A woodworking buddy of mine just told me about an accident that another
acquaintance of ours had about a week ago. Not a fun story.

This fellow (I'll call him John) has a contractor's saw (not sure of the brand)
for which he was preparing to install a new zero-clearance insert. I don't
know whether the insert was home-made or commercially available, what material
it was made of, or whether it had a roll pin protruding out the back to prevent
it from lifting, etc. All I know is that he needed to raise the blade through
the insert to cut the opening.

So John installs the insert and proceeds to hold it down from above with a
block of wood (don't know how big, what kind, or what shape) to keep it from
lifting while raising the blade. The block was sacrificial, and for some
reason he thought it was OK to let the blade cut into the block as he was
raising it while also holding the block in place with a push stick (one of
those long things with a notch at the end; I HATE those things!). Does this
raise any red flags with you yet?

So while John is turning the crank with his right hand to raise the blade, he
is holding the block in place with his left hand (I think he had his left index
finger extended; I'm not sure), and as you might expect the block shifted
around a little bit, and WHAM! The blade grabs the block and virtually
*disintegrates* it, which in turn disintegrates the push stick, which in turn
disintegrates the index finger on John's left hand. Ten different breaks and
fractures in his finger, torn tendons, and meat hanging off the bone. The
doctors told him they might be able to return it to some semblance of a finger
after a half-dozen or more surgeries, but he just told them to take it off. I
probably would have said the same thing.

Be careful out there.

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