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todd wrote:

Unfortunately, if you experience a real kickback, you're directly in the
line of fire. Kelly Mehler ("The Table Saw Book" and strong proponent of
table saw safety) calls what I think you're talking about "ejection",
where
a typically narrow piece is forced straight back. In a true kickback (at
least by his definition), a typically larger piece gets pinned between
the
blade and the fence. The rear of the blade picks up the back and you get
free demonstration of the physics of moving bodies as the panel is shot
out
at approximately a 45 degree angle. Maybe we're just dealing with
semantics, but I want to stress that standing to the left of the blade
when
the fence is on the right is not necessarily a safe location. As someone
here said once, the only completely safe place to stand when cutting with
a
table saw is in the other room.

Can you give me some more information about the 45-degree angle, Todd?
I was always taught to stand to the left of the blade (right-side
fence). Which plane is the kickback going to travel 45 degrees in? Is
it upwards from the table or rearwards from the blade?

I have a set of Grrripers I use to rip with, and I find the easiest
place to stand is often directly on the left side of the saw (legs
braced against the cabinet)...that way I can keep the wood pressed down
throughout the length of the cut and my hands are (relatively)
protected from the blade even though they pass directly over it.

Thanks in advance Todd.

I saw Kelly Mehler demonstrate this once at a woodworking show. Since he
didn't want to shoot a piece of plywood to the other side of the room, he
used an acoustical tile. As he pushed it through the blade, he let it bind.
The rear of the blade picked it up and shot it backwards. It made an
approximately 45 degree angle relative to the fence in the plane of the saw
top at maybe a 30 degree elevation. The fix for kickback is to have a saw
with a riving knife. Unfortunately, almost no saws sold in the US are
equipped with riving knives, so Kelly shows how to approximate one in his
book by mounting a thin piece of wood directly behind the saw blade. No
access to the rear of the blade, no kickback.

todd