Just wanted to share one

Okay I understand that I am stupid and am working to correct this issue hence the membership on this board and just noticing this area of the website today. As I have said in the past I work on a Shopsmith – it’s a good tool in some ways and not so good in others. Now on to the safety issue – familiarity. I have been using the Shopsmith for over ten years and rated myself an above average woodworker (Not so much anymore) and recieved a promotion at work were I needed to use a 3 hp delta contractors saw to rip some 2X’s down. I just slid the fence over and started cutting. On my Shopsmith with it’s 1 1/8 hp kickbacks are rare (In fact I can think of none since I have used it) but that’s not because of my wonderful safety practices – using push sticks, not ripping small boards and such, it’s because of the power issues, instead of kicking back you can hear the motor load up and finally stop – it used to pop the breaker but it is on it’s own breaker now so I reach over slam it off and extricate the board. It is normally caused by a twist in the board that I had not noticed. On that delta I just cut and instead of bogging down it picked up the board, turned it into a high speed projectile and hit me in the gut, rolled up hit me in the right chest and up over my head for about fifteen feet clanging around the other tools. Fortunately I wore bruises for a week or so and had a sore stomach, I know how much worse it could have been.
While my experience is an extreme I know we have all down this before, jumping onto a friends saw that is different then our own with out a second thought. We need to be all aware that every tool is different then ours even if it is the exact same brand. We all set our tools up to fit ourselves and there is no garuntee that the person who owns the tool that it is set up correctly. In my case the delta’s fence was set narrower at the back of the blade so I fixed it and set it up correctly with no further incidents and now inspect the boards I cut on the shopsmith much more carefully.

-- RickM