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

Early in using power tools I was running the company table saw. No safety devises at all on it and I didn’t even know what they were. The saw had a cast iron top, a blade, and a fence. I was pushing a small piece of oak thru with just my hands, I moved to the left side of the table to catch the wood as it passed the blade. Of course the blade caught it and it went flying backwards. The result was a bruised thumb and ego. It could have been way worse. The wood propelled through the shop wall and went into the next room landing on top of an office workers desk. Luckily no one was in the room at the time. It could have easily gone right through me as the wall was cinder block construction with Gyprock on both sides. I unplugged the saw and cut the wires on it so no one could use it ever again and went directly to the hardware store to buy a saw that had all the safety devises on it and learned what a push stick was. I spent 3 hours there while they went over safety procedures and when I got the instructions I read them a couple dozen times before I used a table saw again. I had been using that old saw for about 6 months with no idea what I was doing, just damm lucky.