If a piece of wood comes off the lathe it can do
you serious harm. Other shop tools can maim you, a lathe can kill you.

The above was a recent comment here on the group. While I certainly
don't disagree with the first sentence, I have problems with the second.
Everything in life is dangerous and potentially lethal: one can die from
drinking too much water; one can die from whittling a folk art Santa and
slicing through the femoral artery; one can die from just getting out of
bed in the morning (most heart attacks occur during the first few hours
of waking). There's risk in everything we do - the difference is how
safely the activity is pursued and then the statistical odds of a fatal
injury occurring while performing the activity.

It may be quibbling, but every tool in the shop can kill you and many of
those are much more statistically risky, injury-wise, to operate than a
lathe. I would suppose lathe injuries tend to be much less severe and
permanently disfiguring than injuries from table saws, jointers, band
saws, routers or a number of other shop tools. In the four years I've
been turning I've only seen one instance of moderately severe facial
injuries from a flying piece of wood (a few years back in the AAW
Journal). I've seen, read and heard of nicks to the chins, friction burn
injuries to the hands, bruised and blackened fingernails, a bruised
temple (from getting smacked by a tool handle after the operator tried
peering into a hollow form while the lathe was running and tool still
working inside) and plethora of cuts, nicks and scrapes to the fingers.
Every one of these injuries, including the facial bruising in the
Journal picture, would heal within a week or two. Other shop tools
remove fingers permanently. When was the last time the injury with a
table saw, jointer or band saw you were told about resulted in only
bruising?

On the whole, deaths from woodshop injuries, I would suppose, are
statistically pretty low on the totem pole. When was the last time you
heard about someone being killed using any woodworking tool much less
while operating a lathe? I object to the alarmist scare tactic in the
quoted post. I especially object to the notion that operating a lathe
carries greater risk of death than other shop tools.

(BTW, I started my daughter out, guiding her hands while turning tops,
last year when she was six.)

--
Owen Lowe

Northwest Woodturners,
Cascade Woodturners,
Pacific Northwest Woodturning Guild
___
Tips fer Turnin': Pour your end-grain sealer into a clean, wide-mouth
clothes detergent bottle. The lid makes a handy dipping container for
your brush and the leftovers will drain back into the bottle when you
recap the jug.