Table Saw kickback and trimmed finger (Graphic description & images)

[Jacob]

I wish I had read this thread sooner, Hopefully with two push sticks my left hand would have stayed clear. This kind of thing looks about the best. There are alot of options out there where your hands are alarmingly close.

Yes I don't rate those gripper/grabber/gadget variations - you have to reach further forwards, your hand still close and your arm may be going over the blade. Expensive too.

I assumed it would just get pushed in the direction of the blade.... As they say Assumptions make an buttocks of us all..


View attachment 171230

Yes that's the way to do it!
Odd looking push sticks - maybe a bit of overthinking going on? I stick with the common standard pattern which is much more versatile than it looks and it becomes automatic and second nature. Also I have copies lying about so there's always one or two to hand.

Has anyone tried the "JessEm Clear Cut Stock Guides for Table Saws"?

Daft expensive gadgets. If you really need them just make a feather board (or two) with some scrap and clamp it to the fence

 

[TRITON]

I've already got the expensive bike.... Carbon wheels, carbon frame, even carbon handlebars.
Just frustrating as I can't ride it..

Nice, whats the make , and is that a roval bar/stem ?

At least its your rear brake finger and you can always move it in a bit and use 2.

Odd looking push sticks

Yeah, a bit short. Prefer much longer myself, especially the right hand.

I suppose the uber safe way and removes the hands completely(eek) is to use something like a Co-Matic M3 Baby Power Feed. Same price as one of those Jessum things, but you can use it on the saw or moulder or surface planer.

 

[BarbaraT]

Please,please get a crown guard on that saw! In fact you now have the opportunity to design a real masterpiece while the healing progresses.

I have the crown guard that came withe the saw.....The one attached to the riving knife.. Always has been attached..
Didn't stop my hand from clipping the front of the blade..

 

[Luckosaurous]

Mitre saws can be highly dangerous and although the focus is rightly on table saws I'd like to share a photo of what I keep on my shed wall.

It's perhaps not very obvious, but that's the blade guard on a Makita mitre saw. An insufficiently secured workpiece caught on the blade and impacted the guard, causing the steel to shear. My hand was on the workpiece at the time. The whole saw (all 30kg of it) leapt off the bench with the force of the impact. I consider myself incredibly lucky I can type this with both hands.

As a result I do two things now: Always properly clamp the work piece, never use my hand to hold it in place. The clamp on the Makita is a PITA, especially for trenching cuts, but I'd rather that than the alternative. The other thing I do is take a look at that mangled piece of metal every time I start to use a power tool. Paranoia can sometimes be a useful state of mind.

Yeah I know they can be savage, I’ve had a friend cut his thumb to the bone with one.

It was stupid of me. Similar to you, the clamp on my dewalt is also a PITA, so I just told myself “it’s okay I’ll be careful” (the irony isn’t lost on me) and so made a cut holding the workpiece by hand, fingers only a couple of CMs from the blade. I just REALLY wanted to get the trim finished in that room so that I could move onto the next one. Thankfully, unlike your situation, nothing happened, I cut the piece just fine and managed to fit it and finish the room before it was too late to be making noise.

Once I had finished and settled down for the night I actually thought about what I had done and realised how stupid it was and how lucky I was. I was tired, not thinking properly, and in a rush. The perfect storm really.

I’d like to think I’m a little more sensible after a moment of realisation, but then if you’d asked me before I did it, if I ever would take a risk like that the answer would have been a firm no.

So that’s why I’ve looked into sawstop and why I’m hesitant to pull the trigger on buying a table saw still. I feel like I need to earn my own trust back first if that makes sense.

…well, that and also knowing that even if I do operate in what I think are safe practices, I will never be certain that they are actually safe.

 

[BarbaraT]

Nice, whats the make , and is that a roval bar/stem ?

At least its your rear brake finger and you can always move it in a bit and use 2.



Yeah, a bit short. Prefer much longer myself, especially the right hand.

I suppose the uber safe way and removes the hands completely(eek) is to use something like a Co-Matic M3 Baby Power Feed. Same price as one of those Jessum things, but you can use it on the saw or moulder or surface planer.

The bike is a pivot firebird with a custom paintjob, Shimano Saint brakes with 220mm hope floating calipers, There are incredibly powerful even my stubby finger should be fine..

The Handle bar is OG-EVKIN HB-2000 Integrated MTB Handlebar I did break a few other Chinese bars before this one.... This one seems to be surviving.

I've just ordered an itech power feed af32, having slight nightmares about having my hand slowly feed into the blade..
Still not sure if you need something to push it against the fence..



Does anyone use any clamps with the sliding table on there panel saw? Next job is cutting down some large sheets of 18mm plywood..
Feels a bit like wimping out if i use the track saw..

 

[TRITON]

I've just ordered an itech power feed af32, having slight nightmares about having my hand slowly feed into the blade..
Still not sure if you need something to push it against the fence..

No, you just angle the drive head slightly towards the fence and it will do both tasks. Just stand there and feed in one after the other.
You'll probably have to trial and error a few bits to get the angle right. Too much and the side pressure will overcome the forward motion and they may stall. But its not difficult really, just a little bit of a faff about.

Mine is a nukeproof mega 275 carbon, I've set it up as a mullet on a 29er lyrik, but it was never intended for that(though I doubt it matters other than the head angle is pretty damn slack. Hope pro5 fortus 30 wheels, and a sram gx drivetrain is i think the best of all worlds. Not hugely expensive bits if they need replaced. I've also got a 27.5" 36 factory and a 27.5 pro5 fortus to swop it onto for full 27.5" set up, which was the original mega build
Ive a carbon bar but im still unsure about bits like that being carbon, that sudden failure scares me a bit. CRC sale had 800 ragley risers reduced from 50 to a fiver. I'll probably replace the carbon with one of them.
The other bikes a Scott genius 920 Eride Enduro which I must admit is a lot of fun.

 

[Doug71]

I only really use the clamp on my panel saw if I'm making some critical angled cuts or cutting small pieces.

This is the normal type of clamp for a panel saw

https://www.scosarg.com/spare-work-...G1Qaq0y565jQVOgoR2SItkmoZODDYqb9bqT3Nsj5Ar1q0

 

[Jacob]

.....

Mine is a nukeproof mega 275 carbon, I've set it up as a mullet on a 29er lyrik, but it was never intended for that(though I doubt it matters other than the head angle is pretty damn slack. Hope pro5 fortus 30 wheels, and a sram gx drivetrain is i think the best of all worlds. Not hugely expensive bits if they need replaced. I've also got a 27.5" 36 factory and a 27.5 pro5 fortus to swop it onto for full 27.5" set up, which was the original mega build
Ive a carbon bar but im still unsure about bits like that being carbon, that sudden failure scares me a bit. CRC sale had 800 ragley risers reduced from 50 to a fiver. I'll probably replace the carbon with one of them.
The other bikes a Scott genius 920 Eride Enduro which I must admit is a lot of fun.

Strewth it's a foreign language!
Mines a Dawes Galaxy bought 25 years ago. Been all over though - LEJOG, Wales, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Denmark etc. Cycle camping with a lot of gear. Been off it for some time for various reasons but following new hip replacement am at it again, fairly gently!

 

[TRITON]

Strewth it's a foreign language!
Mines a Dawes Galaxy bought 25 years ago. Been all over though - LEJOG, Wales, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Denmark etc. Cycle camping with a lot of gear. Been off it for some time for various reasons but following new hip replacement am at it again, fairly gently!

Cycling has moved on pretty far from the galaxy days Jacob. The in thing is a gravel bike. A cross between a tourer, a cross country and a road bike.
Even a basic gravel is likely to be half the weight of your old steed.

Some of the higher end now use electronic wireless shifting, so gone are antique things like cables

 

[scooby]

Cycling has moved on pretty far from the galaxy days Jacob. The in thing is a gravel bike. A cross between a tourer, a cross country and a road bike.
Even a basic gravel is likely to be half the weight of your old steed.

Some of the higher end now use electronic wireless shifting, so gone are antique things like cables

I had a brief career change last year and worked at Ribble Cycles. Had the pleasure of fitting Di2 (dura ace and ultegra) and SRAM’s wireless group sets…so nice.

Used to be a bit depressing cycling home on my 9 speed R3000 group set lol.

 

[TRITON]

I had a brief career change last year and worked at Ribble Cycles. Had the pleasure of fitting Di2 (dura ace and ultegra) and SRAM’s wireless group sets…so nice.

Used to be a bit depressing cycling home on my 9 speed R3000 group set lol.

Im afraid these wireless kits are outside my price range too, and a right barsteward to set up i believe.

Does leave a bike looking rather neat and tidy though. The front of my Ebike is spaghetti junction

 

[scooby]

Im afraid these wireless kits are outside my price range too, and a right barsteward to set up i believe.

Does leave a bike looking rather neat and tidy though. The front of my Ebike is spaghetti junction

I don’t want to take the thread off topic too much. But the electronic groupsets are super easy to install and setup. Shimano (at the time) are/were semi wireless so there was a bit of cable routing (battery to both mechs). SRAM was fully wireless and ludicrously easy.

The main reasons I left was to Be nearer to home as a family member was ill at the time and the money was terrible. I knew when I started and thought I’d be able to live with it, but couldn’t.
The other reasons were spending obscene amounts of time getting the discs not to rub and routing 4 cables though a handlebar (for the mechanical groupsets) was a major pain and pretty soul destroying.

it sounds a bit weird but it really made me dislike bikes/cycling in general whilst I was there.. I’m back as a happy cycling joiner now

 

[TRITON]

I don’t want to take the thread off topic too much

Judging from the OP's bike we clearly have a nutcase offroader who lives bike

obscene amounts of time getting the discs not to rub

I use playing cards. equal number each side orientates the caliper exactly.

 

[Inspector]

I use playing cards. equal number each side orientates the caliper exactly.

As kids we cloths pinned them to the forks because the flapping noise from them slapping the spokes sounded neat. Kind of like a motorcycle when you are 6.

Pete

 

[Jacob]

As kids we cloths pinned them to the forks because the flapping noise from them slapping the spokes sounded neat. Kind of like a motorcycle when you are 6.

Pete

That's a good idea I might try that.

 

[Doug B]

Feels a bit like wimping out if i use the track saw..

As I’ve got older I find myself using the tracksaw more & more to breakdown sheet material, taking the tool to the material is far less of a chore than taking the sheet to the tool, nothing wimpy about it just a practicality of aging I’m afraid

 

[Spectric]

@Doug B using the tracksaw for sheet goods is really a much safer approach, only using the table saw when really needed for the likes of ripping 4 by 2's etc. I think the table saw becomes much safer for sheet goods when it has a proper slide table that can accomodate an 8 by 4 sheet, now you are in a different league and need a lot of space but well away from the blade and with age you do have to find workarounds, you cannot avoid aging and it can be a right pita at times.

 

[HamsterJam]

Really sorry to hear of your accident and I hope you make a speedy recovery.
Many thanks for being brave enough to post it. Hopefully we will all learn some lessons and become safer today. It’s too easy to become complacent.
I may be using the table saw later and will pay extra attention to where my hands are.

 

[Jackie H]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Since I started using my table saw last year I have always endeavoured to treat the saw with the greatest respect. This is a sobering reminder for me not to allow any complacency to creep in. The HSE guidance appears to cover all the key basics and a good starting point. A key point I think is always carry out a mental 'risk assessment' before making cuts.
On a slightly tangential issue wrt safety on the table saw I have a slight issue with my saw. When I first got it I was mainly doing cross cuts. More recently I started to do some rip cuts and found the timber was binding on the rip fence on the final push out. This caused me to recheck all the alignments. After a a few tweaks I was confident I had the blade and fence correctly aligned and parallel, at least to a few 100th's of a mm. This improved things however I still felt the timber binding on the run out. I then found that the riving knife was toeing out from the blade, effectively pushing the cut timber towards the fence. I checked this by passing a cut piece back through. The work piece was free running between the blade and fence up until the piece gets to the riving knife. At this point you can see the work piece starting to deflect the knife and then spring back once it passes right through, I would say about a mm. I can see no way of adjusting the riving knife independently.
I would very much like to hear any thoughts from the more experienced members on this. I.E. is this normal. a safety risk etc. Obviously even more wary now.
The table saw is a Charnwood W629.

HSE GUIDELINES - TABLESAW SAFETY

 

[Hornbeam]

At least its your rear brake finger

Ive ridden continental for 45 years. That way round would kill me