My helper and I were unloading a brand new 8" jointer from the back of the pick-up truck. I was holding the infeed side of the table as we slid it easily along the bed liner to the tailgate. As the cast iron platform cleared the gate I was unprepared to lift my half of its 500 plus pounds and the unit dropped, only a few inches, crushing my finger between the underside of the table and the tailgate. Ouch!!

The humor, as I see it, lies in the irony of being injured by a machine that was not yet assembled or for that matter even plugged in!

Over the years I’ve had a few close calls with my power tools and without exception they have always been my fault.

Years ago I recall building a complex fixture to allow me to "safely" slide a part into the table saw from the back side. The operation failed miserably, the saw launched the fixture and part through my garage door window, over the driveway and into the street. While I was not injured on that occasion, I could have been. The event was one of many through the years that have helped to emphasize to me the importance of shop safety and more importantly, the tool operator’s obligation and responsibility to ensure it.

In the early days of mechanized woodworking, what I like to call the dark ages, before carbide tips and CAD drawings, accidents were commonplace and it was perhaps not so unreasonable to blame the tool. A broken belt or defective blade could cause significant injury. In my opinion, this is no longer the case.

In this enlightened age of lawyers, litigation and insurance companies, tool manufacturers have gone to great lengths to ensure the safety of their products. Many of these safety features are redundant, should one fail, a secondary measure will protect the operator.

And while I’m sure that from time to time a tool is still to blame, I believe that more often than not, the real "tool" is the operator.

Tags: safety

Categories: Safety