"jtpr" wrote in message
news:1096835894.eYlvSgVjg6IsV/Z5Ix8+Lw@teranews...
...on your Table Saw? My brother in law was over last night and we were
standing at my table saw discussing safety. He said he always stands in
front of the piece of wood he is feeding into the table saw and feeds it
through by holding his push stick on top of the wood between the blade and
the fence. I said I always stand to the left of the blade and feed it
through by holding the wood on the outside of the blade. He felt he had
better control his way, I felt it was dangerous to stand directly behind
it. We both use those long notched push sticks.

Also, he cuts thin strips with the waste side between the fence and the
blade. So if he wanted to rip a 1" piece off a 6" board, he would have
the
5" side between the fence and the blade. I do it in reverse. I never
really thought about it. How do you guys do it? Which is safer/better?

--
--Jim

I take my cues from both reading and watching Kelly Mehler, who has written
books on table saw use and is a strong proponent of table saw safety. He
defines the major risks to using a table saw as a) kickback, b) ejection,
and c) laceration. Lacertation is easy to understand: don't use your flesh
as a substitute for wood. However people confuse ejection for kickback,
where kickback is generally far more dangerous. Ejection occurs when the
workpiece is ejected straight back due to the friction force between the
workpiece and the saw blade. Per Kelly Mehler in _The Table Saw Book_,
"kickback is caused by the tendency of the rising teeth at the rear of the
blade to pick up the workpiece, catapulting it toward the operator at speeds
approaching 100 miles per hour." When this happens "the workpiece is
hurtled diagonally backward toward the operator." If you're standing to the
left of the blade, you're going to catch a kickback right in the gut. Kelly
states that the most common table saw accident by far is kickback. The only
way to completely eliminate the risk of kickback is to use a properly
adjusted splitter or riving knife. If you don't have that, keeping the
piece firmly against the fence and using a shoe-type pusher will help. With
that in mind, use a cross-cut sled when you can.

For narrow cutoffs, I do it the way your BIL does. If the cutoff is
particularly narrow, I make sure to use a zero-clearance insert.

todd