Woodworking Safety #5: Band Saw Safety Video

PS, cudos to my camera operator (tooldad’s apprentice) on the drill video. This one I had a sub. Sorry if it is a little jerky.

Nice demo Jason. Having demonstrated the bandsaw for 34 years as a “shop” teacher, you covered everything I covered.

I do have a couple of suggestions. Another teachers suggested having the students count 3 teeth on the blade when it came to s stop before removing scraps or walking away from the saw.

In the 34 years, I had 3 student bandsaw accidents all for the same basic reason. One occurred when the guide/guard was about 3 in. about the stock . The student was cutting a thin slice off the edge and the slice broke, his hand jumped into the blade, 12 stitches. The other two occurred when students fed their finger into the blade getting a small cut on their finger tips. You covered keeping the fingers out of the line of the blade. I ultimately put a red permanent marker line on the table from the blade to the front of the table. This gave the students a visual guide of where they should not have their fingers. I did this during every demonstration. I periodically redrew it as the line wore off. Never had a problem after that.

Keep up the safety videos. I am an administrator now and am passing the links on to teachers in my district. Good job!

-- Bill --- "We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us" Marshall McLuhan