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Thread: Sawstop Injury I didn't think this could happen.

  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rod Sheridan View Post
    Yeah, I'd be concerned about anyone who doesn't use a blade guard...
    Don't be concerned. In more than 4 decades of professional woodworking I have never used a blade guard on a table saw. None of my table saws has a splitter, riving knife or blade guard. It is not "safety" accessories that make a table saw safe--it is keeping your body parts out of the blade. Know where the blade is and where your hands are.

    In that video the injured party proudly showed off his foot-tall push stick. Ridiculous! One cannot work safely with such unstable devices "protecting" oneself.
    "Anything seems possible when you don't know what you're doing."

  2. #32
    The reason I bought a SawStop is because I was doing something similar and almost put my hand into a spinning blade to grab the offcut. It was a split-second brain fart. Humans make mistakes.

  3. #33
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    Advocating the removal of blade guards and other safety devices is irresponsible. What any of us do in our own workshops is our own business but it is indefensible to peddle and promote unsafe practices to anyone else, especially the inexperienced. Just because nothing has happened to you or me is irrelevant. Safety devices are fitted because statistics tell us that they reduce injuries. Does anyone really think major corporations would fit safety devices if they were unwarranted? Please move the safety culture out of the early industrial revolution when workers were expendable to the current era where there is no need to risk losing body parts to enjoy your hobby or trade. Cheers

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by andy bessette View Post
    This guy ignored rule #1--"don't push your body parts into the blade." Instead he relied on a contraption to protect him.
    He even admits, the blade guard would likely not have stopped the incident, as he fed his thumb into the blade.
    Last edited by Anthony Whitesell; 02-27-2018 at 9:06 AM.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Henderson View Post
    Exactly the case and why I have no sympathy for a lot of people who get injured. Taking the safety equipment off of your saw except when absolutely necessary and then operating unsafely, that's your fault not the saw's. If you're that stupid, you deserve what you get. But what's the first thing most Saw Stop owners do when they get their "safe" saw? They take off the blade guard!
    I have not seen any statistics on this, but I can't imagine that most would be removing the guards. The guard & riving knife work so well & are so easy to change that I don't see any reason not to use them for almost all saw operations.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lomman View Post
    Advocating the removal of blade guards and other safety devices is irresponsible. What any of us do in our own workshops is our own business but it is indefensible to peddle and promote unsafe practices to anyone else, especially the inexperienced. Just because nothing has happened to you or me is irrelevant. Safety devices are fitted because statistics tell us that they reduce injuries. Does anyone really think major corporations would fit safety devices if they were unwarranted? Please move the safety culture out of the early industrial revolution when workers were expendable to the current era where there is no need to risk losing body parts to enjoy your hobby or trade. Cheers
    Very well said.

  7. #37
    The reason my guard is removed is because I use my crosscut sled all the time. The SawStop gives me the peace-of-mind of using a saw configured in a more convenient way.

  8. #38
    I think we tend to focus on people putting their hand or finger into the blade but there are ways your hand can be actuallyh pulled into a blade and this is where even an experienced ww'er can get in trouble.

    This happened to me recently when using a push block to make a series of dado cuts. Let me tell you its a scary thing and fortunately for me I still have all my fingers.

    Like any of these incidents, when you debrief yourself, its always "Why did I do it THAT way?"

    This is why I told Julie even though we use a push block, that doesn't mean you can't get hurt.

    Bottom line: Pay attention to where your hand and pushblocks go AFTER the cut is over.

    I will be posting some pics of a re-enactment of what happened to maybe save someone a serious injury.
    Last edited by Keith Outten; 02-27-2018 at 8:13 PM.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by andy bessette View Post
    Don't be concerned. In more than 4 decades of professional woodworking I have never used a blade guard on a table saw. None of my table saws has a splitter, riving knife or blade guard. It is not "safety" accessories that make a table saw safe--it is keeping your body parts out of the blade. Know where the blade is and where your hands are.
    Agreed. As the owner of a TS that came with a blade guard that was an opponent that had to be eliminated, I keep one eye on that spinning blade at all times and the other eye on my hands. "Never the twain shall meet."
    “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness..." - Mark Twain

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lomman View Post
    Advocating the removal of blade guards and other safety devices is irresponsible. What any of us do in our own workshops is our own business but it is indefensible to peddle and promote unsafe practices to anyone else, especially the inexperienced. Just because nothing has happened to you or me is irrelevant. Safety devices are fitted because statistics tell us that they reduce injuries. Does anyone really think major corporations would fit safety devices if they were unwarranted? Please move the safety culture out of the early industrial revolution when workers were expendable to the current era where there is no need to risk losing body parts to enjoy your hobby or trade. Cheers
    Exactly..................Too many people with no training...............Regards, Rod.

  11. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Robert Engel View Post

    I will be posting some pics of a re-enactment of what happened to maybe save someone a serious injury.
    Looking forward to learning from your story.

    When it comes to safety, one is never too old to learn. I attribute my TS incident-free record not to my use of the SS, but to never ruling out any safety improvement opportunities (if I had, I wouldn't be owning a SS). Every incremental knowledge and acquisition of safe practice and device will help me keep my record untarnished for the next two decades or so (not planning to continue power woodworking when I am past my mid 70s).

    As for the no guard, no riving knife/splitter thing, as long as the risk of injury is confined to the user of such tablesaw, who cares? (What about newbies and inexperienced folks? The onus is on every tool (not just woodworking) user to " read, understand and follow all the safety rules that come with your...tools," and to be able to tell the good from the bad.)

    Simon

  12. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lomman View Post
    ...Safety devices are fitted because statistics tell us that they reduce injuries...
    No! Safety devices are fitted because lawyers insisted on the manufacturers protecting themselves from liability suits.
    "Anything seems possible when you don't know what you're doing."

  13. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Frank Pratt View Post
    I have not seen any statistics on this, but I can't imagine that most would be removing the guards. The guard & riving knife work so well & are so easy to change that I don't see any reason not to use them for almost all saw operations.
    Yet watch YouTube and I'd say more than 90% of the channels that I've watched do, indeed, remove their guards. As much as I like Norm, I place at least some of the blame on him for removing his guard "for visual reasons" all those years.

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by andy bessette View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lomman View Post
    ...Safety devices are fitted because statistics tell us that they reduce injuries...
    No! Safety devices are fitted because lawyers insisted on the manufacturers protecting themselves from liability suits.
    You know both can be true, right?
    Last edited by Brett Luna; 02-27-2018 at 2:14 PM.
    Brett
    Peters Creek, Alaska

    Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. — Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by andy bessette View Post
    Don't be concerned. In more than 4 decades of professional woodworking I have never used a blade guard on a table saw. None of my table saws has a splitter, riving knife or blade guard. It is not "safety" accessories that make a table saw safe--it is keeping your body parts out of the blade. Know where the blade is and where your hands are.

    In that video the injured party proudly showed off his foot-tall push stick. Ridiculous! One cannot work safely with such unstable devices "protecting" oneself.
    Let me offer readers of this thread some of what we call "statistical humility" in my risk analysis teams as a counter to Andy's argument.

    Let's take 100,000 professional woodworkers. They are all very good. So good, that their risk in any given year of work of doing something that puts their digits into a saw blade - because of a moment's inattention, or being startled by some bizarre event in the shop - is 1 in a million. Then in a 40 year career, 5 of them will put their hand into a saw blade.

    Of course, in reality, 1 in a million are very optimistic odds. There are very few human operations that we do with that degree of reliability / repeatability. In the best, safest hospitals in this country, with dedicated teams enforcing attention and quality assurance, we still perform surgical operations on the wrong body part, or leave a foreign object in a closed surgical incision, in about 1 out of 100,000 surgeries. That's not because surgeons and nurses don't understand that those are dangerous, life-threatening incidents, or because they are not profoundly and professionally focused on not doing the wrong thing. It's because humans are not perfect executors of any action in environments that change moment to moment, task to task. Woodworkers have nothing on surgeons and nurses in this respect.

    So, use 1 in 100,000 as a better estimate, and that "5 hands into saw" goes to 40.

    Of course, that makes it overwhelmingly likely that any individual professional woodworker, like Andy can say in the later days of their career that they didn't need guards or auto-stopping saws (only 1 in 2500 will be hurt in a lifetime in the shop). It does leave 40 maimed woodworkers out of 100,000, however.

    What I emphasize at work (where I deal with very different, but still human mediated, risks), is that any risk mitigation plan that relies on an individual or organization to be sufficiently exceptional to not need benefit of better tools is betting against numerical reality is never a good strategy.
    Last edited by Steve Demuth; 02-27-2018 at 4:09 PM.

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