Healthy obsession

There is no topic that induces more fierce debate in woodworking than health and safety. It will produce the most intense arguing bested only by religion and politics.

I will concede that this post is going to rile a few people but it needs to be said that to fully understand this post you need to realise one thing... safety is not a set of rules, regulations, and products. It is in fact a state of mind.

When New Zealand introduced a government department called Occupational Safety and Health (henceforth known as OSH but now currently known as WorkSafe NZ) I was working as a farmhand. My boss came up to me and the conversation ensued as such:

Boss: "I have something to tell you"

Me: "Ooookay what?"

Boss: "I need to tell you to be careful when walking down a hill because the grass could be slippery and you could slip over and hurt yourself".

Me: "I know that. You don't have to tell me."

Boss: "Yes I do"

Me: "No, I already know that. That's just commonsense."

Boss: "It doesn't matter, legally I have to tell you this"

Me: "So what you're saying is that they created a government department to allow stupid people to continue living?"

Boss: "Pretty much"

Me: "We're all screwed"

This discussion just goes to show how the world has changed. You see before OSH came along it was up to the individual to set what was safe and unsafe. Now the reason OSH came along was because many individuals were making the wrong decisions and getting themselves maimed or killed. So OSH pushed the impetus onto the businesses to ensure the safety of their people. Unfortunately in doing so they took that decision off the individual and so what happened was management introduced a whole bunch of safety measures because they were going to get fined if they didn't but they didn't think about how those changes affected the ability to do the work. This introduced safety problems far worse than stupid things individuals made because it affected more than just one person.

Think of any tablesaw that is on the market today. What do they come with? A blade guard. Now you would think of a blade guard as a good safety product wouldn't you? And if you watch this video from Stumpy Nubs you'll think twice about removing it right?

Well on the one hand you have Stumpy Nubs (and he does do great stuff) then on the other hand you have the likes of Steve Ramsey:

He says that a blade guard isn't that necessary if you have the right safety procedures in place. So who's right?

Personally I agree with Steve. It's not that Stumpy Nubs is wrong it's that reliance on guards is a fool's errand when the person using the saw is a fool.

I'll give you an example of why relying on safety equipment isn't a fail safe.

Here in New Plymouth where I live there was a guy working in an industrial sawmill. One day the chipper he was working at jammed with a log. The chipper had all the guards and safety systems and even had an automated shutoff system. He jumped over the safety guard into the chipper to clear the jam. Unfortunately that auto-shut off had not activated and he jumped in before the proper safety procedures were followed which included manually activating the shut off to make sure. As such when the jam cleared the machine reactivated and he lost an arm and a leg. He frankly got off lightly but it just goes to show safety devices and procedures mean absolutely nothing when the operator is an idiot.

An ex-friend of mine cut off three of his fingers on a bandsaw because he turned up to work stoned. Safety procedures mean nothing if the person is an idiot.

And this is why I say that safety is state of mind rather than a collection of products and procedures. If you work with something knowing full well that you are in danger then your mind tends to be more aware because the brain instinctively wants to preserve itself. As such you become safer because your brain automatically will see the danger, be aware of the danger, and become focused on this danger so that it can ensure it gets through the danger unscathed.

It will know that there is nothing to be done in most cases to stop the danger but mitigating the danger is where the safety lies. I'll give you a personal view of this.

I'm a motorcyclist. I have owned more motorcycles than cars and I feel the safest when I'm on a bike than when I'm in a car. The simple reason for this is simply that when I'm on a bike I'm more aware of what is around me than when I'm in a car. In a car I get complacent because of all the so called safety systems found in a car. But if I drive with the same mindset as on a bike my driving is far better. I see everything because I have to. If I miss something I could end up dead. If I see everything then I can react quicker and get myself out of most situations or if I can't get myself out I can often find a plan to mitigate getting hurt more than I otherwise would.

A good example of this was in 2000 when I had a motorcycle crash. I had misread the situation of the car in front slamming on his brakes. Because it happened at an intersection and I could see no other vehicles I thought he had just missed his intersection and reacted accordingly. Unfortunately that was when I saw the vehicle that had pulled out in front of him and I was now heading straight for him.

In the split second before we hit I had seen every possible scenario and chosen the one that got me away from the car by throwing the bike to the ground and rolling behind the car. I ended up landing wrong but I walked away with nothing more than a broken wrist. The key thing is that because of my mindset I was able to make a series of decisions far quicker than had I been in a car.

The same can be applied to woodworking. A tablesaw has a number of issues with it. Spinning blade, risk of kickback, pieces flicking up at you. If you are aware of the danger and in the right frame of mind then the danger is less than you think because you will already have built up a plan of how you're going to handle things going wrong... you'd just have done it subconsciously that's all.

Now take into consideration SawStop and other safety products. Have you ever seen their marketing? Follow SawStop on Instagram and you'll see a bunch of reposts from people who credit their SawStop from giving them much greater injuries. SawStop is a reactionary product. If your finger hits that blade then it'll stop instantly and you'll get just a small nick or cut.

But what do you think that does to someone's brain when they're using their SawStop? I can tell you that a product like that will make them complacent. You always see the SawStop marketing with someone still sustaining an injury and their comments are always along the lines of "I had a moment of distraction and hit the blade but my SawStop saved me". Great, that's fantastic but if you were paying attention in the first place your SawStop would never have had to be activated. Why did you allow yourself to be distracted rather than concentrate on what you were doing with a very dangerous piece of equipment? Why did you allow your focus to be on something else? What was more important than paying attention to a spinning blade that will tear you to shreds because that's what it's designed to do to wood?

And this is my point. A SawStop is a great piece of kit and if I could afford it and had the room I'd get one simply because it's there IF I need it. But you can achieve far better results if you focus solely on what you're doing, where your hands are, where the wood is, where other people are, where other things are when you're working. If you do that the chances of needing the capabilities of the the SawStop become negligible making the cost of the SawStop a non-neccessity.

This applies to routers, bandsaws, jigsaws, drill presses, in fact to all hand and power tools. Never try to multitask because if you think you're good at it you're wrong because the brain is a single task unit. It works best when concentrating on one task so make that task what you're doing.