# what I saw today, and what do you do?



## AaronK (Nov 30, 2008)

biking home from work, two guys around a portable table saw, one in front, one in the back. Looks like they were ripping some long molding or something - basically a long piece about 10' long. maybe one feeding and one catching it.

blade raised all the way up. no guard. no fence.

what is the right response (i drove away quickly)?


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## roman (Sep 28, 2007)

Europeans put blade up as high as it will go and yes people will/might not agree but it lessons the odds of a kickback. As for no guard, or splitter……..in most cases thats foolish

I think you made the right choice


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## Lifesaver2000 (Nov 17, 2009)

That would depend on the situation. If this is a worksite and this is something the guys have done many times, I seriously doubt they would be interested in anything you had to say.

If this was a homeowner who borrowed or rented a saw and never used one, they might be a bit more receptive if you told them you are a regular TS user and would like to give them some help in how to use it. Of course, it would be very hard to know in advance what type of group these guys fall in to.

But my own experience in trying to tell someone something about their health or safety is that it is almost always a waste of effort. Unless you catch someone when they are just learning how to do something, I find that they have their own idea of how things work, what is safe and how things are done, and trying to tell them they are wrong just makes them angry.


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## AaronK (Nov 30, 2008)

i can see how if you are using a fence and guard a high blade could decrease chance of kickback (that's what I tend to do myself), but not without them on a 10' long piece of work.


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## AaronK (Nov 30, 2008)

i think these guys were hired guns/goons


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## skywalker01 (May 19, 2009)

That doesn't sound too unsafe to me. It's just a push pull operation, and with the blade raised all the way up you don't have to worry about the work just floating on top of the blade because of the downward pulling motion of the front of the blade. Just don't get really close, and they don't have to due to the 10' lengths. I'd do that for sure. Oh wait… there's no fence….. never mind… That's dumb


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## Manitario (Jul 4, 2010)

I agree with Lifesaver: I would be tempted to stop but ultimately they probably wouldn't be interested in what you had to say anyways. People pay me for medical advice, but they rarely are interested or follow what I have to say.


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## drfixit (Oct 16, 2009)

More than likely they would not have listened to you. The only reason people at my job listen to me when I try to give them safety tips is because I am the company Risk & Safety Director and they have no choice. LOL If they have been doing it unsafely like this for a while, the only way they will change, is if one of them gets hurt. (Hopefully they will be lucky and not have an accident though)


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## gfadvm (Jan 13, 2011)

Call 911. They're gonna need them.


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## rance (Sep 30, 2009)

Only problem I see is no rip fence. I do small work and guards are more in the way and cause more problems than they solve. Life is about tradeoffs.

Wanna buy a blade guard? Cheap, never used. Not even by an old lady.


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## Grandpa (Jan 28, 2011)

a lawyer would have stopped and been ready to represent…..I shouldn't say that because I am sure we have some decent lawyers on here….somewhere.


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## gfadvm (Jan 13, 2011)

"decent lawyers"? That's an oxymoron. Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. No offense to the legal eagles.


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## Lifesaver2000 (Nov 17, 2009)

gfadvm: don't call us, trust me, they wouldn't listen to us either.


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## canadianchips (Mar 12, 2010)

While YOU were biking: 
Were you wearing your helmet ?
Did your bike have a bell or horn ?
Did your bike have a headlight ?
Were you riding on the street or the sidewalk ?
Did your bike have the proper reflective markers ?
(In this stupid country you get fines IF you were not following the above regulations.)People are getting tickets after being HIT by motorist because of the above.
SADDLEY the guys cutting on the saw can do what they want .


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## canadianchips (Mar 12, 2010)

As far as "HEALTH and SAFETY" 
STICK IT !
I got my fingers slapped today at work. My pallet load was too high, you can only stack it 6ft. My 3 barbeque boxes measured 74"The WAREHOUSE is too small as it is, now we need to stack more skids that are 1/2 full.
Our health and saftey committee seems to be the LAZIEST, ignorant people we have in the whole chain of stores. 
I am like Rance. I have blade guards for SALE ! (I will not sell them to just anyone, I have to FIND them first !)


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## Dark_Lightning (Nov 20, 2009)

Not enough info. What you think you saw from the street may be different from the reality. Best advice from me is "Let the man who assumes the risk be educated to the risk". Which means that those guys should have been trained for what they were doing. By the employer.


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## Martyroc (Feb 1, 2012)

Well like some of the others here, I don not have my blade guard on, I have no idea where it is forthe last 15+ years, ( shame on me), however I always use the fence and I have hold downs plus a feather board on the side so I minimize the risk somewhat. I position the blade no more than the bottom of the highest tooth with the top of the board, supposedly keeps the noise level down, plus less blade exposed to me. I cut a lot of dadoes and after a few years of taking the guard off and putting it back several times during a project I got fed up.

The guys you saw probably do that every day of the week so it's just a matter if time for an accident to happen, we all do things that someone might consider a liitle more riskier than others, but no fence and just eye balling the line with what would have to be 4" of exposed blade that's even to crazy for me. I would definatley want to be the guy on the out feed side.


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## JGM0658 (Aug 16, 2011)

I would stand next to the guys so I could be part of the law suit against the saw builder….


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## grumpy749 (Nov 22, 2011)

run and hide.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

Some pros on jobsites rip tapers on the table saw with no fence. I think
it's stupid but I met a guy with a couple of missing fingers who
thought nothing of it.


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## wvumike1 (Mar 12, 2010)

If they were Notre Dame or Pitt fans I wouldn't say a word…...


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## renners (Apr 9, 2010)

You could have approached the two gentlemen and highlighted your concerns about safety but they most likely would have ignored you/told you to f&ck off.
You can be sure that wasn't the first time they played that game of table saw Russian roulette, and it won't be the last.
One thing to bear in mind is there's no helping some people.


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## TexasJim (Jul 16, 2009)

There could be a long debate about guards and how high to raise the blade and no one would be likely to change their mind. But I think everyone (I could be wrong but that's what I think) would agree that free-hand ripping is one of the most dangerous things you can do on a table saw.


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## Finn (May 26, 2010)

....."One thing to bear in mind is there's no helping some people."..... 
You can't fix stupid.


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## gfadvm (Jan 13, 2011)

Ron White said it best: "You can't fix stupid."


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## PRGDesigns (Jan 25, 2012)

I ran into something similar yesterday. I found some 8' 5/4 Western Red Cedar on CL and took my pickup to retrieve it. Found out after I arrived it was in 16' lengths. Would have been nice to know as I would have brought something to haul the 16's. The seller said no problem, he would cut it. They pulled a little Ryobi miter box out of a van and the seller's helper started cutting. Looking at the saw, the helper had his left hand on the 16' lumber and his right hand on the saw handle/switch. In more graphic terms his left hand/arm were in the cut zone of the saw. I corrected him a couple of times telling him I didn't want to see his hand laying on the ground. After the third time, I told him I would whack him in his man parts every time he had his hands wrong and perhaps the pain from that would convince him his hand was worth saving. Somehow that "funny" extreme struck a chord and we completed the cuts w/o him reverting to the incorrect hand positions. They had several hundred more boards to cut that day beyond my load. The helper thanked me afterwards and expressed his concern that no one had ever shown him how to use the saw. He asked me how many years I had been doing this and I told him I had only been working with lumber for 37 years and to date still had all 10 digits and man parts.


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