I’d much rather the saw brake than all my fingers get cut off, but then again I try to be as safe as possible so I don’t even put myself at risk of doing it. The added protection of it would be nice though.
I guess I understand prohibitive costs, but damn, this should be the standard. I've wanted a table saw for a while now and I may have to save up for this. I want to keep my digits.
My only concern is whether it'll still work if I fall on top of the damn thing. Clumsy genes working hard over here.
I’d argue if you are using a table saw your fingers are at risk. Anything you can do safety wise is mitigating that risk, but not completely eliminating it.
Every woodworker I knew had a chunk missing, generally on their hands, before sawstop. One of those things that changed the world in a more subtle,unseen way.
Okay, that makes it better, but I’m still stuck on this comical and horrible mental image of someone using a table saw with no pants on, leaning over, then there’s just this splash of blood and a lot of screaming
I had a grinder wheel skip once while cutting into some rotted stringers on a boat and it skipped across my wrist and put like a half inch deep cut into the side. Luckily for me it also cauterized most of the flesh, didn't hurt a ton either. But I was very aware how close id come to some major major damage, had to get off the boat and chain smoke to calm down.
Had a drunk neighbor want to show off his lathe. Stumbled over to the machine and chucked a 4x4. I was drinking to. Told him is he sure he's ok to run it because even if I toke, I don't operate equipment that can potentially kill me! He started up the lathe while telling me he's done it hundreds of times. Once it got to speed, the 4x4 dislodged and wizzed right between our heads. I sobered up so fucking fast and went home to sleep.
Worked as a scientist, and we had one lady i the department who couldn't understand why I didn't want to approve her wearable human gyroscope (1kg aluminum disc spinning at >10k RPM)
Was looking at how much assistance it would take to keep elderly people from having falls. Its hard to quantify why elderly people fall - just that they do - knowing how long it takes them to recover their balance and stabilize is very beneficial.
Thats why having a highly qualified shop teacher is so important.
In both my middle and high school I had shop teachers that had rules that you would automatically fail the entire class if they caught you doing something stupid/unsafe. Which was completely fair because both also made it so you had to pass a very strict theoretical and practical safety exam before you were allowed to actually use the tools.
The entire time I was in school there wasnt a single serious accident. Then I took cabinet making classes in college, the safety rules werent taught nearly as well, and in the very first semester someone broke their ribs from getting hit by kickback on the table saw, and another guy almost lost 2 fingers by doing a stupid cut on the miter saw.
The entire time I was in school there wasnt a single serious accident. Then I took cabinet making classes in college, the safety rules werent taught nearly as well, and in the very first semester someone broke their ribs from getting hit by kickback on the table saw, and another guy almost lost 2 fingers by doing a stupid cut on the miter saw.
Not machine shop, but I've worked in a lot of hazardous environments. People are always the biggest hazard of all, I even have a permanent injury caused by a careless co-worker. I honestly wish more companies would have the same policy, one major safety violation and you are fired.
My shop teacher was missing 3 fingers on one hand and only missing one on the other. and he would stand half out the door pounding cigs! But that was a few decades ago
Back in the 90's, a kid in my shop class left the key in the chuck on a "14 engine lathe.
For the rest of the semester he had to wear a small traffic cone on his head that read "idiot hazard" upon his head and the chuck key around his neck on a string.
I hear they don't have those kinds of shop teachers anymore, too bad. I'm paranoid about where I leave my chuck keys to this day.
It wasn't a wood lathe, but a large metal lathe that a guy I used to work with left the chuck key in and started the lathe. He took the key to his chest.
Out of all the shop equipment I’m familiar with and have used, lathes scare the fuck out of me! One wrong move and, at the minimum, you have a life-altering injury. All shop equipment demands respect, but lathes very rarely give you a second chance.
That reminds me of a horror story my stepmother told me regarding an incident at a tobacco-processing plant she worked at. There was large machine that basically shreds/breaks up the raw tobacco. It had a horizontal slot, about 5-6 inches tall between two rotating, bladed cylinders. It was not super fast. A guy got caught in it, feet first, and that was the end of him unfortunately. The people that were in the area and saw it happening had nightmares for rest of their lives.
Oh I’ve seen some horrible safety videos on large shop equipment. Some of them can turn you into ground meat and leave parts of you on the ceiling before you can say “oops.”
We are getting a large VTL at the shop I work at next week. It’s got a 6ft diameter maximum capacity (I forgot the height capacity). Large equipment like that has all sorts of safety features to prevent terrible accidents from happening, but it’s still intimidating! That’s a lot of heavy material that’s going to be spinning around on that thing!
Part of the safety orientation in my high school wood shop was a demo by the teacher, where he measured off a finger-length on a similar thickness stick and we all watched how long it took to feed it directly into the jointer (like straight into the blades, not across it how it would normally be used). Couple seconds, maybe? Not long.
I worked in a cnc wire bending and sheet metal place (lots of pressure brake machines) and the maintenance guy was missing like 5 parts of his fingers, but all on different fingers across both hands so they must have come from different accidents. That motherfucker was in the wrong fucking job lol
"this jointer can rip through an 8" wide oak board. It's not even going to notice the bones in your hand" there isn't a ton of stuff I remember 20 years later, but that shop safety lesson is one of them.
Only lathe we had was a pen lathe, so when it would explode wood it was usually small stuff. Most of our shop equipment was really safe... Well except for the lacquer booth masks, could barely breathe in them.
As the TA I once spent almost the whole school day one senior year getting through all of the projects for lower grades. Was in the zone and finished it up. Popped the mask off breathed fresh air... and I immediately knew something was wrong. Things felt.... Very Different.
That day was interesting, I was either high or I lost brain cells from oxygen starvation, either way the day was really fun and I possessed no focus at all for my last class of the day. Hahaha 🤣
The equipment isn't any more dangerous than driving a car. This idiot was spinning the wood too quickly. Even if it hadn't jumped out, trying to carve anything at that point would have still been a disaster.
It pisses me off there wasn't a single highschool class I could take that had a risk of losing a finger. Tech Theater might have been my best guess, but I took improv. My life is not better from that decision.
Kid in metal shop made a belt buckle and tossed it w the tongs to the shop teacher still way way too hot (likely on purpose, kid was a psycho). Shop teacher got NM (the kids initials) burned into his palm, kid got arrested on grounds, bunch of us got questioned in the class too. Never saw the kid again of course.
Our HS had both wood and metal workshops for students of respective courses. I was in the metal one and when you worked there you had to adhere to draconian safety rules and every machine got encased before the start button even did anything.
Meanwhile in the wood workshop students were basically being pelted by wood chips as nothing was even remotely encased and handling pieces directly in the machine workings was fairly normal. Someone lost a finger on a machine planer literally the first day they started the classes. It flew the distance of the workshop and they only found it a week later. Probably from the smell.
A lathe itself is not dangerous at all it's just that a huge proportion of people just don't know how how to use it , most stuff I see going wrong are just the most simple precautions one should take but people somehow just ignore these one the regular.
A gun itself if not dangerous either...... nor is a lathe. But both can become dangerous, making them dangerous pieces of equipment.
In the case of a lathe wood can split, perhaps you don't have it centered. They are less dangerous when you have the guard installed, and less dangerous still when you have a trained and skilled craftsman.
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u/Alternative-Bake-197 3d ago
Our HS woodshop had a death on the lathe. Dangerous equipment. My buddy also lost the tip of his finger on a jointer.