Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
I wanted to urge people to use protective eye gear with my quick story of a
near-miss. Then I figured that what I really wanted was to read of other's
mishaps and close-calls to know what is dangerous. Maybe this thread dies
with 1 post, I hope not. Perhaps it's been done 100 times or more?

When I was a noob, I was using a fence mounted stop block to cut equal
length parts. A properly sized stop ends well before the blade starts.
Unfortunately, my stop was too long, extending to the area between the
fence and blade.

A cutoff got trapped between the blade and fence, and was launched like
a pitching machine. I got hit in the lower gut hard enough to
initially believe I would soon die. Luckily, the wood had hit my thumb
first. I broke my thumb, but the emergency room folks thought it took
some of the energy away from my abdominal impact.

I've been hit by frozen pucks, hockey sticks, linebackers, the ground
and curbing during serious bicycle crashes, I've stuck my hand into
large scale r/c propellers and had one serious auto accident. This
injury hurt worse than any of that.

A second thought and review of the procedure before the first cut would
have prevented the accident.

Let's be safe...