How do these cuts not cause kick back?

[doctor Bob]

I'm a bit on the side of "couldn't give a toss" to be honest.
You tube has been around for years and full of dodgy stuff, everyone knows it's full of dodgy stuff, whether it's mechanics, woodworking, welding, pyrography, wing suit flying etc. I do think people have to have some ownership of their actions.

Last weekend I travelled 200 miles, to view a classic car, my expert man drove 300 miles with a trailer to take it away, the car was supposedly the business, unfortunately on arrival my expert looked at it for 2 minutes and summed it up as "been f**ked up by a you tube warrier, so that was a waste of £400. I hate you tube wan***s.

 

[Daniel2]

I feel your pain @doctor Bob , but we shouldn't paint everyone
with the same brush.
Look at our very own @petermillard for example.

 

[Noel]

I like Heisz, many interesting videos.
Much easier/safer to clamp the workpiece and bring the blade up.

 

[doctor Bob]

I feel your pain @doctor Bob , but we shouldn't paint everyone
with the same brush.
Look at our very own @petermillard for example.

Yes I agree, sorry I should have been clearer and meant you have to sort the wheat from the chaff, etc etc.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Clearly you're untrained ... I'd say you also havent a clue what you're on about.

Actually, I suspect you're incorrect with at least one of those assertions, possibly both. I say that because I've read many a post by hennebury elsewhere on other woodworking forums, and seen examples of his work going back thirty or more years. My interpretation of the evidence I've seen is that he has sophisticated woodworking knowledge covering both hand work and machine woodworking.

I somewhat disagree with the thrust of the posts he's made in this thread concerning the technique demonstrated and the need for viewers of that video to self-assess the risk along with their ability to emulate the technique without coming to harm - I somewhat disagree because I suspect quite a number of those viewers possibly don't have the experience to make a good judgement. I say the last sentence in light of my experience of working in the USA and witnessing more than one professional woodworker undertaking essentially the same procedure, i.e., a professional making the judgement on safety of a specific technique. At least one of those woodworkers made the wrong safety assessment and experienced a quite savage kickback resulting in a lump of wood hitting his upper body and fingers/hand flesh contacting the sawblade followed by a trip to the emergency room; fortunately the injuries were limited essentially to upper body bruising and lacerations to hand flesh and digits requiring quite a number of stitches. So, if a pro can get it so spectacularly wrong, what hope is there for the relatively inexperienced amateur? As I stated in my first post in this thread I found Americans, when I lived and worked there, remarkably cavalier in their use of table saws. Quite a lot of what they got up to on the machine I found gobsmackingly buttock clenching. But I think many of them found me comparatively timid and wimpy with my 'girly' British table saw work habits.

Personally, if video making of woodworking techniques was my thing I would never demonstrate such a practice as dropping on as seen in that video. It probably does give the inexperienced or bull-headed woodworker a misplaced confidence in the efficacy of such a technique. As to whether or not videos of that nature with what I personally consider to be unsafe practices illustrated should come with strongly worded health warnings I find hard to decide one way or another. There's a risk of being too nannyish, I suppose. There's also the fact that all these online information sources recognise no national boundaries or jurisdictions. Whilst we in the UK, bound by our national legislation and regulations, plus our typical machine woodworking set-ups and work habits, might abhor numerous techniques shown via online sources, in other jurisdictions the technique may well be considered uncontroversial, or even if considered somewhat dodgy, then it's up to the viewer to decide if it's okay for them to emulate, or not. Slainte.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Disclaimers and warnings are a cop out.

I may watch with fascination/interest motor cycle racing, rock climbing, mountain biking, wrestling brown bears, etc etc. They all have the capacity to kill or seriously injure very quickly. I have little or no desire to try any of them.

It takes a brain little larger than the size of a pea to realise that fast rotating cutting tools can maim or worse in microseconds. Videos are produced for education, entertainment or egotistical reasons, but it is up to the viewer to use some caution before trying to copy the performance.

 

[Cabinetman]

I have been having a think about this thorny problem.
I agree about censorship with @hennebury . Hate it.
Also I do believe people should accept the consequences of their actions, and do research before doing dangerous things.
So what’s to be done, particularly on here.
It’s probably up to us to try to educate and keep banging the drum on safe ways of working?
Keep pointing out/ showing bad examples? As this thread has done?
I tried in a thread on using push sticks, some people said I was foolishly brave to even attempt it!
Wouldn’t stop me doing it again though. Ian

 

[Spectric]

As Bob has said you tube delivers anything and everything so people take it as gospel, I have seen many examples of electrical work people have attempted using you tube as the tutor and once it works they think job done, but no testing, wrong materials and dangerous.

As for that table saw clip, if you decide to copy his antics then you have to accept the risk, but is he just looking for his moment of fame or getting likes.

When I want to sand on the flat, I don't need to go to those measures to fix some abrasive paper down, using a roll of abrasive I just clamp down the ends with some wood and clamp, no danger, quick and gets the job done so take you tube with a pinch of salt.

 

[TheTiddles]

What a lot of angry pixies this has brought out.

Yes, it’s dangerous. One day he’ll cut something off, then get sponsored by Sawstop and spend his time promoting that as the solution to his poor technique. Brought to you by the same country that thinks armoured backpacks and curved hallways are the solution to their kids being murdered.

You can’t teach the uneducable.

 

[keithy1959]

There is almost certainly a disclaimer buried in YouTube's Terms and Conditions that idemnifies itself and its channel operators with all the stuff mentioned above. In fairness to John Heitz, he normally makes it clear thats how he chooses to do it, and accepts it might be dangerous. He does not instruct - he demonstrates how he did it.
If you want to find someone to hate about this stuff, how about the Lidls of this world who make dangerous tools available to anybody at too cheap a price, with the connected issues with badly made tools - but that's another can of worms !!

 

[TRITON]

Actually, I suspect you're incorrect with at least one of those assertions, possibly both. I say that because I've read many a post by hennebury elsewhere on other woodworking forums, and seen examples of his work going back thirty or more years. My interpretation of the evidence I've seen is that he has sophisticated woodworking knowledge covering both hand work and machine woodworking.

I somewhat disagree with the thrust of the posts he's made in this thread concerning the technique demonstrated and the need for viewers of that video to self-assess the risk along with their ability to emulate the technique without coming to harm - I somewhat disagree because I suspect quite a number of those viewers possibly don't have the experience to make a good judgement. I say the last sentence in light of my experience of working in the USA and witnessing more than one professional woodworker undertaking essentially the same procedure, i.e., a professional making the judgement on safety of a specific technique. At least one of those woodworkers made the wrong safety assessment and experienced a quite savage kickback resulting in a lump of wood hitting his upper body and fingers/hand flesh contacting the sawblade followed by a trip to the emergency room; fortunately the injuries were limited essentially to upper body bruising and lacerations to hand flesh and digits requiring quite a number of stitches. So, if a pro can get it so spectacularly wrong, what hope is there for the relatively inexperienced amateur? As I stated in my first post in this thread I found Americans, when I lived and worked there, remarkably cavalier in their use of table saws. Quite a lot of what they got up to on the machine I found gobsmackingly buttock clenching. But I think many of them found me comparatively timid and wimpy with my 'girly' British table saw work habits.

Personally, if video making of woodworking techniques was my thing I would never demonstrate such a practice as dropping on as seen in that video. It probably does give the inexperienced or bull-headed woodworker a misplaced confidence in the efficacy of such a technique. As to whether or not videos of that nature with what I personally consider to be unsafe practices illustrated should come with strongly worded health warnings I find hard to decide one way or another. There's a risk of being too nannyish, I suppose. There's also the fact that all these online information sources recognise no national boundaries or jurisdictions. Whilst we in the UK, bound by our national legislation and regulations, plus our typical machine woodworking set-ups and work habits, might abhor numerous techniques shown via online sources, in other jurisdictions the technique may well be considered uncontroversial, or even if considered somewhat dodgy, then it's up to the viewer to decide if it's okay for them to emulate, or not. Slainte.

Oh what a gigantic [post.
Bottom line is nobody ever in the world was ever taught to lay on a cut without using a back and forward stop.

then get sponsored by Sawstop and spend his time promoting that as the solution to his poor technique

The above picture is a pictorial representation of the proverb of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted

 

[BucksDad]

I know some have referenced USA but just to point out John Heisz is actually Canadian

If you want to understand his persona in general and his own opinion on people's comments about the safety of his methods, then I recommend watching a few videos from his second channel "I Build It Scrap Bin"

The sad thing for me is that he just recently crossed 1m subscribers - one of the few woodworking channels to do so I think and he's constantly unhappy with YouTube, it's algorithm and the lack of views his latest videos get relative to subscriber count. A reminder that even successful channels on YouTube are still completely subservient to YT itself

 

[Spectric]

You can’t teach the uneducable.

So true, you have to feel sorry for teachers that have housebricks in their class and yet are expected to meet ofsted requirements, when will they wake up and realise you can not educate a housebrick, they require a different journey, maybe youtube influencers !

 

[TheTiddles]

So true, you have to feel sorry for teachers that have housebricks in their class and yet are expected to meet ofsted requirements, when will they wake up and realise you can not educate a housebrick, they require a different journey, maybe youtube influencers !

Can’t say I’ve ever met young people like that, tends to be the old ones

 

[petermillard]

I feel your pain @doctor Bob , but we shouldn't paint everyone
with the same brush.
Look at our very own @petermillard for example.

I tend to stay out of these kind of threads because honestly I’m with @doctor Bob on this one - really couldn’t give much of a toss! What I do find baffling - bizarre, really - is the desire to hold individuals in other countries to the commercial safety standards of this one, whilst giving large TV companies and media corporations a free pass; someone further up the thread said they’d reported the YouTube video to HSE - I wonder if they did the same when Misty was flouncing around the ‘Britain’s Best Woodworker’ workshop/studio trailing scarves and sleeves in their wake, or when the chainsaws were out, or the turning?? As for those teddy bear ladies on repair shop, there’s not a single pair of safety specs between them, the horror! I think I’ll write to my MP.

And before you sputter ‘..but that’s not the same thing…!’ well, that’s exactly the problem isn’t it; where do you draw that line?? Personally I think individuals should be responsible for their own actions - both those making YouTube videos and those watching them. If you tried to second-guess what some numpty might do with a set of spanners, you’d never get anything made.

You do you, and I’ll do me.

 

[Jester129]

I was in America in '88 looking at some machinery that my company were buying to be used here. When I asked about the guarding, the American supervisor said, "If they're so stupid to put their hand in there, then they can!". It's clearly their mentality, as it is ours to put guards everywhere to protect the stupid Brits from themselves. That's our HSE working.
I can only agree that there should be a disclaimer, and realise that common sense isn't common at all! ATB

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Bottom line is nobody ever in the world was ever taught to lay on a cut without using a back and forward stop.

I watched a video of someone demonstrating dropping on to a spinning sawblade and lifting off with neither a back or forward stop, so in that case those 'always present' stops were absent. Demonstrating is one element of teaching, and those that watch to learn often try to replicate the actions of the demonstrator. In my case demonstrating to learners has always been in my teaching arsenal. Slainte.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

realise that common sense isn't common at all! ATB

"Common sense" is a dangerous mix of hindsight and confirmation bias.

 

[the great waldo]

Watching him turn those ply discs on the router put the wind up me. I`ve seen how one of those big cutters can grab and throw wood (in my case an electric guitar body grabbed the end grain and threw the body into just below the trouser belt line (you all know where) luckily it wasn't me) what he's doing is all basically risky. I still can count to 10 with my hands and intend to keep doing so, but that said he has some interesting ideas,
Cheers
Andrew

 

[Droogs]

It is the fact that his channel is run as a business and is available here, regardless of method. The publisher has a legal duty regarding safety as businesses and this is not being met.

@petermillard It was me that reported him (to youtube) and regarding the said tv show, I have not watched it other than 10 mins or so from the first one. If I had and saw breaches of HSE then yes I would report them for the very same reasons I reported this channel.

I actually enjoy some of his videos and ideas but his work practices are dangerous, especially for those less aware of the dangers.