Now I do occasionally do things that many consider dangerous. Things like my working with a batch of horses milling around me, motorcycle riding, roof work, tree work, talking back to my wife... You know dangerous stuff.
Still I do all of those things very carefully.One of the less dangerous things I like to do is watch how-to shows, home remodeling shows and other things of that nature on TV.
Just this week I saw on 3 different shows, people using a table saw in an absolutely silly level of un-necessary dangerous practices. Not just inherently dangerous but working with the kind of casual sloppiness that exemplifies the phrase "Familiarity breeds contempt". In each of these three cases these folks were feeding multiple pieces of wood through the saw with their right hand between the blade and the fence and and their left hand holding onto the piece of wood on the left side of the blade. In one case the piece to the left of the blade was only about an inch and a half wide and in one shot his index finger and thumb on that hand were only about a half inch from the blade. No splitter, riving knife or guard in sight. These were the kind of boring repetitive cuts that breeds loose unthinking grab, shove and toss motions over and over.
In another show a unidentified guy working in the background was cutting a bunch of pieces just a few inches wide between the blade and the fence and not using any kind of push stick. He was not even using the straddle the fence hand position, just shoving piece after piece through the saw with his knuckles barely clearing the blade which was sticking up much more than needed. He was obviously far more aware of the camera than he was the saw...
BTW, the small bench saw was sitting on the ground and he was on his knees. I see a lot of that on job sites. Is there some huge global shortage of benches or saw-horses? .
