Power tools and shop machines are usually some kind of rotating oscillator, with some kind of tooling attached that can cut the materials we work with. This means they can cut us too, or hurl things at us. Fortunately, there are several layers of protection for use with these tools. Guards, shields jigs and fixtures that shield us and guide the tools or the work, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that we can wear, as well as safe practices and procedures for using them, allow us to be artistic and productive without harm to ourselves.

Hand tools are sharp cutting edges, coupled with hand-eye coordination and physical force applied by the user. If there is a safety issue, usually it is the fact that the tools are dull, or just sharp enough to cut the user, but too dull to do the work, and that causes injury from tools that slip. Other times it is because we are not mindful of where we place our hands, how we use proper posture for the task and technique or the effort we apply.

If we remember that a high level of sharpness, proper fixturing of the work, and putting our hands on the hand holds, handles, and behind the cutting edges, we can develop practices that keep us safe from harm. Experience will remind us that sharp tools push easier than dull ones, and excessive force needing applied by the tool user should serve as reminder, if not warning. The rest is really about finesse, and finesse is not about trying too hard.

Often times, hand tools offer us a safer way of working on small, short, and thin work pieces, when compared to woodworking machines and power tools. Any machinist will tell you that in working metal, secure fixturing is everything. Woodworkers often have a choice between moving the tool or the material, and often with minimal fixturing. We as the users of these tools have to keep all the balls in the air to achieve fit and finish as well as remain safe through the process, and it really does come down to the thought process first and how we carry out that thought process second. Success is possible!

Usually the most dangerous thing in the shop is the person performing work there. Yes, that does mean us. If we don’t pay rapt attention to what we are doing most every moment, the potential for injuries can cross the line and bite us. We don’t have to be interfaced with a tool. Is the path we will carry something large through, and which will obstruct our vision, clear and free of trip hazards before we life and carry? Do we lift with our legs and not our back? Do we keep three points of contact when we are on a ladder?

In practice, our minds assess many things in a moment, and dismiss them if they look usual. Usually if things look acceptable we turn our focus elsewhere, particularly if we surmise what we looked at seems to have a low potential for needing us to revisit it with our attention again soon.

For instance, this is the difference between crossing a street when there are few cars or when there are many. Maybe we know the power cord to our circular saw or router is in a safe place where it will not become a bother. Maybe the power cord will be a bother and we can’t fully mitigate this so we must plan to manage this as we work. We often scale up our awareness as required for the situation. When we are not as familiar with a situation, we are better off to scale up our awareness.

This also means we need to know and be aware of what not to pay attention to while we are focused on a task. This is a balancing act that we learn mostly from practice. I know that it sounds odd to point out that we need to know what not to pay attention to. When you are in the moment that requires rapt attention, distractions to our focus and how we manage distractions become important. We have to mentally override a lot of things that come to mind or call for our attention until we finish a process. Sharp tooling is not artificially intelligent. It is not aware of human proximity. We humans own the entire safety process. Awareness is your responsibility, always. I am saying we have to keep our attention in the game until the procedure is complete. Inattention is unforgiving.

Normally after we leave the shop we think we are safe. It’s true, Most usually we probably are, but will someone else who is not as familiar with the potential hazards be? There are still things like shop cleanliness, trip hazards, making sharp tooling safe by putting it away, unplugging it, making sure rags used for finishing are outside the shop away from the house in a bucket of water.

The same focus that you put into doing your best work is the same focus you need to put into keeping yourself safe. Safety is not one thing, but many things in ensemble. It is knowing what to do and how to do it to keep one’s self from harm. Keeping as much of all this in mind as we can, all at once as we work is Mindfulness.

If we practice using safe procedures routinely, and become accustomed to our awareness as we use them, they become good working habits. Finally, we must promise ourselves to always follow our thought out safe practices.

When moments arise that our mind or self talk says to us, “Oh, I can just hold this in my hand and pare a quick slice off”, or “Gosh, I don’t want to put the sled on the table saw for that little cut”, or “I know this piece is small, but I can route that off if I take a small slice”, please know that these are prime examples of wrong headed thinking and are persuasive. These kinds of thoughts intend to override safe practices to save time and bother, but they will never ever protect us from harm.

We should consider for ourselves all the times our minds offered us this alternative reasoning. If we took our minds up on that alternative, and we managed to complete the task without harm to ourselves or damage to the project, then we should also know we took risks, and got lucky. Safe practices are all about the mitigation of risks, and not relying on any luck whatsoever.

My personal hope for you is a long and happy tenure as a woodworker. If you find cause to consider deeply, how to safely proceed with any woodworking process, I’d consider this a good thing. If after considering things, you cannot seem to come up with a way to do things that you feel mitigate the dangers, then don’t proceed. There is no harm or foul in asking for help. If you have questions about how to improve safety in a woodworking process, please feel free to contact me with your concern and perhaps together we can come up with a safer way, even if it means doing something completely differently, or maybe not doing it at all. Remember, one single unsafe moment is all it takes, and that is worth keeping in mind, always.

Happy Woodworking!

But actually, I was going to touch on some thoughts and problem solving on the left side of the blade. Table saw that is. It really is the unaddressed side of the machine.

I am a hand tool user, and advocate. Heck, I even make hand tools, but I am also a blended woodworker. For those unfamiliar with the term, a “Blended Woodworker” is a woodworker who espouses both the finesse of hand tools, and the production of power tools and shop machines.

I make no bones about it, as each of us should follow the woodworking path that makes us feel content. Whether you are a power tool woodworker, a blended, woodworker, a hand tool woodworker, and even perhaps a collector, it’s all woodworking and that is a good thing! Whichever way you are doing it, your doing it right for you. That is all that matters.

Many with table saws are faced with various challenges. Cut quality and safe practices are always ones that weigh heavily on the mind, maybe even the left-brain. Those who have the space and desire, enjoy a large cabinet saw with a 60 inch fence set up, maybe an outfeed table that will accommodate full sheets of plywood. The rest of us may not need a saw that takes that much space, and so we opt for saws with a 30 inch fence system, or maybe even less.

There is nothing inherently wrong, but there are unique challenges here. The left side of the blade is the off cut side, and because of the limited width to the right of the blade, sometime the width of what crosses the table saw must ride on the left, even when it is rather largish.

Rather largish presents an overhang to the saw table. This overhang is a fun little exercise, one that has had me wishing I had a few extra arms at times. You know, there you are, you, and the saw blade.

The Zen moment is where there is nothing but you the saw and the cut in the whole world. The largish overhang is gaining it’s ability to counterbalance itself on the left edge of the saw with each inch you cut, and as friction from the table overcomes the weight of the oafish off cut, the inability to keep the big beasty under control with just one hand, has you wishing one eye could continue to watch the fence as the other eye watches near to the blade so you can direct the left arm to do the right thing in independence.

Good times!

NOT.

I work alone and there is no one to ask for help. Even if I had help, the helper needs to know the drill really well, because the ramifications have a direct line to the saw blade. Unwanted effects can be immediate. Suffice it to say, I think working alone is better for me, so I thought about work-arounds for a long time.

In some cases, depending on the length to width ratios, a circular saw with or without a guide is a good way to break down the lumber to sizes you can better finish on the table saw. In this case I didn’t have this ratio problem where the length P is many times the width, whereas the width would not be enough to properly register to the fence of the table saw and counterbalance the length component of the board.

I also needed more speed, better production, and the table saw has that, so I had to figure the best ways to deal with supporting my overhangs. Roller stands seemed like a viable answer, and turn out to be both in part, a piece of the problem and the solution to that problem, but by themselves, they are not the be all end all at the left side of the saw.

The inherent problem with roller stands at the left, is that depending on the width of the material you are cutting, the overhang will likely have to transit from one roller stand to another as the cut is pushed forwards through the saw, and as this happens, the problem of perfect coplanarity is hard to achieve with multiple roller stands that are set to support in the rolling direction. What you get is slight bumps transmitted back to the blade and too, it is not the best thing for your Zen moment. So stand good, roller bad.

After staring at the table saw for a while with the sheet of plywood up on it, I came upon, wait for it– a temporary-roller stand-modifier-jig. I call it the roller stand ski. Well yeah, and it isn’t originally anyone’s idea I’m sure, and heck it’s 2009, branding everything is in, so I have to name it something.

I use those workforce roller stands from the big box stores. They are priced right, fold, hang out of the way, set up quickly, are bearing rollers, have slight tilt adjustments, and for me, owning four of them has been about right. I have used them at every shop machine. They come in lots of variations, but these seemed just right in the pocket for me, cost/benefit wise.

The ski has to mount above the rollers with the stands turned perpendicular to the direction of the cut. I wanted it to work in such a way that I set the stands about where I want them, and for the ski to simply clamp to the stand. When not needed, It is quickly broken down, and the stands hang back up, the ski leans in the corner…

How I made my ski, was sort of a happenstance that came from salvage. A few years back I had planned to use some birch 1×2 with a 1/4 inch chamfer on one corner and a 1/4 inch rabbet on the other as a molding, but no matter how I approached the milling, it tore out. So I rejected it and used a different wood and these boards leaned against the pile causing me to ponder their future going forward. Can’t throw even the failures away, because they still could redeem themselves, somehow. (Yes I do have a selection of smallish off cuts, and I surprisingly use many, but I toss all my sawdust. Honest! )

So I took a six-foot length of this molding I had made and trimmed the ends to make them smooth. Then I drilled three 1/4 inch holes in each end. The first hole on each end is at seven inches in, because this equals the half width of the roller on the roller stand, and each additional hole moving toward the center of the rail was on six-inch centers. All were drilled 5/8ths on an inch in from the side of the 1×2 that has the rabbet. Then the holes were milled with an 82-degree countersink for use with a 1/4-20 flat head cap screw.

When mounted, the chamfered edge on this rail is at such an angle that just the knife-edge of the chamfer supports the wood and with finish and a wax, it offers very little resistance to what is being slid over it. So in one way, this cast off molding had redeemed itself. But wait, there’s more!

For the bracket, as configured, the Workforce roller stand has a 3/8’s inch difference between the roller and the roller bracket, so I used 1/2 Baltic Birch as a shim. It was close enough width wise, and from the scrap bin. I used the molding for the bracket as well, so since the width of the molding is 1-1/2 inches, and the place on the roller stand where the bracket is clamped is also, this shim is square.

The shim is then glued and doweled to a length of molding cut to 4-5/8ths inches long. This will be the clamp end. On the other end I glued and doweled a 1-1/2 inch square piece of the molding, but I staggered it off center a little so that the chamfer o n the square block meets the end grain of the 4-5/8ths piece, this way the chamfer sits a little proud. The benefit to this is that the inside square formed by the rabbet on the opposite side rests against the roller, and this offers support. Funny how this failed molding worked out this way…

I then drilled the bracket on centerline, and again 5/8ths of an inch up from the rabbet side, with a #7 drill bit and tapped the bracket with 1/4-20 machine threads. So the brackets just bolt on, from the rail through to the wood bracket and I tighten to when it reaches a friction fit that still allows rotation of the brackets without needing tools.

The finish is Watco Teak Oil and Wax. That is a moisture resistant finish, which is common on boats and great for the shop. The rail clamps onto a pair of roller stands with a pair of Irwin quick grip ratchet clamps, but any clamp that can offer better pressure than a spring clamp would do. It is easy to adjust, just as you would the roller stands normally, but now you are adjusting an entire plane with two points.

The roller stand ski sure has added a lot of safety and production to the left side of the blade for me, and I even found use for some scraps that didn’t work out. Best thing is that it stows in almost no space at all. The next best thing is, that since the roller stands adjust, I can always set it higher to compensate for the thickness of my table saw sled when crosscutting long boards. Hopefully something like this can help others with a similar conundrum. It is nice to have this kind of help when you work alone.

Happy Woodworking!