Invention protects fingers from table saw.... woah. You will cringe.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=E3mzhvMgrLE&NR=1

[Angry Dragon]

1. Had these table saws at the cabinet shop

where I used to work before getting laid off

[4lbs]

2. About 20 years ago when I was in college, there was this older male who was a hobbyist woodworker.

One day he came in with his left hand all bandaged up.

It seems he was cutting wood with a table saw, his son came in and startled him, and he sliced a huge gash in his hand because of the distraction.

He said he went to the hospital and they sutured his hand up, doing something like 20 stitches.

It would be interesting if such a device like this would have prevented that from happening.

[damntexdem]

4. Suture self.

Hadda be said. ;-)

[dems_rightnow]

3. Amazing stuff

WOW

[mike_c]

5. wow!-- that was very cool....

All through the beginning I was thinking, "yeah but will he put his finger to the test?" Damn. That took conviction.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. There is an ongoing lawsuit against another saw maunufacturer for not having this

Its pretty bogus, but it has some legs unfortunately.


http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/26939/more-details-on-the-carlos-osorio-tablesaw-lawsuit

[NYC_SKP]

7. Many an older woodworker I'm met was missing a digit.

Hadn't thought about it til now but Lou Mathers (rest his soul) and Dick "hell of a deal" McCaig were both missing one finger due to a table saw incident.

:patriot:

[KT2000]

8. relative sliced his hand

on a table saw at work. The boss immediately threw out the table saw and got one that stopped when it hit soft consistency - they test it on hot dogs.
Relative now has limited feeling in hand, a scar through his palm, an index finger that is half artificial bone covered with skin. He has alot of pain. He may just have the index finger removed if it does not improve.

[Speck Tater]

9. My gradfather was a "shingle weaver" in the saw mills of Oregon and later in Michigan

back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. They worked with bare, unguarded circular saw blades and when I knew him back the 1940's he was retired and had three fingers missing on one hand and two missing on the other.

From Wikipedia:

The craft of shingle making demanded a high skill level and considerable manual dexterity.<2> It was this nimble motion of the around the hands of the sawyers around the spinning blade of their saws that provided the origin of the term "weaver" for the maker of shingles — the woodworkers being likened to skilled operators of looms.

Sunset magazine described the job of the shingle weavers for its readers:

"The saw on his left sets the pace. If the singing blade rips 50 rough shingles off the block every minute, the sawyer must reach over to its teeth 50 times in 60 seconds; if the automatic carriage feeds the odorous wood 60 times into the hungry teeth, 60 times he must reach over, turn the shingle, trim its edge on the gleaming saw in front of him, cut the narrow strip containing the knot hole with two quick movements of his right hand, and toss the completed board down the chute to the packers, meanwhile keeping eyes and ears open for the sound that asks him to feed a new block into the untiring teeth. Hour after hour the shingle weaver's hands and arms, plain, unarmored flesh and blood, are staked against the screeching steel that cares not what it severs. Hour after hour the steel sings its crescendo note as it bites into the wood, the sawdust cloud thickens, the wet sponge under the sawyer's nose fills with fine particles.

"If 'cedar asthma,' the shingle weaver's occupational disease, does not get him, the steel will. Sooner or later he reaches over a little too far, the whirling blade tosses drops of deep red into the air, and a finger, a hand, or part of an arm comes sliding down the slick chute."

[MisterP]

10. that demonstration doesn't look like it's testing for FINGERS on the saw... nt