This 3rd annual Wood Workers Safety Week was organized for the community by the ubiquitous Marc ‘The Wood Whisperer’ Spagnuolo.

What I want to actually show you all today are the dangers of wearing baggy or loose clothing while operating a table saw. I realized that this would be a great subject while filming the next video that will come out later this week.

So, here we have a dummy with a single arm that should be a good representation of a left arm too close to the saw blade while wearing a baggy long-sleeved shirt. Yes I understand that the dummy is mostly positioned in front of the blade, but this could also happen with a right arm too. Just watch…

I’m showing the ‘naked’ dummy so you know how solid the structure is. A human would be constantly moving, while this dummy is solidly constructed and won’t move unless about 100 pounds of force push or pull it.

You might be able to make out that the cuff of the sleeve is already caught in a tooth of the blade. This is for our safety. If I were to pull the sleeve into an already spinning blade, the results would be very unpredictable. Here, we’ll start the blade with the shirt already caught in it.

Make him a little more human with a hat … and a face… And, let’s go.

OK, let’s look at what happened. In two frames of this film, the blade tore the cuff of the sleeve down into the saw. A third frame, and enough of the shirt was grabbed to lift off the zero clearance insert and destroy it. 4 more frames and the saw blade is so caught up with the shirt that it won’t turn anymore. So, that equates to 7 1/100ths of a second to destroy a shirt, a zero clearance insert, and possibly your arm.

Regardless of my initial observations, my zero clearance insert was not the only thing damaged. While removing the shirt from the blade I noticed the shirt shoulder had been ripped by the wooden arm’s sharp rear corners. I’ll show this later.

Let’s do another run with no insert.

This time, with no insert, the shirt was pulled in even further and almost completely around the blade. Let’s look at the aftermath.

A length of shirt about equal to my entire forearm was pulled down to where the dummy’s ‘hand’ was. Meaning, an entire forearm could have been damaged in this kind of an accident. I totally do not advise sawing without a zero clearance insert if this is the case. And, I think I’m making my next one out of hardwood instead of hardboard…

Joey, as my kids named the dummy, doesn’t look too happy here, huh?

Here’s that shot of the shirt ripped off the shoulder. And this was a pretty tough shirt to begin with…

Let’s gear up for a final test.

This time I moved the arm closer to the blade and stapled the shirt to the arm. I originally intended for the wooden arm to fall into the blade for the extra gore factor, so here I’m trying my hardest to get this to happen.

OK, looks like Joey’s ready…

OK, so no wooden arm or hand splinters flying, but still a good example of how fast an accident can ruin your day.

This split in the wood is not from the blade hitting it. The arm was made up of 2 3/8” strips of lyptus screwed together.

Here you can see that my once nice-looking shop shirt is trashed. And so is Joey…

I want to thank my kids for help with this demo and to my baby for napping long enough for us to set up and shoot it.

Stay tuned for my second video later this week.

Guys and Gals of Woodworking,
Today I’m talking directly to you… Actually I’m typing. It would be silly if I were just talking to the computer and expecting this message to get to all of you.

Tommy MacDonald just sent a few of us a link to a survey that WGBH just released for his new show. They are looking for a title and want your opinion. Some of the questions seem redundant to me, but you get to leave comments at the end. So, go ahead and jump right over to the survey and share your thoughts.

The survey is here: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJSFXA5MK

You might recall that last week I criticized my own prejudices about certain styles of woodworking design in a post called A Perspective on Perspectives. I’m happy to add to this (which may yet be an eternal) internal struggle of mine. While relating my distaste for all things Arts & Crafts, Greene & Greene, and Shaker, I asked in that blog post, ‘What is good furniture design?’

Last night I had the great pleasure of talking with Peter Cales of Measure Cut Cut Studio and Share-A-Chair. We recorded a The Sawdust Chronicles show (look for it next week), and in the span of just an hour I have come to respect Peter so much for what he has done, and how he approaches woodworking, that I consider him among one of my greatest inspirations within the woodworking community (among Neil Lamens, Tommy MacDonald, Adam King, Kari Hultman, and a few others).

While speaking with Peter last night, I called into question, again, my disdain for Arts & Crafts furniture. I didn’t bring it up during the discussion, but it was nagging at me in the background (much like my mother used to nag about ‘how could [I] live in such a messy bedroom’).

Peter’s designs are definitely Arts & Crafts influenced. Straight, parallel lines, some exposed joinery, and other subtle hints here and there point to this. But Peter’s personal flair opened me up to take another look at A&C again.

In fact, just now, I’m taking a look at the names above (Neil, Tommy, Adam, Kari, and of course Peter). I’m surprised that I never realized that these 5 individuals lean in almost entirely different design directions. And… I love their work, their passion, their motivators (actually I don’t know much about Kari’s motivators, but I still find her work amazing), and their openness about the craft.

Although I may never intentionally make an A&C style table (or chair as Peter would like to see me make), I plan on being less pessimistic and more open to the style of furniture that I’ve shunned in the past.

I just left the kitchen here at work. For the past several days someone has been leaving one of those free daily newspapers on one of the tables. I don’t read them, generally because they are gossip rags and I could care less who’s sleeping with whom, or who’s overdosing on the latest designer drugs. Nevertheless, I glanced down at the cover as I walked by.

At first glance, I was taken aback to have seen a naked woman on the cover. It shocked me enough that I stopped, backed up and took another look at it. I could have sworn that I had just seen a partially naked woman on that paper. But it wasn’t – not by a long shot.

What I realized was that I was looking at the paper upside down. There was a large man on the cover with his sleeveless arms folded across his chest. Somehow the upside down, naked and muscular forearms, and bony elbows made me think of a nude woman.

Granted, I’m just as prone to thinking of nude women just as much as the next guy, but I don’t normally associate mustachioed, overweight, sunglasses and black t-shirt wearing thug-like bald men with beautiful naked women. In my book/brain, the two are as polar opposites as oil and water.

So my only recourse is to think that my spacial/dimensional perspective on the picture, with only a split second to observe it, was to blame for the misinterpretation of the image.

What does that say for how we approach our craft? About how we regard it? About how we view other woodworkers’ designs before they are built?

I have always had preconceptions about other people’s designs. Especially Arts & Crafts, Shaker-esque, and designs derived from Greene & Greene (as it seems G & G is becoming a very popular sub-culture in Arts & Crafts). These preconceptions haven’t been favorable.

While some of the designs may be appealing to my eye, they generally feel soulless to me. Soulless, because they’ve been over-done in my book. But that’s my perspective. I’ve been known to look at things from a very skewed point of view. Often! So please take my personal preconceptions as just that – my PERSONAL preconceptions.

So this revelation, if you can call it that, calls into question something that I’ve been focusing on lately. ‘What is good design?’ And ‘What does it mean to be a good furniture designer?’

I wonder if my questions are now going to be answered similarly to the well-known and dubious answer to ‘What is Art?’ – ‘Art is what I say it is.’ or ‘Art is what I point at and say This is Art.’

Just last night I started making some changes to my life. No, I didn’t buy a plane ticket to Edge-of-the-rain-forest South America so I could chain myself to a tree in order to stop deforestation. Though I think deforestation is an unnecessary and unfortunate byproduct of uninformed and newly capitalistic societies, I think my energies are well focused elsewhere.

No, the changes I began to make last night were much more simple. For the last 5 months I’ve been growing my hair out for the cold weather. Last night, I had my wife shave it all off (again) for a couple of reasons – it’s getting warmer, and I’ll be biking to the train station for the Spring, Summer, and Fall, so I don’t want my hair to get messed up by a helmet.

I had just returned from the local sports-focused big box store with a shopping bag full of bicycle-related goodies. The change that I made this morning was actually getting on the bike and riding to the train station. I know some people might not see that as much of a difference from my first change (the haircut) but actually DOING instead of planning to do is a major feat.

What I’ve come to realize this morning is that our woodworking endeavors sometimes mirror the desirable and undesirable traits that we exhibit in our lives. Many of us plan to do great things in our shops. We talk to our friends and neighbors, our spouses and our contacts online about the next big project, or the new design we come up with – or even, that new jig that we are going to build that will solve all of our problems in the shop.

But, what are we really doing. Paying lip service to our passion. The jig never gets built. The new design remains either on paper or is fading from your memory. That big project becomes a small spice rack or new shelf for the coat closet.

In contrast look at what those energetic young people are doing outside right now. Go ahead, take a look. Well, I’m assuming that you’ll read this during daylight hours, while people are still up and about. Anyway, what I’m talking about is look at all of those people who enjoy jogging, walking, biking, swimming, orienteering, whatever… They are out there doing it every day. Actually doing it.

It’s Spring in the Northern Hemisphere right now. It won’t be for long. Soon it’ll be Summer. Then Leaves will start to fall and then it’ll be bone chillingly cold again. When it gets that cold, that’s it for me. I spend at least 3 months making excuses for why I’m not in the shop. But right now, I’m getting back in the saddle.

I spent an hour in the shop two nights ago just milling up the lumber for my next iteration of the X-Leg Table. This was supposed to be my Winter project, but it has become my Spring project instead. What got me out to the shop at 8pm on a Tuesday night? Me thinking ‘I can sit on my butt watching TV, or I can DO something. DOING is better than doing nothing.’ So I got out to the shop and jointed and planed 6 boards of Lyptus.

I’d love to show you this Lyptus now, because it is some amazing wood. But, that’ll have to wait for a podcast.