Relative danger of woodworking

[Burt Alcantara]

As shooters like to say, the best safety is the one between your ears.

Burt

[Will Blick]

All great contributions, and now matter how often this type of thread surfaces from time to time, its always good.....

but after reading this thread, I am wondering why this became one of my hobbies? If I had all the knowledge I do now, back in my youth.... I probably would have never got into ww... oh well.... I still like it..and sometimes its hard to find things in life you enjoy...

[Jose Morales-Wade]

I recently had an incident with a drill press. I was using a circle cutter that came loose and almost cut my finger off. I had to go to the emergency room and got 15 stitches in my finger!. It took more than a month for the injure to close properly. I still have some swelling and extreme sensitivity on my finger after more than 2 months!. Point I try to make is that you must be careful with all the tools. The most dangerous tools is the tool you "think" could not hurt you. A lapse in judgment, improper setup (like on this case) could cost you.

[chris yount]

The most neglected safety aspect I see especially with the pro carpenters and masons I grew up working with was safety glasses.It truely is amazing that more eyes arent lost in this group because of such basic negligence.The second most indifference was toward hearing protection.The latter can affect your levels of fatigue and irratitabilty causing you to make mistakes and use bad judgement leading to "freak" accidents.
The last thing I consider an overlooked safety problem and the one I am probably the most guilty of is working in a cluttered area.I get my tools out, extension cords run, lumber scraps and other work material around me and dont want to take time to put things in an organized fashion going from one step of the project to the next.

chris

[Dino Makropoulos]

Hello all,
Also, what would the experts feel is the relative danger from hobbyist woodworking? Even the most careful person is not immune from accidentally getting distracted and touching the blade just once. What do people feel is the likelihood of this?

Hi Dan,
Almost zero if you follow the Dead Wood Concept.
Secure the wood like a machinist and have the blades and knifes facing away from your hands. This way you can't touch the blade.

I should also point out that I don’t pretend woodworking (or anything) can be made perfectly safe.

Perfectly safe? No.
Safer than pushing materials into spinning blades? YES.
Visit a machine shop and you will see that machinists work safer than woodworkers. They use the Dead Wood Concept. They use vises.

I could get distracted just once while driving my car and cause far more injury than I could ever cause with my table saw (and I drive my car far more often than my table saw…). Enjoying life is inherently dangerous – perfectly sane people scale mountains and jump out of airplanes. But how do people feel the danger from woodworking ranks in comparison to the rest of life’s dangers?

Thank you in advance for the insight!
Dan Friedrichs

I feel safe cutting, routing and making stuff all day.
Safer than driving to the store where others control my luck.
The tools don't drink or do stupid things.
We do by forcing the tools to learn our ways.

[David DeCristoforo]

I'm thinking that a discussion about which tools are more or less dangerous is a bit like laying odds on craps table bets. Sure, the odds may be against you but sooner or later someone will win the bet. Categorizing tools or operations based on how likely one is to hurt you overlooks the primary cause of injury... human error. Anything can hurt you. Thinking that a particular tool is less likely to cause injury can result in a lessening of vigilance which, in most cases, is exactly what leads to injury in the first place.

[Paul Greathouse]

Real simple,

Just like mushroom hunting and hawk watching.
Both have their pitfalls if you don't know what your doing or where your going.
And never do the two at the same time.

Per

Per, is it possible that bagging too many mushrooms on said mushroom hunt may put you in the right state of mind for an extended episode of hawk watching?

[Per Swenson]

Same concept but I was considering, ya know eating poisonous ones by being misinformed and then strolling off a cliff because your head is in the clouds.

Per

[mreza Salav]

I'm thinking that a discussion about which tools are more or less dangerous is a bit like laying odds on craps table bets. Sure, the odds may be against you but sooner or later someone will win the bet. Categorizing tools or operations based on how likely one is to hurt you overlooks the primary cause of injury... human error. Anything can hurt you. Thinking that a particular tool is less likely to cause injury can result in a lessening of vigilance which, in most cases, is exactly what leads to injury in the first place.

Very well said David.

I was going to say: the most dangerous aspect is, not understanding how dangerous things can be. All the power tools (including the ones you considered less dangerous) can be seriously dangerous.

To be clear, I have been hurt both by Planer and Drill press (the later more than once and both times needed a bandage, dumb me that took me more than one lesson to learn).

[Dan Friedrichs]

Agreed. Certainly no tool is entirely safe, but undoubtedly the probability of an accident with certain tools is much higher than with others. There are always dangers, but often times those dangers are highly improbable. Table saws have higher incidences of injuries than drill presses - that's why someone invented a "SawStop" rather than a "DrillStop".

[Brian Kent]

Many of my minor accidents were about safety issues I never heard of:

Combination sander: Held down a small piece on the belt sander. It got thin enough to slip under the stop and my finger hit the belt and tore of the skin.

Router: Trying box joint for the first time and did not think of where the router bit was leaving the wood.

Table saw: Read about dozens of experienced woodworkers removing their guards. When I removed the guard I removed the splitter too. First kickback. Later tried the saw again with a ding in the aluminum fence. Second kickback.

Drill press: Like a couple others here, drilled into metal that I was holding by hand. Drill bit grabbed and turned the metal into a sharp propeller.

Part of the reason I like reading about woodworking when I'm not doing it is that I can learn from other people's experience. What scary is what I don't know yet.

PS. Yes I would like a Saw Stop but that only answers one of hundreds of safety issues.

[Rob Damon]

I asked my uncle how he lost the ends of his fingers....

The story he told:

In his twenties he was working full time in a furniture factory, running 8/4 boards across a 16" jointer. Day after day, week after week. After passing a board across the blades and turning to grab another board he notice a lot of blood on the jointer. He look around to see that the last 1" of his middle and pointer finger were gone and the tip of his ring finger was missing about 1/2". His pinky and thumb were fine. His work was so repetitive and he had become so familiar with doing it that the just one lapse and his trailing hand had slipped down too far on the back of the board in pushing the board through. The blades were turning so fast and were so sharp that he did not even feel it cuting his fingers off.

Rob

[Dan Lautner]

Kickback from a TS is 100 times more common than contact with the blade. I will not use a TS without a Riving Knife. The RK simply eliminates the issue of kickback. I also have a nice arsenal of feather boards and push sticks. I think the miter saw or scms is the one to watch out for. Most people secure the stock with their hand and not a clamp. One mental lapse and you could completely sever your fingers. The dead wood concept does have merit but you might be dead of old age before you complete a project without a TS.

Dan

[Nissim Avrahami]

In my opinion, WW is as dangerous as any other technical profession like, Metal working and even flying.

My X-work was in civil aviation and you could see in every dispatch room on the wall "Accidents don't happen - they are caused"...I "transferred" that to my garage when I started my WW hobby.

As an hobbyist, "time is not money" and it doesn't worth for me to loose even the tip of my little finger....just to finish the project faster...

I think that in WW like in aviation....almost every accident investigation led to the conclusion that the crew deviated from the "standard operating procedures"...same in WW, ones you start to deviate from the standard operating procedures or, the safety regulation, you are prone to an accident...yes, it can work one time and even many times but "the door is open" for accident to "come in".

I had to cut some 800+ foot board (2 cubic meters) of 1" thick White Oak and I stopped many times to make jigs, fixtures and aids just to keep my hands "far, far and away" from the blade or to reduce the chances of kickback, and by that, "shutting the door" or at least "pressing hard from the other side" not to let the accident to "come in"...

We live on both sides on the "pond" and it looks to me that the way that "each side" looks at "safety" is a little bit different.

In Europe the safety regulations are very clear "Blade guard and Riving knife must be installed for ANY operation on the table saw"...just by following this rule, I think that I leave only 1/64" of an "open door" and no, there are no cases that the blade guard or riving knife have to be removed....if this is the case, I know that I'm "not using the correct machine for the correct job".....and all my "Machinery" includes table saw and router (hand and table) but, I find the way to do it safe.

Of course, if one wants to use the Table saw as "All in one" machine, he is "opening the door" more and more...

It looks to me that, the riving knife itself, might not save you from any kickback otherwise, they would not teach the WW students In Europe to use a "Short fence" when ripping solid wood and that, reduces the kickback chances almost to zero by eliminating the kickback that might be caused by ripping "Reaction wood" (the splitter (together with the anti-kickback pawls) was dropped in EU at 60 and the riving knife took its place).

To conclude, I don't see the WW more dangerous of many other professions or hobbies as long as you follow the safety regulation that were written based on past experience and accident survey...

Last word..."Don't be afraid of the machine but....respect it"...(I heard it from Cabinetman and he is so correct)...

Have a safe work
niki

[C. E. "Ed" Fischer]

When I teach the TS class or safety course for my WW guild, I stress that the most important safety device in your shop lies between your ears. Yes any tool can be the source of an injury but most accidents happen because we take things for granted, are in a hurry, etc. In addition to reading the manuals, keeping all guards in place, etc, I would recommend getting back issues of "Popular Woodworking" and the series on safety written by Marc Adams, Part 7 appears in issue #171, Oct 2008, which is in the stores now.

Ed