Saw kick back

[Rlbailey3]

I always use my riving knife and have come to really love it. Have not had a single issue with kickback while using it and my cut quality is much better with it as well. I am a safety engineer by day so I am pretty safety conscious while in the shop.

 

I did see a pretty interesting and scary video this week about this very topic. Follow the link if you want to take a look.

 

Kickback info and video

[Courtland]

The splitters work great Bailey! Do you have the type that is easily removable?

[Rlbailey3]

56 minutes ago, Courtland said:

The splitters work great Bailey! Do you have the type that is easily removable?

 

Yes mine is easily removable. Since I'm just starting out on a budget I am using a Bosch 4100-09 but am actually quite pleased with it. The blade guarding system is quite well designed.

[Marv Rall]

On 6/25/2014 at 5:35 PM, Cliff said:

I don't use any safety gizmoes outside of those rare instances when I know I'm going to need 'em. One such is when I'm ripping a lot of unreliable wood - or rather wood that is reliably going to clamp up on the blade.

Then an only then do I put the riving knife on.

The rest of the time I use some really basic lifestyle ways of being around machinery that I've learned over the past 50 or so years running machinery of all sorts from woodworking to giant engine lathes with 4 foot diameter face-plates and snarly fixtures sticking out from the radius 4 foot chuck diameter blanchard grinders, millers of all stripes and sizes and machinery with the power from belts dropping from the ceiling.

As it regards kickback. I do a few things: First, I am never in the line of fire. I just don't stand where the lumber might go.

Basic rule of the Karate Kid's teacher Mister Miaga "Not be there when blow lands."

Second, I defeat the physics of the kickback by constant technique. I apply downward force on the work.That's it really. To kick back, the work needs to pick up ever so little and then it all happens very suddenly.

The work can pick up on the lead into the blade or on the rear of the blade. It hardly matters, but for the force delta. Front blade kicks are usually way less forceful. Both need to get the work off the table in order to happen.

Even when the work squeezes shut on the blade, it has to pick it up to throw it at you. Otherwise the blade just burns and I just shove it harder through the cut.

If I know or suspect beforehand that it's going to clamp on the blade, I take a trick from old school sawyers running the crudest of old time mills. I drop little wood wedges in the kerf on the lee of the blade and it can't close up.

As for my pinkies very often coming within mere fractions of the blade in passes: I lean. My direction of lean is away from the blade so that if things get out of hand ( & when it happens, it happens way too fast for reactions to save you) my energy is going away from the blade. I'm falling to safety.

But since I got my slider a lot of the usual risks and hazards are in the past.  I can mount work in a fixture that will hold even the oddest shaped pieces securely with no need for me to do anything but shove the sliding table through the cut and remove the work after the pass is done. My hands are just not part of the picture during the cut.

I came up without all the doodads and gizmos that people often think of as mandatory and too often become very angry when I say that they are just in the stinkin' bleedin' way and can't stand 'em. They accuse me of trying to kill people or some other hysterical tom foolery.

 

I figure If I can get along without all the safety crapola, then any one else can too, if they wish to. Ya just gotta use yer noodle.

But, still, my hat's off to any one who can manage to live with the safety gizmos - I don't know how they do it, but c'est la vie and god bless 'em.

 

 

 

 

I too operate without blade guard---BUT--always use a splitter. I consider the splitter the best safety item in tablesaw useage.

[Cliff]

11 hours ago, Marv Rall said:

I too operate without blade guard---BUT--always use a splitter. I consider the splitter the best safety item in tablesaw useage.

 Since I got a band saw I do  most all my ripping on that.  With the BS nothing can be thrown at the operator no matter how careless he is.  Things may be cut off the careless operator, but not thrown at him.  I like the BS for thin strips especially.  I joint both faces of a board rip each joint again and repeat. Then they all go for a ride through the planer or sander.  

[John Morris]

1 minute ago, Cliff said:

Things may be cut off the careless operator

I got a morbid chuckle out of that one Cliff, don't know why, it was just funny. Thanks.

[steamshovel]

I don't use anything to stop kickbacks. I don't have any distractions so I can pay attention. I try to put my mind into what I an doing and nothing else. I use a push stick when it starts getting close. I have had  kickbacks. But most of all I stand to either side of the table saw while ripping the wood. I don't have extensions on the TS so I am able to do this.

 

preston

[Marv Rall]

Of all the comments one item not mentioned is the push stick. I always use the riving knife--some time the zero clearance insert, but in every instance possible I use shop built push sticks to move material beyond the spinning blade-----these very from I/8th" material to one of my favorites -a 2by 6 with a sacrificial push ledge and shaped for a comfortable hand hold----no kickbacks using the followthru method---works for me.

[Fred Wilson]

On 1/22/2016 at 2:43 PM, Courtland said:

Those pawls are great Allen. Such a simple concept yet very effective. 

Use something similar all the time.

[BillyJack]

If you are not using all guards available on a table saw or upgrading  for protection you simply are a "risk". Won't or don't are foolish comments...