A cautionary tale for my woodworking friends here on TalkBass: Please don't let this happen to you!

A buddy experienced a nasty kick-back while face-jointing a few days ago. He was using only one push block instead of two (I know...:crying: )

He lost the baby finger, half of the ring finger, and part of the middle finger on his left hand.

These kinds of accidents happen faster than you can react. Please ALWAYS use extreme caution and TWO push/hold-down blocks when jointing.

Well, thats enough to make me stop using just one block.....before this the router table has always been my biggest fear.

Ugh........memories of jr hi woodshop.
A kid in my class did the same thing.
must pee now

Jointers scare the crap out of me. I hope I NEVER get comfortable with mine.

I know more people who have had jointer accidents than any other machine in a wood shop. The biggest mistake people make is that they try to join stuff that is too short.

I know more people who have had jointer accidents than any other machine in a wood shop. The biggest mistake people make is that they try to join stuff that is too short.
This.

Read your jointer manual. Type out and print the MINIMUM DIMENSIONS your jointer recommends and tape them on your jointer somewhere. Never go under and you will eliminate a lot of risky variables. I hope your buddy is alright Jazzdogg, that's very sad to hear. :(

My high school construction class has a jointer (we call it a joiner for some reason), but it seems to be one of the safer machines. I feel much safer using the joiner than a router. All we use the joiner for is planing the edges of larger boards, and all the guards are in place, so it seems pretty safe. If I had to choose any power tools to use in a project it'd be the joiner and the band saw, and maybe the surface planer if I needed it once. I dislike routers, and the table saw's not my favorite, though it isn't that bad. I used a saber saw once on a project, but then I decided to use the band saw after that for any curves I needed to cut in my wood (the saber saw made annoying squeaking noises and I have better control on my cuts on the band saw). I don't really like the loud machines with spinning exposed blades. There haven't been any accidents in my class yet this year, and I hope there aren't any. I did almost get hit by a board that flew out of someone's hand while he was sanding the edge on a table belt sander. Then later a piece of wood touched the table saw blade after I turned the saw off and went around to get my wood. It flew off the table and almost hit somebody. That was the one time I didn't make sure to push my wood off the edge of the table before getting it too.

This.

Read your jointer manual. Type out and print the MINIMUM DIMENSIONS your jointer recommends and tape them on your jointer somewhere. Never go under and you will eliminate a lot of risky variables. I hope your buddy is alright Jazzdogg, that's very sad to hear. :(


This is very good advise.

The most improtant safety feature on any machinery is you. Engage your brain when your working. Don't be stupid. I don't care how awesome you think you might be; you're aren't that great. It only takes a split second for anyone to loose a finger or a hand or worse. Unfortunately, the jointer does look very safe and most people do not give it the respect that it will take from you in the future, if you are not careful. I have over 30 routers, 9 shapers, 5 table saws, 3 planers, 4 radial arm saws, and tons more; but that jointer. That thing will get you when you least expect it to, guard or no guard.

This is very good advise.

... I have over 30 routers, 9 shapers, 5 table saws, 3 planers, 4 radial arm saws, and tons more....

Just remind me, what do you do for a living ? :eek:

I own a cabinet shop, fifth generation. We also used to build cabinet doors for other shops. I also sell wood.

Here are a few pics of my old shop. These two pics only show about 2/3 of the area.

http://a313.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/89/l_823cfa827dff88a4c55b05ed3801f648.jpg

http://a966.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/26/l_505d71dc25d670805985963fee825add.jpg

But how does one get their hand caught in a blade when your hand's on top of a board that's just being guided through? I guess if you're using it improperly it could happen. Then again, that's just the thing. If everyone followed the proper procedure for using all these tools, these accidents wouldn't happen. Of course there'll always be someone who doesn't follow the steps. That's why they should make more of these http://www.sawstop.com/ That's gotta be the coolest saw I've ever seen. They should make different versions of that for the other woodworking tools. Think of all the finger's that'd be saved.

But how does one get their hand caught in a blade when your hand's on top of a board that's just being guided through? I guess if you're using it improperly it could happen. Then again, that's just the thing. If everyone followed the proper procedure for using all these tools, these accidents wouldn't happen. Of course there'll always be someone who doesn't follow the steps. That's why they should make more of these http://www.sawstop.com/ That's gotta be the coolest saw I've ever seen. They should make different versions of that for the other woodworking tools. Think of all the finger's that would be saved.


Usually, the way a jointer will cut you is by trying to join the small stock. You are pushing against the rotating blades. You are usually pressing down and against the fence. Therefore you have quite a bit of force on a small area. The rotating blades will grab the leading edge of the board and roll it forward, thus rolling your fingers into the blades. Thin stock is also dangerous. Whenever pushing this through you are concentrating on the piece not vibrating from the force of the blades, thus forgetting about your fingers dangling too close to the blades.
I have several friends that own those sawstop table saws. Very nice machines. The man who invented the mechanism that stops the blade orginally tried to sell the idea to the major table saw manufactures, like Delta, Powermatic and Jet, but they all black balled him. He then decided to build his own machine and I guarentee insurance companies will try to make them a requirement for wood shops in the future.

Yeah, I guess it could be easy to have an accident like that. All we really use the the joiner for is for 3/4 inch thick wood and it's usually over 4 inches wide. Also, the blade is usually set pretty low, so it's not taking that much off the wood and isn't grabbing it that much. I can usually just run the board through quickly without pressing it down much. I always hold the board at the top too just to guide it, but I see how that wouldn't always work for what other people may do. I like to use the joiner to take little bits of my pieces for my projects. I'd rather run a side for my cabinet through the joiner a few times and measure after each cut than make one cut on the table saw and notice something went wrong afterwards when it's too late.

How much does it cost to replace the brake mechanism on a saw stop table saw? I was telling my dad about it, but he thinks, though it is a good idea, people should just watch what they're doing. But if you have a lot of people working with one saw, it's gotta be cheaper to get a saw stop and replace the break one or two times than it is to pay the bills when an employee loses half their hand.

Gotta be cheaper? I wouldn't but a price on one's life or lost digits. Also, one cannot avoid a freak accident. There are plenty of one in a million variables that can cause an accident.

It usually cost around 70 to 100 dollars to replace the brake, plus a new blade. I can tell you that a finger cost about $1500 to have sewn up.
I would never run something under 8 inches through a jointer. And it doesn't matter how low you have the blades set. Whenever you run soemthing through that doesn't adequately span the distance of the jointer head, you are just asking for trouble.

My high school construction class has a jointer (we call it a joiner for some reason), but it seems to be one of the safer machines. I feel much safer using the joiner than a router.

And there in lies the problem. You don't need to fear the tool, but if you don't respect it then you won't take the proper precautions. Band saws are similarly somewhat benign in their presentation to me. Not a lot of noise and the blade seems well guarded, but it will still slice right through your finger without slowing down.

Greg N

8 inches long or wide? Most of the boards we need to plane the edges of are at least a foot long. That's not even the final length, so the boards are longer than they'll be when finished. I wouldn't put any short pieces through. I'll use a hand plane if I have little pieces that need planing.

8 inches long, not 8 wide.

Greg you are dead on. +1

I only use my jointer for body blanks or panels. If you have one wide enough, they are good for pulling out bows and twists.

The thing about a jointer is that if you are flattening a board and it shoots out from under your hand in an instant there is nothing but air between you and the blade, and you were just pushing down on that board weren't you? Larger pieces are not safer only because you can handle them further away from the blade, they also have more mass and are less prone to being tossed off the tool.

I approach all tools with the thought in mind of what will happen when the kickback occurs, not if it happens. I also have to keep in mind that the wood can be replaced and not to make any special efforts to save it or the tool.

Practice what to do in the event of a problem. I am not kidding. It seems stupid, but I find the old adage to be very true "In an emergency we do not rise to the best of our abilities. Rather we sink to our training." So train yourself. No one else will do it for you.

Sorry about getting preachy here. I just know that "I have got to be the stupidest person who ever walked the earth" feeling you get right after an accident too well. So far I still have all 10. Hope you do too.

Greg N

I NEVER use my jointer without using push blocks, 2 of them all the time I'm doing face jointing, and 1 on the face of the board pressing against the fence when I'm doing edge jointing and I usually run the other hand on top of the board with my fingers overlapping and grabbing on to the fence so that I have some kind of 'stop' in case of problems.

I like those euro style guards that lift up instead of to the side when the board is over the head, so that you can never actually pass your hands (push block or not) over it and you have to kind of skip it. Those are pretty safe.

http://www.codesmiths.com/shed/workshop/reviews/jointer_guard.jpg

My worst accident so far was with a handplane! I got my pinkie finger caught between the sole of the plane and the wood while pushing it forward to level a center block with the rest of a body blank! scraped from my knuckle to the fingernail and bled very badly. So even hand tools have to be respected!

My worst accident so far was with a handplane! I got my pinkie finger caught between the sole of the plane and the wood while pushing it forward to level a center block with the rest of a body blank! scraped from my knuckle to the fingernail and bled very badly. So even hand tools have to be respected!Hand tools also, for sure. I've seen some nasty damage done more than once by a flat blade screwdriver that slipped. (Although that's more likely with mechanical tasks than woodworking.)

The tool that I have seen do more serious damage in the trades than anything else is the simple utility knife. It may not take the whole finger but it does a nice job on the nerves and tendons. Eyeballs too.

Rings are dangerous too. They get stuck on stuff and if you have enough momentum you create something the emergency room doctors call "hyper extension". Kind of an understatement when your finger is hanging by a thin strand of tendon about a foot and a half away from the rest of your hand.

Greg N

what does a jointer do exactly?

Rings are dangerous too. They get stuck on stuff and if you have enough momentum you create something the emergency room doctors call "hyper extension". Kind of an understatement when your finger is hanging by a thin strand of tendon about a foot and a half away from the rest of your hand.


A similar thing to this happened to a friend of mine. He was rescuing a guy and was at the bottom of a hoist cable beneath a helicopter. He thumb got wrapped in the hoist cable and when the tension came on it ripped his thumb off including pulling out a tendon that connects the thumb up into the upper forearm somewhere. Fortunately the thumb pulled off with his glove and fell into the water inside the glove which floated. The guy he was rescuing was able to grab the glove. A surgeon were able to reattach his thumb at the low price of $70,000 US.

what does a jointer do exactly?

flattens stuff.

I almost got electrocuted when my wife (newly weds at the time) and I were putting together our first christmas tree. My wedding band touched a stripped cable. Quite the scare.

Sorry about your friend, that really sucks.

Jointers and shapers always made me the most nervous.

I would always use the pushsticks and had complete focus when using them.

ugh. that sucks man. i cut off the tip of my pinky on a jointer about a month ago and it still hurts when i touch it with anything. i cant imagine what thats like. i feel horrible for your friend.

Novice question: what is the difference between a jointer and a planer?

-Josh

The jointer's mainly for cutting the edges of a board. A surface planer cuts the faces of a board to make it thinner.

I spoke to my friend's wife today. The surgeons ended up amputating all three fingers. Unfortunately, there wasn't much left to repair: The jointer he was using was equipped with a helical multi-element cutterhead instead of ordinary knives.

The sad irony is that my friend recently ordered a SawStop cabinet saw because he thought the additional cost would be completely justified by the additional safety features.

He'll be spending the rest of his retirement years with only a thumb and forefinger on his left hand.

There are only two times when a woodworker hurries: right before the accident, and immediately after.

You know, I constantly think about horror of loosing fingers and how much I enjoy playing bass. What really sucks about most luthiers, is that most of them started as bass players. They were players before they were builders. I know nobody can afford to loose digits, but I think it is exceptionally terrible for a player to loose them. I think it woiuld be devistating.

The jointer's mainly for cutting the edges of a board. A surface planer cuts the faces of a board to make it thinner.

Because the improper use of woodworking tools can cause accidents, and because incorrect information can lead to improper tool use, I'd like to offer a clarification about the difference between a jointer and a thickness planer - hopefully without hurting anyone's feelings.

The first steps in squaring rough lumber are to flatten a face and an edge, resulting in two perpendicular surfaces that are flat, smooth, and exactly 90-degrees to one another. These steps were traditionally performed using hand planes (and still can be :D ); today they're usually performed using a jointer, which is analogous to an upside-down hand plane with a rotating cutterhead instead of a fixed knife.

The next step in the squaring process is to make the unsmoothed face flat and parallel with the smoothed face, which is performed using a thickness planer and electricity (or hand planes and sweat). The thickness planer is equipped with infeed- and outfeed-rollers which force the jointed face tightly against the bed of the machine while pushing it past a rotating cutter head that removes stock from its upper surface.

While it is possible, under some circumstances, to flatten the face of a rough board using only a thickness planer, the force exerted by the infeed- and outfeed-rollers is sufficient to temporarily flatten "thin stock" (the definition of thin depends on how beefy the planer is, and the modulus of elasticity and grain orientation of the board being processed) during the planing process, yielding stock with two parallel faces, neither of which are flat.

Under some circumstances thickness planers can "kick back," forcefully ejecting wood from whence it came. The likelihood of injury increases when one attempts to feed rough stock with an unjointed face into a thickness planer.

Thank you very much Jazzdogg. Very helpful!

-Josh

Nelson has a great point... Rings! My aunt has twenty plus years in the trauma surgery field and there is one thing she swears by. Don't wear rings while working!! She has seen numerous accidents that could have turned out better if it wasn't for a ring being crimped onto a finger in the course or an accident. Take off your bling!

I've seen bone heads toss 6" pieces of stock through walls off the jointer! My respect personally goes to the shaper. A 6" or 8" tall blender of steel spinning at several thousand RPM mostly exposed scares the **** out of me every time I use them. Take the time to make sure your machines are tuned and every precaution is taken. If s#$t gets hairy shut that bad boy down and walk away. This bussines is filled with stumped up fingers belonging even to the safest most concientious woodworkers.

And while were at it, put on those safety glasses and respirators. Dust might not take your hand off but it will ruin your retirement.

Be Safe!

I approach all tools with the thought in mind of what will happen when the kickback occurs, not if it happens.

I think this is really the right approach. One thing I appreciate about the shop I work in is that the guy who runs it checks you out on almost all of the machines and begins the safety discussion with the mechanics of the machine's actions and what the implications are in terms of kickback and other bad stuff. This has really allowed me to be able to think through a job in advance and to identify where I might put myself in trouble.

Avoidance through understanding, forethought and planning makes a lot of sense. Run out of sense you end up with this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yp-bQQl3FWY