Table Saw Safety: My Accident and How to Avoid Your Own
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a candid mea culpa and a kickback demonstration that changed how people use push blocks.
What it is
A woodworker shows how his table saw accident happened, why it happened and how to avoid a similar one. He describes severe hand lacerations from a blade contact.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2018 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends tyingq · 2018-11 · on “Making transparent wood [video]”
I moved around a lot as a kid, so I saw a lot of wood shop teachers. All were missing various parts of fingers. Pretty good "mea culpa" video here from a guy that cut his hand up: [this video]
Recommends beams_of_light · 2019-02 · on “Table Saw Accidents”
This is one of my favorite kickback demonstrations. Since watching this, I have made sure to keep my push block/stick close to the blade & applying pressure toward the fence, instead of closer to the fence & applying pressure toward the blade. [this video]
Cites troydavis · 2020-07 · on “Complete Guide to Buying Lumber (2015)”
> They are not a problem if a parent teaches young kids how to use them properly. The statistics don’t bear out that training or experience eliminates risk of serious injury. It’s even trivially disprovable with anecdotes - tons of experienced woodworkers have had blade touches and/or kickback-induced blade touches. Here’s 3: [LINK] [LINK] [this video] If anyone is learning advanced shop safety, a few years ago I made the advanced survey that I wished existed: [LINK] . [LINK] has table saw injury stats. In an era of flesh-detecting table saws, using a table saw without it (other than weird special-purpose saws) means underestimating either the probability or the consequences.