On 5/25/2012 10:50 PM, Steve Turner wrote:
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.


just like any other table saw incident. (they're not accidents). Morons
doing things they shouldn't be doing.

--
Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email