On Jan 20, 2:18 pm, "Leon" wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Jan 20, 10:07 am, Kent wrote:

There is no such thing as a safe cut on the table saw. This one
doesn't have particularly more risk than any other. If I have room I
will always use my hand, much more control that way. You can easily
have the guard in place and use your hand on this cut, so why people
think this unsafe I have no idea.

Reread your first sentence.

Reread my second sentence.

How did you rip the other piece to
4" wide? I don't understand why you felt that cut was safe but this
one is freaking you out.

Ripping a narrow board and cutting to length a short piece of wood are two
different matters. He simply used the wrong procedure to shorten the piece
of wood. Any time the wood is almost as wide as it is long and use the
fence you run the increased risk of the piece binding, for what ever reason,
and being thrown back at you.

If the piece is substantially wider than it is long, then absolutely
that is a high risk cut. I was watching the show "Holmes on Holmes"
once, and they were cutting short lengths of the wood I beams to use
as blocking. So they wanted to notch the top and bottom to fit
between the joists without any gaps. They had the new guy doing it,
and he was doing it with a circular saw. And Mr Holmes wasn't
satisfied with the results, so he shows the new guy how to do it. So
he proceeds to go to the table saw and run them vertically through
with just the fence. So, 1.5" against the fence, 15" or so wide. And
of course standing right behind it. How this guy still has all his
body parts I don't know.

But a short piece isn't by definition unsafe to run through the saw.
People make it less safe by using a push stick and give up a lot of
the control they would have had with their hands. A 5"x5" piece is no
problem to keep tight to the fence. In this case we are talking about
a piece of plywood, so it's not going to warp and pinch the blade.

I do often use a procedure for narrow short pieces that would get
people even more freaked out. I bring the blade all the way up, go in
half way, back out, flip end for end, finish the cut, back out again.
At this point you're going "No no no! never back out of a cut!" but
the problem with backing out is that you're bringing the wood back
into the back teeth of the blade, begging it to pick up the wood and
have a kickback. But with what I am doing the back teeth are never
involved in the cut at all, which for these small pieces I would just
as soon avoid entirely no matter what device you have to help you.
When you get into cutting narrow strips the wood wants to bow on you
at least a little bit an awful lot of the time, and I don't want that
happening beneath a pushing device where I can't see it. I watch
what the wood is doing and if it starts to warp I just kill the saw
and wait for it to stop. I have a backwards push stick I use to pull
the wood straight back. By never involving the back teeth at all I
feel it's safer.

-Kevin