Kickback on Camera
- Thread starter Tom Hintz
- Start date
rockchucker
Well-known member
Thanks for the Vid. Glad you made it out with all of your fingers.
My High School Woodshop had the tool room door right behind the big Table Saw. The Safety Glass with Wire Mesh in it was spider webbed from a kickback. Teacher took a wooden Dowel at the beginning of the year and smacked it on the running blade to show how fast it would go through. Really fast.
I have always heeded caution when running a Table Saw. I like my fingers.
My High School Woodshop had the tool room door right behind the big Table Saw. The Safety Glass with Wire Mesh in it was spider webbed from a kickback. Teacher took a wooden Dowel at the beginning of the year and smacked it on the running blade to show how fast it would go through. Really fast.
I have always heeded caution when running a Table Saw. I like my fingers.
nehog
Well-known member
Simple math time...
10 inch blade
4000 RPM
31.415926 is the circumference of the saw blade
which is 125663.704 inches per minute.
That's 10471.9753 feet per minute, or (about) 2 miles a minute, so with 60 minutes in an hour, that's a speed of about 120 MPH, and I don't know about you I don't want to be hit with a board going 120 MPH!
10 inch blade
4000 RPM
31.415926 is the circumference of the saw blade
which is 125663.704 inches per minute.
That's 10471.9753 feet per minute, or (about) 2 miles a minute, so with 60 minutes in an hour, that's a speed of about 120 MPH, and I don't know about you I don't want to be hit with a board going 120 MPH!
green.bubbly
Well-known member
I have been looking into getting a table saw and I did not know what the riving knife was for. Now, I know.
Thanks for the video.
Thanks for the video.
premierplayer
Well-known member
3,2,1, installing blade guard
lwlobo
Well-known member
Thanks for posting the video Tom. A wise person learns from mistakes (theirs and others), doesn't repeat them, and teaches others to avoid them as well. Well done.
I hate table saws. I'm comfortable around most equipment, but leery of table saws. I've never really gotten trained thoroughly on one, no shop class. I know a guy who sliced his most of the way into his palm with one. I do know enough to use a stick and stand out of the way, push straight. I sold mine after my last project, partly to clear space and partly because it intimidated me.
When I need one again, I'll definately read up more on safety equipment and procedures and continue to be careful. And leery.
I hate table saws. I'm comfortable around most equipment, but leery of table saws. I've never really gotten trained thoroughly on one, no shop class. I know a guy who sliced his most of the way into his palm with one. I do know enough to use a stick and stand out of the way, push straight. I sold mine after my last project, partly to clear space and partly because it intimidated me.
When I need one again, I'll definately read up more on safety equipment and procedures and continue to be careful. And leery.
Toolfool
Well-known member
I'm one of those carpenters who still works without guards. Most people would cringe seeing how closely I work to the blades at times. But I'm never in a hurry, my machines are tuned and my blades are always sharp. My FIL lost parts of three fingers making fence pickets (exactly like Tom's video) and I had a customer who wanted to save money by doing all the ripping of his rough lumber himself. I showed up one morning to find he had lost four fingers the night before (on his own saw, no guards).
NASTYZEN
Well-known member
I cuss and curse every time I use a table saw! I use all kinds of tools but the table saw just freaks me out.
That video just confirms it to me. Thank's for posting.
That video just confirms it to me. Thank's for posting.
GarageEnvy
Well-known member
Again, thanks for the video and glad you weren't hurt. I've never had it happened but I've heard all the horror stories. My father-in law owned a lumber yard for a while and had a solid core door with a piece of wood impaled through it that they never removed with a sign saying "This is why we don't allow customers in the wood cutting area." The story is that it was a "large" industrial Dewalt saw that was an older model that they didn't make a guard for. I don't know the details but he did say the OSHA guys had a field day with the sign and the saw when they inspected.
eborcim
Well-known member
Seems the blocks being used in the video were also wrong for the task. Those are blocks for an edger not a table saw. A push stick is the proper tool to move wood through a table saw. Glad no injuries happened and I did learn what a riving knife is, thank you for that. My next TS will have that and the guards.
Last edited:
We say in the story that the blocks are not normally used but in this case they gave me the "traction" on the wood so that it turned when I wanted it to and not before. I was also able to be pulling (quite hard) back into the fence and just rotate the piece into the blade. The idea there was to have all of the muscle tension away from the blade.
As you see, even with me pulling rather hard on the handle it still nearly sucked me into the blade. I really did try to think this out but I knew we had to show a full on kickback with real wood or it loses the impact that really teaches people what can happen. I had done the foam and balsa wood kickbacks and they are slow and have litle force behind them compared to regular wood.That I did not expect but it makes my point very well. We just cannot overcome the power of the machines we use. The only sane way to approach using machines is to do it right the first time or you might never get a second chance.
my wood shop teacher did this for us once. except he just tossed the wood onto the blade from the front side of the saw. We all watched that 18" piece of 2x4 launch across the shop and bounce off the walls on the other side.
mercman1951
Well-known member
As someone who has dabbled in woodworking before and looking to get more into it, I have to say this was stunning, and as others have said, sobering. Thanks for risking your life & limbs for the sake of education....amazing.
Thanks for this Tom! I saw a kickback happen once in HS (careless operator) and it stuck with me. 20 some years later I purchased my first table saw. First thing I had to do was fix the riving knife because the previous owner installed it wrong. The edge of it still grabs the edge of the piece being fed through, making it a little difficult to smoothly feed the piece past the blade at a constant rate. I'll admit I have thought of removing it, but no more. It stays. Glad you kept your fingers!
Barquero
Active member
Thanks Tom, I spent 90 minutes last night digging through my cabinets until I found my riving knife (still new and unwrapped from when I bought the damn saw!) and immediately put it on.
Great site BTW.
Great site BTW.
Mikea57
Well-known member
Great video. Just be extra careful around any tool that's got a spinning blade. My Dad was pushing a piece of wood through a 12" planer years ago and he was using a push stick but it slipped off the end of the board and before he knew it the tip of his signal finger was history. He lost about a 1/4" of it that day.
I have gotten literally hundreds of emails saying essentially the same thing as this poster. That is very gratifying as it was the intention of doing this kickback video. I wanted it to have the best impact possible to wake people up a bit. We had tried this with foam and balsa wood and while they did work, solid wood is what really shows the bang in what happens in the real world.
Now that I know I escaped with my fingers I am glad I did it. Probably the most shocking to me was how hard it jerked my hand toward the blade even though I had done everything I could think of to be pulling it away from the blade at that moment.