[larrys]

Really great points. I think that when working around power tools it is sometimes forgotten how careful you have to be.

Everyone innately knows certain things like "don't stick fingers in light socket" but other things aren't immediately obvious. Perhaps because you are juxtaposing something like an iphone and maybe are focused on the worse case scenario as being a destroyed iphone (in other words the money issue) instead of the iphone flying off into someones face.

I was watching an episode of "Property Brothers" (a typical renovate a house HGTV type show) and was amazed that they were having the owners participate in demolition without using practically any protective gear (while using crowbars and sledgehammers etc.)

[iancarroll]

> I was watching an episode of "Property Brothers"

I bet this was just for show.

[sliverstorm]

Crowbars & sledgehammers aren't power tools. It seems much more reasonable to use those without significant PPE.

[jacquesm]

Hah.

Wait until you get a nice long steel nail that jumps away on you from the crowbar just as it exits the wood and embeds itself 2" deep in another piece of wood. if you're lucky.

Or when a sledge hits a really hard pebble just off the side of a solid wall and it gets catapulted out.

Sledges, crowbars and pickaxes are really dangerous tools and especially if you should wear goggles at a minimum, and probably a helmet too.

And, no, I'm not from the cradle to the grave coddling department.

[larrys]

Yeah I really don't understand the parent making that comment either. As if it's so much work to have some safety gear on.

From busting apart shipping crates as a kid I also realized that in addition to the goggles and helmet you also need boots that can take stepping on a stray nail as well. Not sneakers, definitely not sneakers.

[sliverstorm]

I absolutely buy they are dangerous, but are they as dangerous as a chainsaw or big angle grinder? I'd take a nail 2" deep in my leg over a chainsaw in my leg any day of the week.

(Personally I'd wear PPE with either type of equipment)

[jacquesm]

How about that nail in your eye?

Really, I can't stress this enough, the kind of energy you can imbue a 4" nail with using a crowbar is something fierce.

Or maybe the crowbar would just fly up and split your head open. 4' of nice steel makes one hell of a spring.

Big angle grinders are actually safer than small ones... until the disks shatter, then you have a real surprise. Circular saws will do fun stuff as well every now and then, they just love it when they get pinched in the cut. So you have to plan how the material will warp before you start cutting otherwise it might cause the dangling part to squeeze shut the cut (when you want the opposite).

Chainsaw in your leg? Not good. Wear ballistic protective covering and you should be fine. The clutch in your saw won't like it one bit but should you ever need it you'll be very happy you spent that money, and a clutch is so much easier to replace than a leg.

With a grinder you want to wear safety classes, no gloves (so you can't get caught). For chainsaws there are as many opinions on safety as there are chainsaw wielders. Even the pros are surprised every now and then, usually not by the saw but by the tree.

The best advice I can give you for saws is don't use one with too little power and keep it sharp at all times (and that goes for all edged tools). Wear a helmet with a screen and ballistic gear (pants, jacket).

If you're super experienced then you can make up your own mind and you'll likely disagree with all of this :)

[girvo]

My dad is a builder, and I've worked for him as a labourer many many times. It really gives you a better perspective on how dangerous all this is...

Anyway, circular saws: dad was cutting some pretty nice wood for a fence. Circular saw hit something in the wood, bounced up, then straight down onto his left hand thumb, severing it entirely.

He then drove to hospital. They reattached it, he was lucky enough to have Australia's best nerve surgeon on call at that hospital that day, and now he's got near 100% movement in it. Very very lucky.

Angler grinders blowing, now that's something that will put the fear of god into you...

[jacquesm]

I agree your dad is very lucky. That's about as good an ending to that story as you could possibly have. One day I was cutting staircase support (all those triangles you have to cut out) from a 2" x 12" board, the same thing happened and the saw just jumped right out of the cut. I slammed it down before it could get out of control and it still managed to cut a really nasty gash into the wood before it finally stopped moving. Incredible how fast that went from everything fine to literally fighting the saw. Nobody got hurt that time so all is well but still it gave me even more respect for rapidly rotating disks of steel.

I had an angle grinder disc blow on me last fall when cutting through a rooftile, that too was quite an interesting experience. It would have been less of a problem if it had shattered completely but of course one segment on one side decided to hang on. If not for eye protection that would have ended in the hospital for sure.

The one thing I've noticed is that if you rarely work with tools you are really at risk. Then as you work more more with powertools you get more experience, you become a bit more confident and more aware of the risks. That's good.

Then when you're working with them for a really long time two things will converge in a bad way: all that experience and confidence will lull you into a false sense of safety an then the law of large numbers catches up with you, very rare occurrences will happen to you because you are doing it so often.

If you're not paying attention right at that moment you could very well end up in hospital or worse.