Kickback Protection - USE IT!!

[Dave Fifield]

Hi folks,

I just found the Sawmill Creek forums recently while I was searching for laser enhanced woodwork sites. I'm still ploughing through the archives and enjoying every minute of it. There's a wealth of information here - I love it!!


A cautionary tale: I've been woodworking for years and made thousands of cuts, and never had an accident until last weekend. I was trimming some 16"x18" ish pieces of 3/4" ply for a box on my cabinet saw. I was on the last piece, right at the end of the cut, when it went sideways on me. I tried to push it back straight, but the saw was too strong. The blade ripped the piece out of my hands and flung it frisbee style WHAM! right into my midriff. It almost knocked me over, winding me for a good 2 minutes and leaving me with a cut of about 10" long - not deep, luckily.

Over the next couple of days, the bruises started coming out and it hurt more and more. I went to the doc yesterday just in case. No internal organ damage thank goodness. It's going to heal, but it's going to take several weeks according to doc. Here's a picture from a couple of days ago (it looks worse than this today and hurts big time still). Avert your gaze if you're squeemish:

http://www.daveswoodenwonders.com/kickback_s.jpg

My pride is also hurt. I have a perfectly good Merlin anti-kickback device, but was in too much of a rush to use it. What an idiot I was!

Moral of story: Use your anti-kickback device EVERY TIME!!

Regards,
Dave F.

[Fred Voorhees]

Yeah Dave, the midriff is usually the victim with these things. I have had my "incidents". Nothing tremendously serious, but it's still kickback and darn, it hurts. I had a slightly small incident about a week ago. Just a small little cutoff caught the blade and got flung, but nothing hurt, nothing broken. Just serves to prove that you can never be negligent and need to always be cautious and observant.

[lou sansone]

dear david
glad to see that you were not more serioulsy injured. good lesson for all of us. does your saw have a riving knife or a splitter. Do you think if you had one on the saw that the kickback would not have happened or did the board somehow get pinched between the fence and the blade?
lou

[Bob Noles]

Dave,

Thanks so much for the reminder.

The good part is that you can still count to 10 ;) .

The TS is the one tool that I hate most in my shop. I hope that one day I really can replace it with the GCSS.

[Jim Becker]

"Ouch" ... and excellent advise. And...Welcome to the Creek!

[Corey Hallagan]

Glad you were to seriously injured Dave. Welcome to SMC!

Corey

[Howie French]

Dave...

first - thanks for the reminder, great advice

second - welcome to the Creek, you have found a most excellent place to spent some time, full of wonderful people who enjoy sharing their knowledge


Howie

[Brian Jarnell]

Similar happened to me,now stand to the side.


When I remember:)

[Dennis Peacock]

Been there and wore the severe bruise for 7 weeks to the right chest. That was my first kickback in 31 years of off and on woodworking.

[Dave Fifield]

Thanks for the nice welcome folks. Bit of a strange way to introduce myself I guess. I'm healing nicely now. The bruising and pain is going away gradually.

Anyway, it's great to find such a wonderful resource on the web at last - I just knew that there was something like SMC out there somewhere! :)

Here's a couple more pictures. First the bit of wood that got me. It's upside down to show the way the saw blade bit into it and "frisbee'd" it at me:

http://www.daveswoodenwonders.com/kb_s.jpg

Here's a shot showing the anti-kickback device I *should* have used but didn't. It's a Merlin. If it had have been fitted, the wood definately would not have been able to kickback at me. Even a simple European splitter device (fin) would most likely have saved me from injury.

http://www.daveswoodenwonders.com/antikb_s.jpg

FWIW, I had to extensively modify the Merlin's mounting to get it to fit on my Jet saw. Also, I had to remove material (aluminum) from the zero clearance insert plate and, of course, lots of material from the Incra fence rail. It takes just a few seconds to insert or remove the Merlin device - there's no excuse for not using it.

Just in case anyone's curious, the project in the pictures is a replica Hammond Organ (BV) bench seat that I'm currently making.

See y'all in the other threads sometime!

Cheers,
Dave Fifield

[Brian Jarnell]

We hopefully learn from these near run things.

[Bill Lewis]

This always makes me think that a shop apron needs to include padding, or make it out of kevlar like a bullet proof vest. PPE for the body.

[tod evans]

dave, welcome!

[Tom Conger]

That could have been the peice of wood that attacked me this weekend. My peice looks identical. Luckily it just scared the hell out of me and left a small mark on my stomach. I put my anti-kickback device on for the next cut.

I used that peice as a shelf in a garage cabinet that I was making, cut side up, as a reminder.

[Byron Trantham]

Dave, welcome to the Creek.

I did the same thing about two months ago with a 1/4" piece of plywood. It took out my watch and broke the skin on my wrist. Little or no blood. I was bruised from my elbow to the tips of my tips and ended with with a permanent scar.