Bandsaw Safety

I'd like to talk to you a little bit about bandsaw safety and I wanna begin with of all things, dust collection. Dust collection on most bandsaws is not so great. And bandsaws certainly make a whole lot of fine dust which is the worst kind of all. Of course the simplest way to protect yourself is just to wear a dust mask. But if I put this on and you won't be able to hear anything I'm gonna say, so let me show you what I've done to my bandsaw to improve its dust collection. This is the normal port that comes off a bandsaw, connects to a pretty small diameter hose. It works kind of so-so. So you can see what I've done here is just to tape the darn thing up. And instead I installed a plastic port down here a four inch diameter port larger diameter more dust collection, and hooked that up to a long hose that goes to my central dust collector. And that's about as good as dust collection as you can get but there's still gonna be some dust that comes over the top wheel. And your best protection is a mask. I'm gonna walk you through sawing this leg, and show you some safety tips along the way. First of all, we have to get the guard down to the right height. But before you make any adjustments to the guard please unplug your saw. Anytime you're fooling around the adjustments around the blade, the guides, anything like that have the power for sure off. So what you wanna do with the guard each time is to loosen the handle back here lower the post until it's a quarter inch or so above the workpiece, and then tighten this thing back up. Now we can plug the saw in. You get to work, but before I make any cuts I wanna show you how I hold my fingers near the end of a cut, which is really important. The most hazardous part of cutting something usually is when you near the end because if your fingers are in harm's way, in other words if they're in the path of the cutter even close to it, you're pushing right along. You can suddenly come across a weaker part of the board or anything like that. And suddenly the piece can just move farther forward faster than you ever thought possible. And your fingers, bad things can happen. So I always put my hands out of harm's way by doing this one hand is if it has to be anywhere at all it's gonna be ahead of the blade where any push forward can't do any harm. The other hand is wrapped around the end of the board like this, my fingers that is, and I'm gonna hold my fingers in a particular way. They're gonna grip the corner in a kind of a triangle like this. So I'm gonna put my thumb on the end. That's doing the pushing. Then put my two other fingers right next to my thumb like this forming a rigid triangle. That I can engage the corner of the board with. Now my fingers can't slide accidentally side to side into the path of the cut. They're just locked right here out of harm's way. So let me turn this on. And then I'm going to do all the cuts on this leg. I'm gonna begin with this rip cut right here. And I'm going to guide that with my finger placed right over here like a fence. And if you're careful it's just fine to back right out of a cut. As long as it's not it's a straight cut and it's easy to do. Next I'm gonna make a relief cut. Like that. And now in a curve like this I'll always begin at the top of the curve. Holding my fingers around here like a triangle. The way I've got my hand right here obviously is bad when you get to the end of the cut, but on a bandsaw, it's totally fine to this stop where you are, change your hand position. There's no chance that the workpiece is going to come back at you. So from here to here Stop, put your hand here. On this cut I always begin here on the thin spot and end up at these spots. Something like this you wanna keep your hands on the waste side of the board. Stop the cut. Here's where I'm gonna wrap my fingers right around this corner like this. And when you're done cutting, you have to do this 10 tests, which is, do I have all 10 fingers left? Oh yeah, they're all still here. A band saw is generally a very safe tool to use because unlike a table saw, there's no kickback the blade isn't coming at you all the time. So a workpiece can't be thrown back at you. All the pressure of the blade is going downwards. Not at you, but still things can go wrong. And in your hurry or something like that you can make some bad choices as well. Let me show you one of them. Cutting a piece like this, for instance it has this crazy overhang on it is don't even go there. This is not safe. If you lead in with a cut like this that downward pressure of the blade can lead the whole piece to jerk out of your hand and tip upwards like that. So this would be just think about what your piece is like before you start cutting it. You want everything to be on the table, all the downward pressure at all points of the cut. So sure you could cut this piece right down the middle. If you wanted to, you just got to flip it over so that all support is on the table. And similarly, and this is comes as a surprise unfortunately to lots of folks. Cutting off a large dowel or a dowel of any kind like this just doing a cross cut can lead to the same cantilevered unsupported cut problem that I just showed you with that block of maple. If you start to lead this into the blade The blade can easily grab the piece and rotate it before you know it. Slamming your fingers into the blade or into the table or doing who knows what kind of bad news to yourself. But fortunately with round stock, cross-cutting round stock that is, there is a simple solution. If you make cradle like this on the table saw just by tipping your blade over 45 degrees and nesting your round stock in the cradle like this you can easily make a cross cut, either using a miter gauge for super accurate cut or just doing it freehand. And you can even make a rip cut if you want. And you can cut right through the cradle it's just a temporary device and the larger diameter round stock you use though the larger the cradle has to be. So this one is too small for that but just fine for this large dowel. Here's another variation on the unsupported cut problem. Let's say I'd like to rip this board down the middle and for whatever reason I need to support it on the ends like this. Well, you can see I've got a problem. The blade is there support right when you start to cut, but as you go along, there's really no steady support as you go. And when you get to the end of the cut. Well, once again you've got trouble. So this has worked fine on a short piece. That's supported all on the table but what I need here is a larger table. And fortunately, I've got one of those right behind me. Just place the piece of plywood on here like this, This piece of plywood has a bar on the bottom of it that sits in the miter bar slot. Voila is now have this gigantic table and cutting a piece like this. Plenty of support all the way along the cut. I use a band saw quite a lot for ripping wood that is not particularly well-suited for cutting on the table saw because it's not very flat. My rule on the table saw is that one face of a board has to be flat. It can't be a wibbly wobbly piece of construction lumber like this, cupped, twisted, all that kind of stuff. Ripping that on a table saw, not very safe. Ripping on a bandsaw, no problem, because all the forces down there's no danger of kicking back at you which is the problem on the table saw. So I can cut this much any way I want on the bandsaw and feel perfectly safe doing it. Here are a couple of tips to help you when you're sawing out a piece like this. First of all, you're often gonna end up with a whole bunch of loose pieces on the table as you're cutting. The best thing to do to get them out of your way. 'Cause sometimes you feel like they're just annoying to be there is to push them out of the way with a stick, not your finger, a stick. Especially when you're gonna push them from the front. It's okay to walk around to the far side of the saw. Stop, grab them, pull them out of the way. But if you're gonna push them out of the way just flick them out of the way like that. Another tip I wanna pass on to you is what to do. When a sliver of wood gets stuck between the throat plate and the blade. And that often happens when the throat plate like this one starts to widen up. There's a pretty big gap in there. And triangular tapered shape pieces often do get stuck in there. And when they do, then you can't make any more forward motion cutting anything. So you've got to get that piece of wood out of there. Well, I want you to resist the temptation to pull that piece out with your fingers while the blade is running. I know that sounds like who would the heck would do that? But we're all capable of making some silly mistakes when we're in a hurry. Nope, the right thing to do when a piece gets stuck like that, stop, just stop everything. Hit the stop button on the saw, wait for that blade to stop altogether, not slow down, just stop. Then you can reach in here from the backside is safe and withdraw that piece. And that's pretty much what you have to go through when something gets stuck like that. So the best solution, if you're cutting off little pieces that have a tendency to get stuck like this is to put either a new throat plate in there that has a zero clearance kerf in it, or put a board on top of your saw with just a one narrow little slot in it. The smaller that gap the app is between the blade and the throat plate or this extra board the less chance you'll have of getting something stuck and having to go through all this start and stop business. When you're re-sawing, that is using a fence putting a board on edge and cutting it into thinner pieces. The most hazardous part of the cut is right at the end. You certainly don't want your hand right here nearing the end of the cut. Again, it can travel right into that blade. Bad things can happen. So instead you just need something to push the board all the way through the cut. Either a second board that you can put right here. And by the way, when you're cutting on a band saw like this in order to readjust your hand position or pick up that pusher board, you can just stop everything just push the board along, let it sit right here. It won't be thrown back at you again unlike a table saw it doesn't have a kickback problem. Grab that other board and push it all the way through. On the other hand, you could always use a device like this a push block that has feet on it, these drop right like that. And when you turn it on its side they provide a little push block on the end. And as long as that doesn't go into the path of the blade. Just hold the board like this it's also is a very safe way to hold the board tight against the fence. And then you can go all the way through the cut. I love to use my bandsaw for cutting long uneven boards. Something I wouldn't do on my table saw cause there's always a danger of kickback. But of course with a long board You always run into the problem of how to hold it down when you get to the end of the cut. And for that you need a stand that's at least as tall as your bandsaws table. So now when I rip this board, when I get this far I've got plenty of support out there and I can just cruise right through the rest of the cut without worrying about holding down the weight of the board. Let's talk about blades a little bit. When a bandsaw blade breaks on your saw I know some people about that but don't worry about it. It does happen. What generally goes on is that the weld separates and what will happen is the blade will just stop going around the wheels. It won't come flying back at you or anything like that. Anyway, obviously that's time to change blades but more commonly you'll need to change blades. when you cut curves of different radiuses. When you pull a blade out of a box it's going to be coiled up like this. And I wanna show you how to uncoil it and then how to coil it back again. First thing wear gloves. These teeth on a bandsaw blade can be awfully sharp and do you some damage if you're not careful. Uncoiling it is not pretty but this is the safest way to do it believe it or not. What I'm gonna do is to open it up gradually. And then I'm gonna toss it on the ground in front of me and away from me and just let it open up by itself. The wrong thing to do is to think that you can just hold the blade in your gloved hands and just kind of wait for the thing to kind of uncoil itself in front of you. And it can move in unpredictable ways. So the best thing to do is just to set it on the ground and do it. So here's how that works. I'm gonna start to unwind it like this until you can feel it kind of wanting to open up the rest of the way by itself not too far, and then just throw it like that, in front of you. That should be pretty safe. How do you get it back into that coil? Well, it's pretty darn simple actually, put your foot on the bottom of the blade like this and your two hands palm outwards on either side of the blade like that. And you give one hand a twist like that. The other hand to twists like that. Let's run through that again. Hands outward, palms outwards that is. Grab, grab, rotate, rotate. And the blade will just force go back into that coil all by itself. And you're all set. Then the best thing to do with the blade for storage is to wrap a wire or something around it, to keep it from uncoiling I love my bandsaw and use it quite a lot and hope you have a safe time using yours too. But don't forget bandsaws are used in butcher shops for cutting up meat and you just never wanna be the beef yourself. So take care.