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Table-Saw Kickback on Camera (2012) [video]
- mig_ 8y agoThank you, now I know.
- adetrest 8y agoI have a very hard time understanding why do people cut corners and do not follow safety instructions to the T. They're there for a reason, so why ignore them? Same thing why I'll never understand why people bitch about OSHA. They exist to save your limbs/life, why on earth would you ever berate them for that? It's literally the best thing workers have to protect them, because their employers would value money over safety a lot more if OSHA didn't exist.
- sillyquiet 8y agoI can answer that I think, although I certainly don't agree with the reasoning. The answer is twofold: number one is 'oh, these instructions are overly cautious, my expertise trumps them', and that is compounded by the fallacy of 'well, I've done it and seen it done for x years this way and have never had a problem'.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gambiting 8y agoSo as someone who has spent some time with and around physical workers - because all of this safety stuff takes time, and time is money, so if you can trade a little bit of safety for some extra time, then it seems like a good trade off. Like, I worked with people who climb industrial chimneys professionally(for inspection, cleaning, etc). Now, in the UK the safety code requires that they have to clip in to the ladder they are climbing with a safety harness every 2 steps. So take two steps, attach one clip to the step above you, remove the clip from the step around your waist, repeat until you are at the top. Now - this might be a safety procedure, but literally no one follows it - simply because if you wanted to do that, it would take you 30 minutes to climb a 100m tall chimney. And these guys have absolutely zero fear of heights so for them cliping in is stupid anyway. I imagine the same logic applies here - sure I could mount the blade guard....or just cut the plank carefully like I did 1000 times before already...."what am I, an idiot?".
- peterwwillis 8y agoSo, weird/dumb question, I don't know if you have the answers to this, but why don't ladders have round tubular hand rails? Like, no residential or commercial ladder i've seen has hand rails, so I'm always gripping tightly to the sides or the steps. But this seems stupid. Anyone with hands will realize that sliding your gripped palm around and up a round tube in a neutral position (that is, with your palms facing each other, not facing down) feels more secure then hand-over-hand on the steps, which don't give good grip anyway because the lip of the step faces down, not up.
- TheOtherDave 8y agoUnless the ladder is anchored to something, it’d probably just fall over backwards if you put any weight on such a rail. They get unbalanced if the load isn’t kept forward.
- jaclaz 8y agoLadders with tubular hand rails exist alright here (Italy/Europe). Examples: http://www.ippis.it/negozio/scale-in-alluminio/scala-in-alluminio-unico-con-gradini-rettangolari-ribattuti-gradini-13/ http://www.ippis.it/negozio/scale-in-alluminio/scala-in-allu... https://www.ediliamo.com/scala-professionale-con-parapetto-frigerio-6046.html https://www.ediliamo.com/scala-professionale-con-parapetto-f...
- Gravityloss 8y agoAt least over here, in maintenance ladders over a few stories high there's a central C shaped track where you attach a metal car about the size of a fist. Then you attach your harness to the car. The car can't come out of the rail. It also has a mechanism that it only moves if you pull it outwards. Makes climbing really easy and safe. Technically you don't even need to use your hands for anything .
- oftenwrong 8y agoThere are many types of fall arrestor systems for ladders, so you can climb a ladder without stopping, but still be caught in a fall.
- mikestew 8y agoI grew up cutting firewood with a 1m diameter buzz saw driven by the power take-off of the tractor via a long belt that would be more than happy to consume your loose clothing or hair with you still attached. The single safety guard for that whole contraption was barely worthy of the word (it was mainly to give you something to put the wood against). Cord after cord was cut with that saw, and both my father and I still have all of our limbs and fingers. If that buzz saw didn't kill me, I'm not fiddling with that stupid safety guard on the table saw/lawn mower/high-amperage device; I've got shit to do, I know what I'm doing. (In reality, I personally use every safety feature of every cutty/stabby/choppy powered device I own. I'm not getting any smarter or attentive in my old age.)
- vvanders 8y agoOh man heavy machinery(esp tractors and PTOs) are a whole nother class of things that can kill you in the blink of an eye. PTO Guards, ROPS, 4WD(almost no tractors have brakes on the front wheels, so running a loader downhill can be really dangerous). All things I'm incredibly thankful for.
- nkurz 8y agoSpeaking of complacency around giant spinning blades, I was putting on cedar shingles last year, and wondered how they were made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3HBfj423cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3HBfj423cc
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI so regret watching this video, made me sick in the stomach. It's absolutely insane, and what's worse, the person posting it considers this a positive advertisement of their company.
- stronglikedan 8y agoHumans naturally have varying degrees of patience, and thus varying degrees of regard for safety measures.
- cortesoft 8y agoBecause risky behavior doesn't always lead to disaster, and people get complacent. You cut a corner on safety one time, and nothing happens, so you do it again. Eventually it catches up to you.
- humantiy 8y agoI had this happen to me once with a bigger piece of wood I was cutting. He's right you have no time to react and the board is gone and flew 30 feet into the wall behind the saw. My hands were no where near as close to the blade as his were since it was a 12" wide board, but certainly freaked me out. He is lucky though that he didn't get cut.
- robodale 8y agoThis exact thing happened to me as well in High School "woodshop" class. The entire class and even the teacher called me "kickback" for rest of the year. I don't think any of us realized at the time just how close I was to injury.
- fpgaminer 8y agoYeah, it's crazy. I would never have imagined a table saw being able to throw large pieces of wood with such force. I had kickback on an 8-foot long 2x4. It wanted to throw that thing like it was a golf ball. I probably avoided a broken rib thanks to having all the safety features of the saw on. Beam ended up jammed into the guard instead of jammed into my chest. So many people leave those things off because they're inconvenient. Glad I didn't.
- mturmon 8y agoThe blade of a standard 10" table saw rotates at very close to 100mph (150 fps). Of course, the teeth of the blade point such that they will maximally engage the wood if it gets loose. So anything of small-to-moderate size will accelerate to as much as 100mph. Using 150 fps, it will depart the 2-foot table of the saw in about 15 milliseconds, so (like the author of the video, and me, once) you will only understand what happened after it's over. The usual reaction is to stare dumbly at your hands, and then stock up on push sticks, push pads, and work holding jigs ;-).
- phamilton 8y agoI had a lighter board kickback on me while cutting a grove. It hit me in the side of my gut and then proceeded to fly back another 25 feet into the street in front of my house. The kickback happened because the blade was so shallow. As I pushed the board into the blade, it rode up on top of the blade. The answer is more downward pressure, but I was using two push sticks to guide it through and didn't have the leverage to provide that pressure. Luckily, I was in a completely stable position and at no time were my hands anywhere near the blade, but it was still pretty scary.
- chrisa 8y agoThere are some good videos on this by Matthias Wandel as well (who used to work at RIM, and has a great channel filled with technical/nerdy woodworking videos): Table saw kickback experiments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFkHmgRIkOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFkHmgRIkOI Effects of table saw misalignment, and kickback https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbca0Km8Q5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbca0Km8Q5E
- ljoshua 8y agoGreat recommendation, thanks for sharing! I've just recently been getting into woodworking and have been getting my zen on with Chris Salomone's videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1V-DYqsaj764uBis9-UDug https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1V-DYqsaj764uBis9-UDug) which are also very educational and a bit nerdy. I love the pure educational aspect I'm seeing here in Matthias' videos.
- evanlivingston 8y agoIf you enjoy chris' videos, and you enjoy the zen of watching someone make things, check out this channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q
- oflannabhra 8y agoI like Chris's stuff, and I really like Andy Rawl's "No Talk...Just Work"[0] series of videos. I actually like _all_ of his videos, but that series is great for relaxing. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yo6ALeIfF4&list=PLPCaXyAa7W002W301ptpoaiQq5BM9mWra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yo6ALeIfF4&list=PLPCaXyAa7W...
- rmu09 8y agoA table saw should have a riving knife installed. AFAIK it is mandatory for CE.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoVideos like this help me to remain vigilant. The longer I work with power equipment without any accidents, the easier it is to forget the risks. For better or worse, I'm unable to forget a picture of the victim of a lathe accident.
- nerdponx 8y agoHeck this is even making me think twice about my habits around the soldering iron.
- seancoleman 8y agoI'm a hobbyist woodworker. After meeting so many craft store employees with missing fingers (vast majority from table saw accidents) I will never operate anything other than a SawStop [https://www.sawstop.com https://www.sawstop.com]. The origin of SawStop is quite a cool story. The founder and inventor created this auto-stop saw, and tried to sell the tech to all the major saw manufacturers. No company would buy it because they didn't think there was a market, so he started a company around it which is disrupting the entire market.
- nek4life 8y agoIt's too bad SawStop saws are incredibly expensive (and going up in price Feb 1st.) They are definitely worth it compared to the cost of an injury, however many people are priced right out of owning one.
- Someone1234 8y agoThey've also used their patents to stop competitors entering the market. So we're stuck with them for 20 years or however long their patent is.
- nek4life 8y agoI believe the patent expires in 2021, however I'm sure their lawyers will likely find a way to extend it well into the future.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoOn the one hand, that guy shopped his technology around for years trying to find someone to work with... on the other hand, I find it weird to see a useful safety technology hidden behind patents.
- Zanni 8y agoCompetitors only tried to enter the market after SawStop validated the market's existence. Something that never would have happened without the assurance of profit that the patent provided. The company tried to license the technology, unsuccessfully, for years, before going into manufacturing themselves.
- vertline3 8y agoThat warning at the end, to always read and follow the directions of your tools, will be burned in my mind now. I bet this video will prevent some bad injuries.
- droithomme 8y agoDespite being well trained, I've had one kickback. It put a hole in my garage door and I had to drive to the emergency room in shock to get a partially detached finger reattached. Expensive lesson.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoSomewhat off-topic, but... IIUC, fixing severed nerves in the spinal cord is beyond the state of the art in medicine. So when someone goes to the ER with a cut-off finger, how is it possible for the finger to be reattached, and for the proper nerve connections to be re-established?
- schwap 8y agoI'm not a doctor, but your fingers are operated by tendons attached to muscles in the arm. So possibly the nerves don't need to have the exact proper connections, and the finger can still move.
- hinkley 8y agoNot a doctor, but it was explained to me thus: The peripheral nervous system can regrow nerve tissue but only if it has an intact pathway. So when they sew on a finger, if they can repair the myelin sheath, new nerves will grow down the old conduit at a rate of about an inch a month. So they sew your finger on and you have to wait a few weeks to see if you're going to get any feeling back. That waiting would drive me nuts.
- droithomme 8y agoNot a doctor but my experience was that there was no feeling at all on one side for about ten years afterwards. Feeling it just now, it seems normal to me. There's still a scar though.
- nimbius 8y agoThis is an absolutely unreal level of professional grade ignorance. no safety shield on his face no gloves baggy sweat pants not even a shop apron its just ONE GUY in a...garage? no safety spotter or anything. Its sheer luck that this guy didnt end up live streaming a suicide. What thintz12 is also not considering is the blade itself is likely carbide tipped. the tips are hard, so if you crash the tool into the steel frame of the workbench, those bits can fly off like a bullet. a kickback that crashes a tool or jams the machine will also trip the breaker youre plugged into. If that breaker controls your garage door, and you're badly injured, you will not be able to make a simple and quick exit for help.
- nmjohn 8y ago> no gloves Wearing gloves when you are working with spinning things (table saw, lathe, etc) is a huge no-no. The glove may initially protect your hand, but as the blade shreds it, it will get tangled up, and will pull your hand into the blade.
- nimbius 8y agoThis is a pretty controversial sentiment, and ive heard plenty of woodworkers tell me this. at 3450RPM, no glove is going to draw a persons hand into a rotating blade. The glove would need an almost cartoonish amount of strength to resist the physics involved. conversely, specially designed chainsaw pants are intended to do this to stop the blade as a safety feature, but the risk of entanglement is much greater in a metal shop where speeds of 600-1000 RPM definitely will grab loose clothing, gloves and jewelry.
- Someone1234 8y agoI'm really confused... You criticized him for not wearing gloves, then when someone suggested that gloves could be sucked in, you countered by saying that gloves would simply fall apart against a machine going "3450 RPM." So either the gloves are pointless, and your original critique was wrong, or gloves are worthwhile and could get pulled into the machine. Pick one position or the other.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mrlala 8y agoThat's just not true though that a miter/band saw are any replacement for a table saw. Let's say I pick up some 2x4 and want to get rid of the round edges so it's pretty darn square. Are you suggesting to run an 8 foot 2x4 through a band saw to remove the 1/4" edges? First you need a damn good band saw to even attempt this.. you wouldn't have any decently long fence really. And even if you set this up all perfect, there's no way it's going to be even close to a straight cut. Handheld jig like you saw could kind of do it, but my god that would be an awful cut even with a straight guide. Ripping boards is basically impossible to do well without a table saw. I agree a lot of other stuff can be sort of done with alternatives, but no where near the speed/accuracy. And if you do any woodworking, you know how much that matters.. if you don't get good cuts you end up taking forever trying to fix everything. Anyway.. I hate using table saws, and do try to avoid it. But there are some tasks where it would be ridiculous to not use one.
- rrauenza 8y agoThe scariest part is how his fingers get pulled towards the blade: https://youtu.be/u7sRrC2Jpp4?t=273 https://youtu.be/u7sRrC2Jpp4?t=273
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoFor a more humorous take on workplace safety, I heartily recommend "Shake Hands with Danger" [0]. [0] https://www.rifftrax.com/shake-hands-with-danger https://www.rifftrax.com/shake-hands-with-danger
- zokier 8y agoOriginal video: https://archive.org/details/ShakeHan1970 https://archive.org/details/ShakeHan1970 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v26fTGBEi9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v26fTGBEi9E There is also this music remix version that I kinda like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfIJtR6R1jY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfIJtR6R1jY
- mauvehaus 8y agoIt's fun to see this one pop up on HN. I'm a programmer making a career change to woodworking. A useful contextualization for how powerful most stationary power tools are (table saw, but also jointer, planer, chop saw, shaper, and, yes, band saws too) is that they're usually rated for continuous output of several horsepower. Go do an image search of people getting kicked and or thrown by horses. Now think about how much that must hurt. Now, remember each of those machines is as powerful as one or more horses, and has a commensurate ability to injure you[0]. Can't stick around to discuss this now, but I'll check back this evening. [0] Yes, I know the history of the horsepower and exactly how much power a horse develops is imprecise. For getting a rough idea how much you can get hurt, it's immaterial.
- dokem 8y ago1 horse-power is not the full power of a horse.
- chrisdhoover 8y agoAnd when said horse kicks you with one leg, horse hasn’t exerted his full power. Yet somehow it stills hurts like a mofo.
- blattimwind 8y agoAnother thing e.g. with bandsaws is that their wheels have large diameters, are heavy (~10 kilos for a 500 mm saw), with most mass concentrated on the rim, and spinning at fairly high linear velocities (10-30 m/s), i.e. they are perfect flywheels. If a bandsaw has neither mechanical nor motor braking (absence of which has been banned for decades here), they'll typically take several minutes to come to a stand still, and they're perfectly capable of cutting through hardwood at slow speeds - not to speak of flesh or bones. Format table saws used in most carpenters shops here have 5-7.5 kW motors (7.5 kW are ~10 HP). Impressive power. Though format saws are far safer by design than regular table saws (and better for both your back, and accuracy, too). That being said kickback is almost always caused by making a cut that simply can't be made safely on a table saw. With suitably sized work pieces the next major concern is binding; a riving knife helps with this but naturally cannot prevent it -- it just gives you more time to shut the saw off. (Larger workpieces are also somewhat -- not much -- less problematic when caught on the blade, because they won't fly as fast or far as a small, light workpiece).
- i_am_nomad 8y agoIt’s nice to see that Harry S. Plinkett has a constructive hobby these days.
- sumoboy 8y agoI had a kickback happen in high school woodshop, broke the saw guard and the piece of wood flew right past my head. I knew I dodged a bullet that day.
- orangepenguin 8y agoWhen my father-in-law was a college student he was using a table saw to cut aluminum stock to make a 2" cube. He had the fence on. As he finished the cut, the 2" cube turned between the blade and the fence and launched at him, hitting him right on the lens of his safety glasses. He never saw the cube--it went out a window after bouncing off his glasses. His safety glasses were crushed, and he had pretty deep cuts and bruises around his eye. He tells that story when he thinks people aren't having enough respect for power tools. He could have been much more severely injured. If he hadn't been wearing safety glasses he definitely would have lost his eye and could have had brain damage as well. Human strength and reaction times are so insignificant compared to these machines. It's purely an illusion that we are in control of them, and there's no reason not to use all of the safety measures and precautions available to us.
- sf_rob 8y agoI can't imagine how cutting a cube would not involve a crosscut as the final cut e.g. perpendicular operation of the material. This type of cut would ideally be done with a sled not a fence, so unless I'm really misunderstanding it was probably a major error in technique selection that caused this incident.
- orangepenguin 8y agoYes, that is also true, and my father-in-law readily admits that he was simply misusing the tool in a very dangerous way. I believe he was starting with 2"x2" bar and cutting off a 2" segment. The fence should not have been on the saw for this, and a sled would have been ideal.
- sk5t 8y agoAlways remember, you are the softest thing in the shop--softer than plastics, even.
- ddoolin 8y agoIsn't his push block already broken @ 4:19? He was suggesting it got cut because of the the actions shown in the video but it appears to already have been mangled...
- tbirrell 8y agoMaybe, but if you slow down the video to 0.25x, @4:30 you can definitely see the blade bite into it and yank it away.
- dheelus 8y agoI have a lot of respect for the table saw when I do my hobby woodworking. Stupid me didn't think a jointer was that dangerous; I tried to joint a small (2"x3"x2") piece of mesquite using just my hands. The piece flew off and my finger dropped into the spinning blades. Luckily, while it did slice off the tip of the finger, it hopefully won't be permanent damage. It did make me realize though how dangerous things really are.
- rightnow 8y agoA european sliding table saw is even safer since you dont have to use your hands that often.
- dekhn 8y agoI had a small bit of my finger removed by the table saw. It was actually a great lesson since I'll never forget it, but it wasn't permanently damaging (other than feeling slightly numb on the tip of that finger). Now I always think twice about the blade path and what things could go wrong.
- sslalready 8y agoWood working newbie here. I recently learned about table saw kick-backs and ordered a Grr-Ripper push block[1] after seeing it being recommended on several YouTube videos. I’m quite happy with it but I’m not really experienced enough to make a fair judgement of the product. Is these kind of things something that more experienced wood workers are using/recommending? [1] https://www.microjig.com/products/grr-ripper https://www.microjig.com/products/grr-ripper
- birken 8y agoDepending on the type of cut, I'll either use my hand, a push block, a push stick or something like the Grr-ripper to make a cut on the table saw. The Grr-ripper is what I use the least, but it is one of the options that is really irreplaceable. For example if I have a long thin piece of wood (say 2' long x 2" wide x 0.25" thick), and I want to rip it into 0.5" strips, then the only way to safely make this cut is with something like the Grr-ripper. It is the only way to get grip on a thin piece of material and allow me to put pressure in the appropriate places (downward, towards the fence and through the saw). But keep in mind in this specific example that the stock is not very wide. If you have a 6" piece of stock and are cutting off 0.5" strips, then by far the safer way to do it is to keep the bulk of the material between the fence and the blade and have the off-cut be the thin strip (and there are a variety of ways to setup your saws to do this cut repeatably). In this example the wood is also very thin, which is important. If the wood is thicker then the danger of ripping on the table saws increases, because there is more surface area between the blade and the wood, and at some point I'll just go over the bandsaw, rip things to rough size and then clean them up on the drum sander. I'm also a huge fan of the grr-ripper rip block for the jointer. I use it all the time for thinner stock where I don't feel there is enough distance between my hands and the blades.
- ianferrel 8y agoHow do you do that cut repeatedly? You have to move the fence each time? (very amateur woodworker who makes repeated cuts like that with the bulk of the wood on the other side of the blade so he doesn't have to move the fence each time)
- tristor 8y agoI have had a kickback ripping 2x4s on a table saw when in a professional woodshop with my dad. That one luckily didn't cause me any injury, but my paychecks from my summer job for the next two summers went directly to the woodshop owner to pay for the damages. The 2x4 flew with such force from the saw that it hit a shelf of tools behind me, destroying several and deflecting slightly before going THROUGH the side of the building, which was a steel shop building from the 60s. Just imagine what it would do if you'd been standing there. You always see those pictures of a hurricane taking a piece of grass and embedding it into a telephone pole, well a table saw can take a 2x4 and put it through just about anything. Crazy powerful tools.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoThe reason people don't think it's because in their mind they don't understand a Watt is. Your average gasoline gallon has 33kW worth of energy in it, which can drive your car for about 35 miles or around 1kW / mile. Look at your average table saw running at 600W of consumption and consider that piece of hardware is using up enough power to move your 3000 pound car a little over half a mile.
- mturmon 8y ago> ...gasoline gallon has 33kW worth of energy in it... kW are a unit of power (energy/time, 1 W = 1 Joule/s), which is not relevant to measure energy content (for a gallon of gas). You'd want plain Joules for that.
- binarymax 8y agoI'm trying to get into bigger wood projects, and I'm on the fence about getting a circular saw or table saw since they scare the crap out of me. I'll probably get a bandsaw and hand held router, but I don't think I could ever have the courage to use a table saw (even a saw stop). I've used circular saws in the past and I was pale white afterwards. I'd prefer to just use hand tools but I'm getting more ambitious with my work and I'm starting to lose patience with the hand saws especially - it's really hard to make perfect straight lines at exact angles on large boards. I have no problem planing down to size by hand. I've seen track saws being used on YouTube and they seem lower risk for me - which might be the closest I'll get.
- CPLX 8y agoYou're going to have a pretty hard time being serious as a woodworking hobbyist if you're afraid of table saws.
- binarymax 8y agoYes and no. Some things take longer and require more practice and skill. I just need to decide if it's worth the time and effort or not. Believe me, if there were an easy way to overcome my fears, then I wood.
- greedo 8y agoA lot of hand tool craftsmen would disagree with you. Chris Schwarz, Paul Sellers...
- bhandziuk 8y agoYou can do a lot with a circular saw. It takes a little more imagination for some cuts but they're perfectly safe and doable. If you either buy a track saw or make your own track you can make repeatable, long, skinny cuts pretty well. Now you're not cutting coves or the like on a circular saw though.
- jnsaff2 8y agoImho a router is way scarier than a table saw. Mostly because you can pretty easily go to cutting a different grain direction when doing a curved cut and stuff can go awfully wrong very fast if you don’t know what you’re doing.
- troydavis 8y agoIf anyone wants to go (much) deeper, or works with wood themselves, I made a table saw safety compendium: http://sawsafely.org/ http://sawsafely.org/ Fellow product geeks might enjoy the design tradeoffs that different countries made, and injury statistics: http://sawsafely.org/#understand-design-decisions-&-trade-offs http://sawsafely.org/#understand-design-decisions-&-trade-of...