"aemeijers" wrote in message
...
On 6/19/2011 7:53 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"Dbdblocker" wrote


I don't see how "keep your fingers away from the blade" would not click
to them. It means at all costs! Not if you feel like it some days.

In spite of using care a piece of wood can cause kickback and it draws
your hand to the blade in milliseconds. Sometimes it is being tired,
rushed, or distracted. I wonder how many of those accidents are "just
one more cut and I'm done for the day".

I dare say a good part of them, with most of the rest being people who
watch a DIY show and run out and buy a saw, but never had an experienced
user watching over them and giving them a dope slap when they do
something dangerous. My father, and the master carpenters that worked
for him back in the day, were kind enough to teach me how to use a saw,
and they didn't mince words when I did it wrong. Gotta give Norm Abrams
credit- he always does the safety spiel, uses push sticks and feather
boards, etc.

(Side question- I haven't seen any fresh new Yankee Workshops lately,
and Norm barely appears on the other show any more- has he semi-retired
or something? I call him a machinist who happens to work in wood. Yes,
some of his projects are absurd for a DIY to attempt, and his tool
collection is worth more than my house, but he sure is fun to watch.)

I hope to have space and time and money to have a table saw again one
day, but it won't have a self-destruct mechanism like that. But then
again, I won't be doing production work, and I'm already to the point in
life where if I'm tired or hungry or ****ed off, I STOP doing
complicated stuff before I screw something up or hurt myself. There is
always another day to finish it. After enough expensive/painful 'aw
****' moments over the years, that lesson finally sank in.

I bet more people hurt themselves with circular saws, since there are
probably 1000x as many of those in use.

I recall reviewing the types of injuries saws produce and there was a very
impressive number of people who used circular saws over their heads on a
ladder (sawing holes in ceilings, for instance) that lived to regret it and
quite a few that didn't. Live, that is.

Haven't seen any push to
idiot-proof them, beyond the orange buttons. Chain saws are another
hazardous tool that gets little attention- after the recent storm here,
there were at least a dozen folks (according to the local paper) that
hurt themselves seriously, cutting up downed trees. Right after the
storm, seems like all the guys with a chainsaw in the garage were
running out to get their streets open on their block. The ones with
nice shiny saws seemed a little unsure of themselves, and you could see
the old gray-hairs with the seriously used saws were having to keep an
eye on them.

The problem I've seen with naive chain saw users is they don't account for
what happens when the last little bit of material is gone and gravity or the
"springiness" of wood takes over. My favorite has to be the guys who cut
this huge 20' section of a 2' diameter oak tree. They had it tied to four
other trees quite thoroughly to prevent it from falling. When the final cut
was made this huge section of tree started jumping around like the ghost of
Paul Bunyan riding a pogo stick. The branches they had tied it to were
quite springy and it took quite a while for the bouncing around to stop.

--
Bobby G.