Several years ago my 14 year old son came home early from school, visibly shaken, with blood all over the back of his shirt. One of his woodshop classmates had severed all the fingers, including his thumb, ripping a board on the table saw. My son said that the boy had set the 12" blade much too high (contrary to instruction) for the thickness of the wood. There was no blade guard in place. His thumb slipped off the end of the workpiece while pushing it through the blade and passed through the saw. My son also said that the boy's fingers weren't immediately severed until he had shaken his hand in reaction, the fingers bouncing across the floor. (You can't get much more graphic than that.) Luckily, the fingers were reattached at our local hospital, and the kid regained about 85% of the use of his hand eventually, the thumb taking almost 10 months to "rehabilitate". An insurance adjuster/investigator came to our house to interview my son shortly after the accident in response to a lawsuit that the kid's parents were filing against the school. The school, in turn, filed a suit against the saw manufacturer for not providing a suitable guard for the machine. I do not know the results of the suits so I can't comment on that other than to say that my son never came near a piece of woodworking machinery again.


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