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I think I'll just put this here (gruesome)

Steve in Idaho

Steve in Idaho

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This seems like the place to show this - as a warning for my woodworking friends.....

I've used this 3hp cabinet saw safely for many years. Always had high respect for it's potential danger. Almost anal about safe practices with it. They say familiarity breeds contempt - and while contempt might not be the right word here, I'll equate that to a momentary loss of respect. Which leads to the reason that I am not going to be doing any tripping this year........




Don't ever get in a hurry and take shortcuts.

I was fortunate enough (I'm claiming divine intervention) to have missed the tendons and bone, but I have some nerve damage that will take many months to recover from. The incision on my lower leg is where they stole some nerve tissue to graft into the gap left by........the dado blade. Supposed to be a full recovery of use of the hand in a year or so. Yes, it hurt - a lot.

No, I will not be selling any boats or tools. Finances are in order and disability will cover me - so no worries there. I hope to be doing some easy paddling beginning in a week or so, if the swelling is down enough to grip a double paddle. Got a long way to go to build hand strength enough for normal moderate use. Single blade is out for a while. Poling probably out for the summer, at least. Shop projects are ongoing, but much delayed.

My friends - be careful!
 
Oh Steve that almost looks like Carpal Tunnel Surgery. I take it your saw is not as precise as a surgeon.. Nice pic. Looks like a backdrop of Kevlar fabric. I take it you single blade on the Left Side? Maybe try the Right side and grab the shaft with thumb and forefinger only..
Its only important that you get out on the water anyway you can( aside from motor)

Ice is your friend now as well as .. well drugs..
 
I single on both sides, Kim - or I did, anyway. Yeah, I think I'm going to be on the right for a while when I get back to it. The lightest and easiest paddling boat I have access to right now is my wife's little Wilderness Chesapeake Pro, so I will probably be spending time in that with the double blade at first. If I can get to where I can use a single blade well enough to execute a reliable brace before summer's end, I will be quite pleased.

Thumb and index finger.....the surgeon has a pinch gauge for checking hand strength there. My left hand can pinch at least 18 lbs. Right hand.......5 lbs, so far. Supposedly, until the nerves fully recover (I didn't even know that was possible 'til now), other muscles that I still have control of will gradually build and compensate.
 
BTW pretty artwork. I retired from Emergency Medical Services and have seen "before " photos. Think the words Will Paddle. Not If.
 
Mike, I still pause and take a deep breath every time I think about it.

Kim - I am in awe of the skill it takes to do what my surgeon did.
 
I wonder if the SawStop system would have lessened the damage. I know Alan has it on his saw and I have promoted it at work as they are thinking of replacing the existing table saw. At work they mostly "groove" styrofoam sheets with a dado blade and of course, no guard for that work at all. I fully respect my power tools as I'm sure most of us do and I think the one tool we all use that could also do serious damage is the router.

Definitely gross but a good warning for those of us who are fervent wood workers. I hope for the best for you for this season and a speedy recovery.

Karin
 
Major OUCH !

Glad you will recover !

I appreciate the lesson !

Jim
 
Thanks for posting this event. Very sorry to see it and I hope your recovery goes well. I have been doing a ton of table saw work, along with nailing guns and skill saw work on canoes and a couple of chicken coops and have found myself working longer than I should.
Your story has been an eye opener, Thank You
 
Robin said:
Thanks for posting this event. Very sorry to see it and I hope your recovery goes well. I have been doing a ton of table saw work, along with nailing guns and skill saw work on canoes and a couple of chicken coops and have found myself working longer than I should.
Your story has been an eye opener, Thank You
Click to expand...
talk about thread drift. Not only will I print the pic for my husbands shop. But
Am interested in chicken coops. No idea where to discuss that nor want to hijack but there have to be good ideas about winter coops other than in a garage. I babysit four opinionated hens who hate snow.
 
Steve, that's terrifying. Very glad to hear there was no serious damage and that there is good hope for a full, or nearly so, recovery. More than once when running a dado blade I've thought of how ugly it would be to get tied up with something like that. Would you mind sharing exactly what happened?

As Karin mentioned I have a Sawstop and have accidentally triggered it twice. Once was stupidly cutting a piece of foil covered foam (knew that was bad but was in a hurry and forgot to disable the safety feature) and the other time was cutting cured carbon fiber, not even thinking at the time that carbon was conductive. Both times I had to look really hard at the piece I was cutting to find where the blade had made contact. They weren't even knicked, just a light witness mark. I was amazed. Can't believe how fast it can stop a blade.

A friend of mine is a professional cabinet maker and owes the end of one of his fingers to a Sawstop. He was doing one of those things we all realize is maybe kind of dangerous at the time but that we do anyway. The blade was buried in the board and his hand was pushing down directly above the blade location when the board bound and was kicked back. His hand slapped down on the blade and it got about 1/4 of the way through his finger, just shy of the bone, before the blade stopped and was pulled below the deck. A few stitches and he was back to work the next day. Feeling came back to his fingertip after a month or so.

When I hear of injuries like yours it's almost enough to make me consider a new hobby. So many dangerous tools in the shop and still a lot of years left to try and avoid a lapse in judgement or just plain bad luck.

Best of luck on your recovery.

Alan
 
Thanks for sharing. Makes me wish to rethink how I do certain things at the tablesaw. Perhaps some more safety gear is in my future... Hope the recovery goes well.

Jim Dodd I remember reading a test once, from when the SawStop was new. They were using hot dogs as test subjects, and concluded that in a case like your friend's, most of the damage was done by the force of him slapping his hand down. That is, he would have had the same injury if the blade had been stopped before he touched it...

Bit of a side point: Does a SawStop even work with a Dado blade? I thought that for some blades, you need to disable the system...
 
sailsman63 said:
Bit of a side point: Does a SawStop even work with a Dado blade? I thought that for some blades, you need to disable the system...
Click to expand...

Yes, you need to install a different cartridge for the 8" dado blade. It also has a wider contact surface. Supposedly, and understandably, it's not quite as effective with the dado blade because it takes a little longer to stop the extra mass.

You can disable the safety feature if you want to cut conductive materials but no matter what you have to have a workable combination of cartridge and blade. If the saw can't determine the correct distance from the cartridge to the blade, or if there is no cartridge installed, you can't run it at all. Thankfully if I put in the 8" dado cartridge and adjust it all the way it will register a 7 1/4" circular saw blade so I can use that to rip my strips.

Alan
 
Karin, I do believe the Saw Stop would have lessened the damage significantly. Yes, it can work with dado, according to their website. Since the accident, I have given serious thought to acquiring one (closing barn door - horses out). I have some misgivings about it, based on the reality that I have other tools that are every bit as dangerous - and there's no such device for them. But I'm leaning heavily toward the idea of reducing the risk on the hazardous machine that I use the most. Pretty sure I'd never let this happen again, especially with this photo hanging over the saw - but other family members and friends also use it from time to time, and I don't want to ever feel or see this again......

Alan, I'll sit down and give more detail when I get a chance and I feel up to it.
 
Yeaaaaaah I have a fair number of stitches on me too, but nothing as awful as that. The biggest safety item that you have is your BRAIN. Working too fast or when you are tired or distracted is when crap happens. Good habits help but when you decide that you can skip it this one time is when it all starts to break down. Maybe not this time or the next, but eventually.

This from the woman who has a finger nail drilling kit so Ican releive the pressure on smashed fingers....lol. I can clear the lunch room in seconds with that trick.

Christy
 
A few years ago in haste while cutting a small block of wood with the chop saw that piece of wood kicked and sliced the tip of my index finger wide open! As I walked up to the house dripping blood everywhere the better half sees me and with absolutely no hesitation breaks out the first aid kit...I might be a tad prone to getting hurt one way or the other. She even was smart enough not to mention the ER. To this day I don't have much feeling in that fingertip but I now take my time with any power tools even a drill as I've had the bit slip off and have buried it spinning into my hand/fingers. Oh yeah, I do wear gloves a lot now while using power tools.
 
dougd said:
To this day I don't have much feeling in that fingertip but I now take my time with any power tools even a drill as I've had the bit slip off and have buried it spinning into my hand/fingers. Oh yeah, I do wear gloves a lot now while using power tools.
Click to expand...

I can appreciate your qualifier in “I do wear gloves a lot”.

The last two times I have bled all over the shop bench have been the result of stupidity and glovelessness.

Drilling a piece of aluminum with the drill press. No clamps, no drill press vice, no gloves. Thin aluminum, it’ll only take a second, I’ll just hold it in place. The drill bound up and whipped that sharp edged piece of metal around, instantly catching me across the back of four fingers.

I’ll go one stupider. I was making a fancy candle lantern using a hurricane globe fitted into keyhole slot in a decorative found wood base. The circular reveal I’d made in the base was dang near perfect to push the bottom of the globe into.

Almost perfect, maybe if I just force it a tiny bit further down.

A little too much force. I shattered the fragile glass globe between my hands. Bleeding like a stuck pig from a dozen cuts. Maybe two dozen, 12 in each hand, some with glass shards well embedded. Trying to pick out the glass and bandage up that death from a thousand cuts made a slaughterhouse mess of the bench, shop floor and sink.
 
Steve in Idaho said:
Slaughter house. Hmmm......How descriptive do y'all want me to be?
Click to expand...

Well I don't know that we need every horrible detail but I am curious what you were doing at the time and what went wrong. Sometimes, even when it feels pretty safe, I wonder how close to an accident I really am without realizing it. Whatever you feel comfortable talking about. Of course, if you don't want to talk about it I'd certainly understand.

I came across this thread on a different forum once and have never looked at my miter saw, which I always considered quite safe, the same:

http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_bas...ury_Story.html

Alan
 
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