re: Admitting our dangerous (and dumb) mistakes might help others.

I have hurt myself on only one machine in my shop in the last 18 years. Yep, you guessed it, the bandsaw. And not only once, but three times (I’m a slow learner). Twice to the ER and the last time just some skin rubbed off, all finger damage, but luckily nothing permanent. The first two accidents occurred not long after I started woodworking mostly due to ignorance, but the last one was about 1 month ago and mostly caused by stupidity, but to be nice I’ll just call it carelessness. To be more specific, I was resawing some lumber and when I got to the last cut the blade was pretty close to the outside where I was holding the workpiece against the fence. I didn’t feel the need for a push stick (although I normally use one anyway) as my bandsaw usually cuts very straight, but I didn’t know that one of the guides was loose from vibration allowing the blade to wander and come out the side of the workpiece onto my fingers. The result was finishing up 5 Christmas baskets with a lot of pain from my thumb and forefinger for a couple of weeks on my right hand, which is the one I mostly use.

I have to admit that I find this pretty embarrassing as I pride myself on working safe even though I’m not a safety nut and I believe that safety is in the brain and not the equipment, but I hope it will prevent others from making the same dumb mistake. Otherwise, I do nick myself often while working with edge tools, but a lot less after I got a decent workbench.