the tools are cabable of.

For me, it's the "just one more minute" syndrome while LOML is yelling down for me to come up for dinner. A hurried "one more minute" could of course be all it takes.

My take away: the shop will still be there tomorrow and a healthy tomorrow is worth the "one more minute" that I don't take today.

[Brad Hammond]

good thought vaughn! i was gonna suggest just that lamar.
i mounted a couple of hinges on the bottom of my rail and attatched sort of a cross bar with a piece of dowel pointing right at the off switch. i never touch the off switch. just bump it with my leg. it's GREAT for sticky situations.

cya
brad

[Lamar Horton]

My old saw had the big paddle that I could bump with my leg but this older unisaw has its switch too far under the table to reach with my leg. Might be time for some modifications.

Lamar

[Michael Gabbay]

Sometimes the woodworking gods are just trying to tell us something. :) You did the right thing. When you're having a bad day don't make things worse.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Great Job! I have closed up shop before I thought I would on more than one occasion. Sometimes it's just not your lucky day. Others you are pissed and we don't work well like that either! :)

[Keith Christopher]

I did something after I saw dmarks use a kick switch on his TS. I built one for mine. I helped one time when I had some 8/4 Ash bind my saw up during a rip. I am standing there like. ummmmm... help ??


glad you listened. Sometimes when that happens I switch to some work I can do with hand tools if possible.

[Ted Shrader]

Lamar -

Wise choice! Good on you.

Sometimes, for me anyway, it is very hard to turn the stuff off and quit for the time being. It is the right thing to do, but very difficult.

Thank you for the post.

Ted

[Shelley Bolster]

I am sure I can speak for Matt when I say that if either of our posts helped you ( or anyone else ) "listen to your little voice" then the telling of our accidents publicly will be well worth any embarrassment. I hope others reading this will follow your example and listen to what our voice has to say! Good for you Lamar!!!:)

[Bernie Weishapl]

Glad you weren't hurt and got out while the getting was good.

I did the same thing Keith and put a switch on that I could kick a board to shut it down. David Marks showed that I believe on one of his shows about his shop. I got caught twice with a bind up sawing and it was a life saver.

[Bob Michaels]

I've been meaning to install a knee switch on my PM66. After reading this thread, and other safety threads, I'm now going to do it before I do anything else. It would be helpful if those who have built a safety shut off would post photos for others to get ideas from. I know how to do it but it would be great to get other ideas also.