(upbeat music) marc: today, i thought it would be fun or, hopefully, educational to cover some of the mistakes thati've made in the past, instances where i've eitherhad a very near accident, or actually did have an accident, and i just wanna tell you about them, tell you what happened, and then maybe thatlittle story will stick
in your head when you are using that tool. maybe it'll prevent an accident from happening in your shop. my first tale is a taleof a young woodworker in temecula, california, cutting a piece of quarter-inch plywood on his table saw. i did a few things wrong. i had the blade upreally high instead of - essentially i like to tell people
about a tooth height above your work piece is what you're aiming for. i had mine about an inch-and-a-half up. i started making my cut and just probably wasn't paying a whole lot of attention. this piece is pretty true. it's got a little bit of a bow on it, but the piece i hadhad a lot of bow in it. i was just pushing it through,
which was an uneven cut. as i was trying to flatten the board with my hand to push it through, at some point when i readjusted, the bow came back inthe middle of the cut, and i'm sure that's what caused it. it got caught in the blade and then flew back across the room. fortunately, it didn't hit me,
but it still, obviously,scared me quite a bit. what you can do to preventsomething like that, obviously, these thin pieces you need to be careful with them 'cause you'll find that's probably one ofthe most common materials that are gonna kick back. a lot of people underestimate because they're so light and small. you don't really think it's a big danger
like the big pieces but in a lot of cases, thebig pieces are more stable. so, i lower the blade to the point that it's about a toothheight above the work piece. tighten her down. you certainly could cut this as is, but there are ways that youcan, again, help yourself. a feather board would'vebeen a nice touch. lock that guy in place.
i don't have the proper fence set up here for my board buddies. they need a track to attachto your fence system, but if you do have that in place, the board buddy can go down and put that downward pressure. that's what i was doing and simulating with my hands when i had the accident. this doesn't give up.
it's always pushing down, even when i reset my hand position, so it's a very goodthing to have in place. as you push that throughwith the splitter in place, it should be a perfectly safe cut, and i could have preventedthat from happening. this one is sort of woodworking-related. it's something that alot of us may attempt that's really not a good idea.
see this six-inch sewerand drain pipe here that i use for my dust-collection system? i had the bright idea at one point. it wasn't a six-inch. this was with four-inch,again back in my old shop. i was using my band saw to cut it. when you cut somethinglike that, that's round, you have the potential for itto roll one way or the other. usually, you don't think of the band saw
as being able to kick something back, but when you cut something that's a circle and you don't havecomplete control over it, you sure can have someserious kick-back from that, and i did. the moral to that storyis don't cut big pvc pipe on your band saw. there are much safer ways to do it. in fact, what i just did after that was
i used the jig saw and a reciprocating saw to have a much more controlled cut. it wasn't that pretty butit certainly was better than creating plastic pvc shrapnel and running for cover. this is probably one of thescarier incidents that i had. it was almost like a scene from a movie, because it was somethingthat was very slow and my impending doom was approaching.
i had to react and didn'treally know what to do. as you feed materialthrough a drum sander, and the same rule applies to the planer, you have these points where you can have your fingers pinched. the problem is in a case like this, this conveyor belt on adrum sander is coarse enough that it can pull your finger in. as i was pushing through,i wasn't paying attention.
i actually got my fingercaught under a board, and between the board and the conveyor. here's where the movie scene started. it was pulling my fingerin further and further. the problem was i was freaking out. i certainly did not have my wits about me. obviously, the first thing to do would be to shut off the conveyor and get your finger out of there,
but i was sort of overreacting. fortunately, as my fingergot closer and closer, it put so much strain on the drum that the circuit blewand it stopped on its own i don't know that i wouldhave reacted in time, and i don't even wanna think about what kind of result iwould have had from that. at least, once i finallydid get my finger out, all i had to deal with was a blood blister
and a very bruised finger, but it taught me a very,very painful lesson on what can happen if youdon't avoid those pinch points. anytime i put anything into the planer or into the drum sander, i'll keep my fingers under if i'm feeding from the back of the board, but if i'm anywhere nearwithin a foot of the board, i'm always feeding from the top.
my fingers will never gounderneath this board, just because i don't evenwant to take a chance. i always feed my boards in like this, grabbing the board from the top and putting pressure - of course, putting your fingers that close is never a good idea - but i put downward pressure like this as i feed it through, never under.
i don't know if you'veever seen a powerful planer when it grabs a board, but, man, when thoserollers engage that board, it usually lifts it upand snaps it back down. if your fingers are underthere, under this metal roller, you're probably gonna get a broken finger. here's a fun story. i had my very first jointer. it was a very old, very heavy craftsman
table-top sort of model. i was cutting a board down. i think it was just a boardof red oak four quarter. i needed to take just a hair off the end. i didn't have a good miter saw. i think i had a tablesaw but for some reason, i didn't think i'd be able to take off the right amount with that. so, i figured, "you know what?
"hey, the jointer takesoff a thirty-second "of an inch per pass, right? "why not run it over the jointer?" so, i did this. i would hope that rightaway everybody is going, "are you kiddin' me?" because you should have that reaction. i just didn't know. i didn't see any reason not to do it.
well, let me tell you why not. you've got vertical grain here. when that blade hits your end grain, it goes into that vertical grain, it's gonna split thisboard apart in an instant. i went through. the first inch was okay. i think i had a point where it started to tip a little bit andi made an adjustment. when i went right back down,
the next blade thatcontacted the end grain smacked into that wood and that was probably the most painful - although i never reallyhad a major injury, that was probably the most painful one because it shot a piece of wood into the back part of my hand and just gave me thismassive blood blister on the inside of my palm.
wow! talk about being scared. i don't know if you remember that, hon, but that was a scary day. (laughs) again, of course, don't runend grain over the jointer. not a good idea. certainly, running anything vertically like this is crazy. that's just crazy talk. don't do that either.
another little mishap that i had took place at the drill press. this, i really should've known better. it's kinda common sense. anytime you drill metal,there's a real good chance, at some point, that the bit is gonna catch into the metal and wanna make it spin. if you allow it to spin, you've got a problem on your hands.
usually, you clamp it in place and you'll slowly butsurely power your way through those parts. i just wasn't thinking. i was building the legsfor my outfeed table on my table saw and ineeded some angle iron drilled for probablyquarter-inch bolts to go through. being in a rush, i justput my fence in place. i had a little piece of angle iron.
i put it up against the fence (laughs) and started drilling. i got a little bit through and then what do you think happened? it actually did catch and wound up - get my arm caught in the thing there - it would up pulling this up and spinning it back into my wrist. that wasn't a major injury
but it's a big piece of metal just whack, smackin' you in the wrist, so another blood blister, black and blue, running into the house,crying like a little kid. it's just not a good situation so, of course, anything at the drill press, it doesn't have to be metal - wood, whatever it is, you never really wanna just -
i mean, there's certaincases where you can get away with holding it with just one hand if you're just drillingsmall holes and things, but it's always safer toclamp your work pieces on both ends. that's where these reallybig, wide-mouth clamps really come in handy is to clamp things like this on to your drill press. if it's completely secure,
especially if you're using something like a forstner bit, the cut quality is gonna be a lot better and it's gonna be a heck of a lot safer. the next thing that i did thatresulted in a scary moment - this is probably up thereon a stupidity level with the jointer mistake - obviously, when you'reworking with a router, whether it's hand-held or on a table,
you need to understand the direction that the router is supposed to go. i apparently didn't get that when you turn a router upside down, it's exactly the opposite of what it is when the router is hand-held. i had my first router table goin', and i knew i needed to puta little bit of a profile. i'm not even sure why i did it this way.
i can't remember the exact circumstance, but i figured it would be really smart to run the work piece between the fence and the router bit, like this. this direction is okay ifwe're on this side of the bit, the front of the bit, but if you run it in thatdirection on the back of the bit, you are now pushing in the same direction as the bit itself is rotating,
which means it's going to helpaccelerate it through the cut. it was perfect. all i can say is, "thank god no one wasstanding over there." i wasn't in harm's way, but it was hilarious and verydangerous at the same time. so, i pushed it through. i got about a quarter inch in and then this piece of wood just took off
like a missile and just went "woop" right across the room intothe drywall and everything. then i afterwards was like, "hmm, guess i'm not doin' that again." again, fortunately, idid not have an injury on that one but it was a close enough call to make me realize again thephysics of what's going on. if you understand the physics of it and what the potential accidents are,
that would have beenso easily preventable, but what am i gonna do? i'm marc. all of these injuriesthat i've told you about, or near injuries that i've told you about, all took place in myfirst year of woodworking. it was at a point wherei was so aggressive with my learning curve that i was in the shop well beforei had read up on it,
or even read instruction manuals. i was just so aggressive that i became a little bitdumb about the whole thing. i put myself in positionswhere i may have been injured, and in some cases, i was. fortunately, i still have all my fingers, no trips to the hospital, and i think i was prettylucky in that sense. since then, after that first year,
i took it as a personal mission of mine to make sure i do things the right way, because this is dangerous stuff. the bottom line is everytime we walk into the shop, we have to realize the dangers and what can actually happen if something just goes wrong. the good thing is since then, i've probably been four, maybe five, years
without a single - otherthan maybe a splinter - no real injuries. i don't really think it's luck. i think it's a matter ofbringing a certain amount of attention and just alittle degree of common sense to the shop every time you come in here. make fun of me if you want to. it's very easy to do withsome of these things. maybe one day we'll do a showon making router missiles.
that might be fun. that's a joke. hopefully, this willgive you some pointers, and learning from my mistakes, so you don't make them yourself.