- Joined
- Apr 25, 2004
- Messages
- 372
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- Location
- Burnt Chimney, SW Virginia
- Website
- www.burntchimneystudios.com
I went over to my friend's shop and we did our best to analyze what happened and what caused him to nearly cut his left thumb off on his tablesaw. My earlier comments about the board pinching is way off the mark. By making several rips he was cutting a groove about 3/8 or 1/2 inch wide. This cut was the last of the sequence, so there is no way that pinching could have occurred. An examination of the boards showed no blade marks indicating that the board had been hurled off the saw -- the cuts were all clean.
He has a square V-mark in his chest as if the end of a board had struck him. On the off-chance that he had touched the back of the blade with the push-stick in his left hand, I asked to see that stick. It was regarded as scrap and had inadvertently been tossed on the burn pile. We simply don't know if it had any blade marks on it. From his description of it, it probably could not have caused the mark on his chest.
His first memory after the incident is of standing to the left of the saw with his left hand and thumb on the table. I wondered if he might have slipped on sawdust or even blacked out for a moment, hitting his chest on the end of the fence rail. The cut across the thumb joint suggests that the hand traveled across the blade from the front of the saw and not the side.
This is a bright and safety-conscious man who has made lots of furniture over the years. I don't think we will ever know exactly what happened to cause his left hand to go into the blade, cutting him across the joint at the base of his thumb, on the palm side.
He has a square V-mark in his chest as if the end of a board had struck him. On the off-chance that he had touched the back of the blade with the push-stick in his left hand, I asked to see that stick. It was regarded as scrap and had inadvertently been tossed on the burn pile. We simply don't know if it had any blade marks on it. From his description of it, it probably could not have caused the mark on his chest.
His first memory after the incident is of standing to the left of the saw with his left hand and thumb on the table. I wondered if he might have slipped on sawdust or even blacked out for a moment, hitting his chest on the end of the fence rail. The cut across the thumb joint suggests that the hand traveled across the blade from the front of the saw and not the side.
This is a bright and safety-conscious man who has made lots of furniture over the years. I don't think we will ever know exactly what happened to cause his left hand to go into the blade, cutting him across the joint at the base of his thumb, on the palm side.