Safe dados????? or why you need push sticks

[Anonymous]

Hi all

Well, I gave up the stacked dado head cutters over a year ago, partly for safety reasons although I never got hurt whilst using one.

I have since been cutting dados on the router table or with a jig and router.

Well, on sunday, I ran a 75mm wide piece of ash through a 12mm cutter raised 5mm above the table without problem.

Ran a second pass to take total depth to 8mm (another 3mm) which was going fine UNTIL the wood suddenly shot through the cutter and dragged my left hand INTO said cutter :shock:

No pain (that took another minute to arrive) and I thought I'd gotten away with it but then I saw lots of 'leakage'



My wife rushed me to A&E and for first time ever, no waiting :shock: Stayed on a ward over night and then plastic surgery on monday. I had a nice 12mm by 8mm dado through one finger (including bone and nail) and deep cut in next finger. A surgeon removed the remains of the nail and re-attached the end of the bone. He reckons movement should be OK but feeling is less likely.

Best I can make out (after inspecting the wood) is that the wood somehow moved across during the second pass by a small amount and then it basically 'climb routed', thus the speed of exit.

I feel somewhat foolish for not using push sticks even though my fingers were at least a couple of inches from the cutter and I have cut literally hundreds of dados this way without incident (no exciuse for not using push sticks though!!). It is my own fault.



This is a picture after the op and with dressings on - linked rather than displayed:

http://www.btinternet.com/~my.webs/hand/hand.jpg



My vote for the best tool for cutting dados:

 

[PowerTool]

Oooohhh,nasty :shock:

Hope
a)you recover soon

and

b)you are right-handed :lol:

Andrew

 

[engineer one]

when i was an apprentice, we were regularly given safety lecture which showed guys who had got caught on pillar drills, and lathes etc.

it was always on a project that they had done many times before.

i have recently met a couple of people who have lost their finger tops
by woodworking, so am sorry for your problems.

what it does suggest is that a feather board pressing down would also be a really useful tip, as well as the push stick.

it's important to know that even those experienced with their tools,
can still get caught. glad your wife was on hand to help out quickly,
too many of us work alone, and have no one around to check on our safety, useful lesson.

hope what's left heals quickly
all the best

paul :wink:

 

[JFC]

:shock: OUCH ! Hope the pain doesn't last to long ! Your lucky your wife was in or it could have worked out far worse !
Hope everything goes ok for you and your fingers !

 

[Alf]

Yes, I'm a coward and haven't clicked on the piccy link 8-[ but it sounds suitably ghastly, Tony. Heal well. Gives a whole new meaning to finger jointing...

Cheers, Alf

 

[les chicken]

Ouch

Get well soon, it takes something like this to remind the rest of us to take care.

Les

 

[Colin C]

Tony, I hope get better very soon , I know how you feel as I removed the top of my finger last year (luckly just skin and not as bad as yours :shock: )
A little reminder for all, its the jobs you do the most that can bite back
Get well soon

 

[tim]

Tony

I hope you recover quickly. Sounds and looks nasty - should they be that green :shock: :wink:

Its so easy to not take all the right precautions esp when its a familiar routine - I do it all the time but then we forget that its the wood that varies. Thanks for posting this - I hope it makes me (and others) stop and think more.

Get well soon

Cheers

Tim

 

[Philly]

OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! :shock:
Get well soon, Man! Sorry to hear about this. And thank God there wasn't a dado involved.
Best regards
Philly

 

[DaveL]

Tony,

Sorry to hear you are hurt, but glad its been repaired. I hope you heal quick. Take more care. :roll:

 

[frank]

Tony i hope every thing heals up ok and you can get back to woodworking very soon .
It makes me think i should get some of them steel butchers gloves .

frank

 

[Adam]

Phew! Sounds erm, horrible, but do get well soon.

Adam

 

[Scott]

Nasty! Hope it heals up well (and soon) Tony

A good reminder for the rest of us!

All the best

 

[Richard in Smithville]

Not the first time I've seen that happen. Glad to see there was enough of your fingers left that the docs could rebuild them. Hope you feel better soon.

 

[Charley]

Ouuucchhh :shock: That must of hurt

Hope everything heals up quickly. While your are recovering it's a great excuse to plan your next projects :wink:

 

[OPJ]

YIKES!! I hope it doesn't affect your woodworking too much! :?

Just out of interest, do you have some kind of guard on your router table?

I only ask because each time I see a custom made router table, or even one of the top-of-the-range models in a catalogue, I barely see ANY that come fitted with even an attempted guard to save you from such accidents.

And yet, with a saw bench and planer, there's health and safety legislation over here that requires these things - why not for the router table?

You have a highly sharpened cutter potentially spinning at more than 20,000rpm - but where are all the H&S guys???


Seriously, I hope everything works out okay for you - and that the rest of us take this in on a very serious note. For ALL woodworking machinery!!

 

[Losos]

Tony,
Hope you'll be recovered soon and woodworking as normal. Thanks for putting pictures on a link. I'm very sqeamish so I didn't click. Your description was ample for me to appreciate your plight.

I had a few minor 'incidents' today with knots in old wood. Nothing happened but a knot (About half inch size) did fly past my hand and face at great speed. :shock:

 

[soapy]

Hope you make a full recovery Tony. My first hardwood project was in ash and after using softwoods and mdf I learnt fast to pay more attention to grain direction when profiling edges with the router.

 

[neilc]

Tony I feel your pain. The same thing happened to me around 6 months ago except to was a 1/4" spiral cutting bit so it didn't do near the damage you got. It sucked my right index finger onto the top of the bit right at the nail. Its amazing how quickly it happens. It healed up really well except I have a small patch of nail that never reattached back to the finger. I was lucky.
I hope you heal up real soon and can get back in the workshop again. I was real nervous for a while when I went back. Best wishes.
Neil

 

[Scrit]

Hi Tony

Well I have some idea from personal experience how painful parts of the process are, especially the surgery under local anasthetic with a tourniquet (and the bit where it all wears off and you climb the walls :shock: ), so you have my utmost sympathy. With a bit of help you'll be off the drugs and getting physio within weeks, but you may find that you lose some or all of the sensation in parts of the finger tips, which can feel really strange at times. I wouldn't give up on the power tools, just yet, though.

Get well

Scrit