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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

In 7th grade, our wood shop teacher lost a finger on the table saw, in the classroom. Not when I was there, and I'm not even sure it was during a class or with kids around, but she'd lost a finger, and that room was closed the rest of the year.

A few years later, a different teacher also lost part of a finger on a table saw, just working on something in his garage.

These weren't major factors, but have been partially responsible for me never developing a taste for hardware. I enjoyed metal shop in 6th grade for a bit, but... it got very loud, sometimes very hot, and the cost of doing anything wrong was great pain or death.

Contrast that with "nerdy" computer stuff... I could sit, relaxed, and 'create' stuff myself (often just typing in code from magazines and books, but it was a start!)

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SawStop table saws effectively prevent complete amputations.

You can still do much worse of course, like chewing off all your fingers in a jointer or embedding an angle grinder wheel in your face.

Wrapping yourself around a rotating axle is also fun for the whole family.

Contrary to what YouTube will make you believe, you don't actually need any power tools to take up wood working as a hobby. You can do everything with hand tools, it will just take longer and often needs more skills.

My father was a professional cabinet maker and a decade ago he built a new kitchen from scratch. The only power tools he used were a table saw (which admittedly is one of the worse) and a belt sander. Everything else he did with hand tools.

When was that?

I'm just curious what era of safety devices were likely available.

The primary safety feature on a modern table saw is the riving knife, which helps prevent kickback. My old Craftsman contractor saw doesn't have one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riving_knife

While not as tight to the blade as a riving knife, I've found these splitters[1] paired with a zero-clearance insert are an excellent alternative, and can be custom-fitted to almost any saw with nothing but a hand drill and the saw itself.

[1] https://www.microjig.com/collections/mj-splitter

I learned respect for my table saw early in my software engineer turned part time woodworker career after a near miss kick back incident. I’ve been using MJ splitters ever since on my old school Delta unisaw.

Neat! I didn't know this existed. A wonderful retro-fit for older saws!

Mid 80s.

We were in a 'newer' school district - the middle school was less than 10 years old at that time. All equipment was relatively 'new'.

Thanks. I only started using table saws a few years ago, so I watched a lot of youtube videos on safe operation.

It seems clear that using (riving knife) + (blade guard) + (push sticks or similar) + (feather board) + (careful adherence to safe operation) eliminates most of the risk.

I'm still unclear how much risk remains when following those rules. Maybe because most injuries I hear about involve people skipping at least one of those five elements.

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