Your hand has 27 bones, 27 joints, 34 muscles, and and more than 100 ligaments and tendons. It is an astonishing piece of engineering, down to its fingernails: they comprise planes of resistance that give you a fantastically accurate sense of touch, capable of registering the smoothness of this page and, probably, the difference between its printed and unprinted surface.
In this installment of Skills 101, we’re looking at the parts and use of the tablesaw, an essential of good craftsmanship. It’s also a monster. Each year, emergency rooms in the United States treat about 50,000 serious hand injuries from this tool. Ten percent of these involve amputation of fingers or thumbs. It’s likely that your local emergency room will deal with two tablesaw incidents this week. Respect the tablesaw. Safety is your primary task.
The tablesaw is a deceptively simple device, a powerful circular saw set solidly in a stable, geometrically precise structure to create predictable accuracy. Its blade can be adjusted for height and for vertical angles, but its primary virtue is straight, clean rip cuts determined by the set of the fence at a given distance from the blade. The miter gauge riding in one of two grooves machined into the saw table’s surface is a carrier for crosscuts; it functions well for short stock, but not very small stock. Other crosscutting tools, particularly shop-made wooden sleds that ride in the miter gauge grooves and allow more secure clamping and carriage of the workpiece, are more precise and safer. Those two miter gauge grooves delineate no-man’s-land. With few exceptions, your hands should never stray between those slots when the saw is in use.
Below the table are two important safety controls: the on–off switch and the electric plug. Adjust nothing on the tablesaw with a live motor; pull the plug and save your hand. The on–off switch should become intimately familiar, usable without glancing away from the table. The most important time to use the on–off switch is when your precision and focus are compromised by fatigue. Hit the off switch, turn out the lights, go home, and rest.