Table Saw Safety Tips

Table Saw Safety Tips

Saws are always dangerous. They involve metal, spinning blades that are designed to cut away wood in mere seconds. Therefore, before you fire it up; it is important that you respect the machine. Most are designed to keep you safe when cutting. They have shields and they have safety guards. Not everyone is willing to leave them in place, because they do sometimes get in the way. This is not the safest choice you can make. People have lost fingers because a board slips away from them. However, there are other things that can go wrong with this type of saw and you should also keep them in mind when using it.

One of the biggest threats when using a saw that is stationary on a table is a kickback. Kickback occur because you have a solid blade, spinning quickly, trying to cut into another solid object by spinning fast enough to slice it. Blades have teeth on them and the teeth catch when they scoop away the wood. The kickback can cause the wood to jerk quickly in one direction or another. There is no warning that it is about to happen, but the repercussions of it can be lost fingers and bad cuts on the board. To avoid potential kickbacks as much as you can, you will want to make sure that the blade height is set right for the wood that you are cutting. If possible, you will want the blade’s teeth to come just out of the wood when it is sawing through. This will ensure that the blade cuts deep enough to hold the wood still, but that the blades are not so far through that your fingers can be taken off because of a slip.

When using a saw, you should also wear a pair of goggles. This will keep dust from flying up and getting into your eyes. If you are sawing through wood and a chunk of it comes up, you may end up dealing with more than a watery eye. The wood may cut into your eye and if you jerk when it the wood dust hits you; you could end up jerking the board, which could cause you to get cut and the blade to make the wrong cut in the wood.

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