If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you know that I carried a healthy fear of power tools in the beginning. It took me about a month to talk myself up to doing a rip cut on the table saw for the first time by myself. Sure, I had done a rip cut before in a class setting where they used SawStop blades and I had an instructor monitoring my techniques. If the CEO of SawStop is willing to make a video where he puts his finger into a rotating table saw blade just to show how his product will stop automatically at the first detection of moisture, I can definitely use this saw with some confidence! Check out the video on YouTube- it really is amazing.
But, back to the point. A lot of this fear was fueled by the videos and stories that are everywhere of people losing fingers, having pieces of wood thrown into their stomachs and on and on. I sure am happy I didn’t let them stop me from beginning woodworking altogether! I remember thinking at the time (very naively), “How could someone let their finger get close enough to the blade to get chopped off?” So, for a very long time I wore my goggles, the ear protection, I never stood behind the planer, etc.
That was until I didn’t. I first noticed my safety awareness decreasing (or my comfort with the machines increasing) one day while using my router table. There is a red circular insert that pops in and out and sits around the router bit. I remember in one of the classes I took, the instructor saying that your fingers should never pass close enough to the router bit to pass over the red circle. There I was, working with a small piece of wood and having my fingers very easily pass over the red circle. Eh, I thought. I’m ok. Another day, I was cleaning out the garage and I noticed the blade guard for my table saw sitting nicely on a shelf, covered in saw dust- it clearly hadn’t been used in months. When did I stop putting that back on? I couldn’t even remember. But no one uses them right? You never see a blade guard in a video!
Then this week, I was using my drill press. The drill press isn’t spinning fast enough to really send the wood flying so I didn’t take the time to locate my goggles which were absolutely within arms reach. About halfway through my press, I took a huge breath of air and blew it right onto the piece I was working with to get some of the shavings out of the way. One shaving bounced off the drill bit and right back into my eye. For the next ten minutes, the only thought going through my head was that I was going to go blind as I rushed into the house, pulled out my contact and assessed the situation. Thankfully, I was able to extract the wood shaving with ease and I was only left with a blood shot eye the rest of the day. This incident, however, felt like a wake-up call. Goggles must be on or I might end up losing a finger one day!
Safety first.