Comment by rimunroe
7 months ago
I would love if someone could chime in with actual statistics here, but I've always heard that table saws are the most dangerous common power tool in the US by raw injury count alone. I have a weak assumption that more people have circular saws than have table saws. This seems unsurprising to me, because both track and circular saws are used with the blades faced away from the person. I can't speak to track saws, but I've never had a board launched at me by a circular saw. People also tend to over-extend themselves over tablesaws, and have their hands inches from the blades.
See: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/01/2023-23...
and https://www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/neissquery/Data/Highlights/2022/...
for general data
For table saw vs band saw, NEISS tries to track table saw vs hand saw vs radial arm saw vs band saw vs powered hack saw vs ...
It's hard, obviously, since it depends on effective coding of at point of injury.
As of about a decade ago (i don't have access to later data):
78% of injuries are table saw
9% band saw
8% miter saw
5% radial arm saw
Circular saws and track saws would be in the "other powered saw" category, and accounts for less than 1% of injuries.
blade contact was 86% of the injuries
While this data is a decade old, the data trends have been relatively stable (even the track saw one)
The simple reason that track saws don't show up meaningfully is there aren't enough sold - these aren't sale-normalized numbers, and the number of track saws vs table saws sold appears to be about 100x difference.
The main trend is that radial arm saw decreases and goes to miter saw and table saw.
This happens naturally since there are not a lot of sales of radial arm saws anymore. (But also shows you how dangerous RAS are - despite them not really being sold, they are highly overrepresented in percent injuries)
Thank you! This matches what I’ve heard, and what I’d expect just from the general geometry of things
> I would love if someone could chime in with actual statistics here, but I've always heard that table saws are the most dangerous common power tool in the US by raw injury count alone.
I don't have data, but there are various threats with a table saw.
1. Overconfidence / complacency. Things like reaching across the blade, not using push sticks, etc.
2. Kickback. It happens because you pinch the workpiece between the blade and the fence. Knowing how to properly configure a fench, featherboards, and how to use the kerf and ribbing knife is important.
3. Shop clutter. People tripping and/or slipping around their saw.
SawStop style tech vastly improves most of these scenarios. Kickback, though, turns a workpiece into a very large projectile. Where you stand matters a lot.
To be clear: I was asking for data about relative frequencies of accidents with varying tools, not about risks from table saws.
But yes, those are all risks. Additionally, like most tools a poorly maintained table saw is more dangerous.
The table saw I grew up using was from the 1940s, so was about 50 years old by the time I started using it in the late 90s. Its fence was always around 1-3° out of alignment. Absolutely no safety features whatsoever. The motor was fairly weak too, and the surface was rough, so you needed to use a bit of force while cutting, which obviously increases the risk of slipping into the blade.
I got a SawStop last year for my new house's shop and was pleasantly surprised by how little force I needed to use to guide workpieces along it while cutting.
See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39982822
I tried to give the data you asked for.
(I moved from a sawstop to a sliding table saw so i'm nowhere near the blade in the first place)
I try to stand away from the plane of rotation of the blade.
Yeah, you should never stand in line with it.
Sawstop prevents one specific mode of improper use, and it's not even the most common danger present with table saws: kickback.
No matter how good or experienced you are with a table saw, you will have it launch material like a projectile backwards at some point (kickback.) Don't be standing behind it when it happens - instead, be on the other side of the fence.
If you're on the safe side of the fence, you likely don't have enough arm length to comfortably cut your fingers off anyway. (And why weren't you using a push stick?)
For reference, this is what kickback looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7sRrC2Jpp4
The workpiece goes flying and the guy almost loses a finger.
This guy is standing in the correct place (clearly experienced) but is pushing with the wrong apparatus and technique.
Also, when you drop a circular saw it stops spinning. Table saws won't shut off automatically if you lose your balance or something unexpected happens in your environment.
> Also, when you drop a circular saw it stops spinning.
The blade is still moving very fast, it doesn’t stop spinning. The guard is what makes it safe - though maybe there are other types out there?
Pretty much any circular saw made in the last twenty years has a brake.
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IMO overhead router is way worse than a table saw, but compared to its usage, the table saw wins by far.
I'm actually for this change, though normally I'm not a fan of trying to mandate the use of technology to solve social problems (like vehicles installing distraction sensors). The table saw manufactures are caught in a stalemate legally speaking, where adding a massive safety feature like this can be seen as a tacit admission that previous generations of saws are unsafe. This could lead to a massive (expensive) recall, like what happened with radial saws. This seems like the perfect example of when a government should step in and brake the local maxima to ensure better safety for its citizens.
If all this legislation does is push more people to use low-end track saws on foam, I think that's a huge safety win. In the shop, the only woodworking tool I'm more weary of than a table saw is a jointer. Interestingly both have large spinning blades on the surface of a large flat surface. I wonder if that design in general needs to go by the wayside?