Table Saws Can Be Dangerous!

There are a lot of mistakes you can make running a table saw, and plenty of them are dangerous. The real question isn't whether you're making any of them, it's how many.

The table saw is probably the most useful, most versatile tool in the workshop. For most of us, it's the first big power tool we buy, and we end up using it for just about everything. That's exactly why it deserves respect. The more different types of cuts and setups we throw at it, the more chances we have to do something wrong.

A good table saw is worth the investment in your woodworking, whether it's a career or just a hobby. And "good" doesn't mean you need to spend a thousand or two thousand dollars. The saw I use retails for $499, and I've seen it on sale for $379 more than once this year. Right in that $500 to $600 range, there are plenty of solid saws out there.

They'll do a lot for you, but only if you use them properly, safely, and in a way that doesn't beat up the saw itself.

What follows is a list of the mistakes I've come across most often. I'll be honest, I've made every one of these myself, and some of them I picked up from my dad, which doesn't make them right. The one injury I've ever had on a table saw came from doing something wrong, so I know firsthand what's at stake here.

Improper Push Stick Usage

Almost every table saw sold today comes with a plastic push stick. They vary a bit in shape, but they all work on the same idea: a stick that pushes the board through while keeping your hand away from the blade. That's the concept. It doesn't mean people use it correctly.

I'll say upfront that I'm not a big fan of the plastic ones that come standard. I prefer a wood push block instead, for two reasons. First, it gives me more downward pressure and more positive control over the board.

Second, I've seen plastic push sticks shatter when they contact the blade. A wood push block will still get chewed up by the blade, but it takes longer, which buys you more of a safety margin. I use all-wood push blocks in a couple of different styles, and they all serve the same purpose.

Here's where people go wrong: there's a natural tendency to keep the push stick right up against the fence the whole time you're pushing the board through. Friction ends up working against you, the far end of the board drifts away from the fence, leaving a gap. That's an easy mistake to fall into.

The result is that you're pushing the board through crooked, which means a bad cut at best, and a strong chance of kickback at worst. 

The correct position is close to the blade, about half an inch away, rather than hugging the fence. That's nearer the center of the board, so you get much better control instead of just pushing on one side of it.

Being closer to the blade also helps push the board into the fence, which is especially true with the style of push block that lets you apply sideways pressure toward the fence while pushing forward. 

The only exception is when you're making a genuinely narrow cut, then the push stick has to be near the fence out of necessity. Otherwise, keep it around that half-inch mark from the blade.

So when do you actually need a push stick? Different people give different answers, but a solid guideline is: if your hands are going to come within five inches of the blade, use one. Take a 1x4, if I don't care where along its length I'm cutting, my hands will end up within three and a half inches of the blade. That's too close.

It might feel safe to run the board through holding it by hand at that distance, and it is safe, as long as nothing goes wrong. But what if you catch a knot and the board reacts unexpectedly? What if it kicks back? Suddenly your hand is an inch, maybe half an inch, from the blade.

That's too close for comfort, and there's a real chance of your fingers getting caught. Compare that to ripping a 1x12 in half, your hands stay well away from the blade the whole time, and even if the board kicks, your hand can land flat on the table outside the danger zone.

Unless you're in a situation like that, or you're holding onto a long board well back from the blade, use a push stick or push block.

Never Cut Freehand

The one injury I've had on a table saw was the tip of my thumb, and it came from trying to make a freehand cut. I honestly can't tell you exactly how my thumb ended up in the blade, because I was pulling my hand away from the saw at the time.

Somehow, in that motion, my thumb crossed the blade. It split the bone, and the X-ray looked like a crab's claw. I'm fortunate it wasn't worse, I haven't lost a finger, or even a fingertip, in fifty years of doing this. I broke one bone and have a scar to show for it, and I haven't repeated the mistake since.

The problem with freehand cutting is that a table saw needs the material to stay perfectly straight and square to the blade. The moment it gets cocked even slightly, you pinch the blade, and pinching leads to kickback, which means getting hit in the gut by a piece of flying wood, on top of whatever damage it does on its own.

The cut that got me was a 12-degree angle. I had a board I needed to cut at that angle, didn't know a proper way to do it at the time, and freehanded it instead. I know better now. 

The trouble with freehanding is that keeping even pressure on the board, while fighting friction and everything else working against you, is nearly impossible. Whatever angle or shape you think you need to cut freehand, there's a way to set it up using the fence, the miter gauge, or some kind of jig instead.

Tapered legs, for instance, involve angles like that 12-degree cut or shallower, a tapering jig handles that safely. If you ever find yourself about to freehand a cut, stop and figure out the jig or sled that will do it for you instead. 

Don't Remove the Riving Knife

The riving knife, that piece of metal behind the blade, matters more than people give it credit for. Its job is to keep the two halves of the wood separated as you cut.

If you're ripping a board and the cut gets long enough, external stresses in the wood can cause the two pieces to pull back together. When that happens, it pinches the blade, and that's a setup for kickback.

So why would anyone remove it? Mostly because it gets in the way when cutting dados and grooves. Most manufacturers tell you to set the riving knife so its top sits about 10 millimeters above the level of the saw blade.

Mine sits below it instead, mainly because the blade guard usually mounts to the riving knife, and I rarely use the blade guard. Most of the cuts I make can't be done with it in place. A dado or a groove cut into the bottom of a board is a good example.

But needing to remove the blade guard doesn't mean you need to remove the riving knife too. I keep mine set a couple of millimeters below blade height. That way it stays out of the way for dados and grooves, but it's still there protecting me from the kind of cut where the blade could get pinched and kick back.

Staying Out of the Kickback Zone

Speaking of kickback, you want to stay out of what I call the kickback zone — directly behind the piece of wood you're cutting. If a board kicks back, it comes at you fast, and getting hit in the gut by flying wood can be genuinely painful, sometimes seriously so.

With a thin piece of wood, this is simple. Stand to the side, and if it kicks back, it goes right past you. It gets more complicated with larger pieces, because staying clear of the kickback zone means positioning yourself further over, sometimes on the far side of the fence, which is an awkward angle to work from.

That added difficulty is exactly why bigger cuts are riskier — it's easy to forget you need to stay out of that line of fire. Make it a habit to check where you're standing relative to the board before you start.

Finishing a Cut Without Reaching Around the Blade

This one comes up most with small pieces. You're partway through the cut, everything's going fine, and you reach the end. What do you do with your hands at that point?

Your push-hand can keep going, pushed by a push stick and held safely away from the blade. But your other hand, the one that was supporting the offcut, has to come out of there, because there's no way to safely push that offcut piece through the rest of the way with your hand.

You could use a second push stick for that piece, but that means having two sticks in contact with the board at once, and there's a real risk of pushing the offcut stick into the blade. It's workable, but not great, because it splits your attention between two things at a critical moment.

The better approach: push the piece through, shut the saw off, and remove it. Or, if you've got another cut to make right after, push it through and then use the same push stick to clear the offcut. Trying to manage two push sticks simultaneously just isn't worth the risk.

Never Combine the Fence and the Miter Gauge

Using the fence and the miter gauge together seems logical, I learned to do it from my dad, and it does make sense on paper if you're trying to cut a batch of offcuts to the same size, using the fence as a stop block.

The problem is that as the piece goes through the blade, if it cocks even slightly, it can jam between the blade and the fence, and that's a kickback situation.

The fix is to attach an auxiliary fence, just a block, to your existing fence, positioned back away from the blade. That way, you slide your piece over to set your dimension, make the cut, and once it's done, push the cut piece through with a push stick.

Because the piece is still attached to the miter gauge, you can then pull it back, slide it over, and set up the next cut. At no point does the wood ever get trapped between the miter gauge and the fence, because by the time it reaches the blade, it's already clear of that auxiliary block.

Not Using a Crosscut Sled for Long Boards

Along the same lines, never cut with the short end of a board against the fence and the long end sticking out into the room. It's nearly impossible to keep the board square to the fence that way, and the longer the piece, the worse it gets.

With something like a 3½-foot length of 1x4, you can see it wobbling as you try to push it through square, it just can't be done reliably by hand. If you need to make cuts like that, build yourself a crosscut sled instead.

It's a safe way to handle those cuts, and you can even mount a stop block on the sled to repeat the same cut as many times as you need without issue.

Setting the Blade Too High

Every table saw manufacturer will tell you the blade should sit an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch above the piece you're cutting. Plenty of people ignore that and just leave the blade set high enough to handle anything without adjusting it.

The cut quality doesn't suffer either way, the blade will cut the wood the same regardless of height. But the risk to you changes a lot. If you lose your balance mid-cut and your arm comes down on a blade set an inch high, it's going all the way through muscle and possibly into bone, and it'll happen too fast to react to.

With the blade set at only a quarter inch above the material, you'd still get injured in that same fall, but you're looking at a quarter-inch-deep wound instead of a massive one. Still serious, but nowhere near as bad. This is purely a safety matter, not an efficiency one.

While we're on the subject: when you're done cutting, crank the blade down into the saw table. Even sitting idle, a blade sticking up is a hazard. If you trip while carrying a board and fall onto the saw, that blade can leave a row of bloody dots across your arm even though it's not running.

It takes almost no effort to crank it down, and once it's down, you could fall right on top of the saw and nothing would happen.

Never Reach Toward a Moving Blade

This connects to a lot of what's already been covered. Any time the blade is moving, it's dangerous, and this is actually less of an issue during the cut itself than right after you shut the saw off.

The saw is off, but the blade is still spinning, and a spinning blade can still cause a serious injury until it comes to a complete stop. As long as it's moving, stay away from it.

The thumb injury I mentioned earlier happened after I'd shut the saw off. I was pulling my hands away from the saw, and I genuinely have no idea how my thumb ended up crossing that blade, as far as I know, I was moving away from it the whole time. Somehow, in that motion, it still happened.

Keep Your Off-Hand Positioned Correctly

A lot of us use our off hand, the left hand, typically, as a guide while feeding a board through, pressing it against the fence almost like a featherboard. There's nothing wrong with that. It's common, especially on wider boards, where controlling the piece with two hands is a lot easier than with one.

The mistake happens when you lose track of that hand's position as the cut progresses. Say you start the cut with your off-hand pressed against the board near the front, holding it to the fence. That works fine at first. But if you never move that hand back as the cut proceeds, two problems show up.

First, you end up getting dangerously close to the blade. Second, and more subtly, by staying in that same spot near the end of the cut, you're still pressing the board against the fence, but you're now closing up the kerf, the gap the blade has already cut. That pinches the blade.

If the riving knife is in place, it'll catch that and prevent a real problem. But without it, that's exactly how a kickback situation gets created. The off-hand needs to stay back, ahead of the blade, for the entire length of the cut. Once it can no longer stay in a safe position, take it off the board entirely and let the push hand finish the job alone.

Dealing With Wonky Boards

Cutting a board that isn't perfectly flat is something almost everyone runs into, because almost every board has some degree of wonkiness. Home improvement store lumber gets joked about constantly for this reason, and even lumber from a proper hardwood supplier can have wane, twist, or bow.

So the real question isn't whether your board is wonky, but what you do about it. How you handle it depends on the type of wonkiness. If a board is cupping, run it through the planer first to get two parallel sides. It's not the usual order of operations, but it can make the rest of the process easier.

If the board is warped with a curve in it, the common advice is to put the convex side against the fence. Don't do that. Never put the curved side against the fence, whether it's a slight wave or a pronounced bow. Instead, attach a known straight piece of wood to the board using double-sided tape, letting it hang over the edge by about a quarter inch.

Set your fence against that straight piece, and it becomes your reference edge for cutting. Run the board through to straighten that first edge, then remove the straight piece, flip the board around, and use the newly straightened edge against the fence to straighten the second edge.

Twisted boards are the worst case, and the most dangerous, because it's nearly impossible to run a twisted board through a table saw while keeping it flat against the table. The twist needs to come out first, using a jointer, a planer, or hand planes.

Cutting the board into shorter sections can also help, since straightening a short piece is much easier than straightening a full 6- or 8-foot board. Whatever the wonkiness, it's worth dealing with before cutting, because it's a direct path to binding and kickback.

Avoiding Levering

Levering mostly comes up with long boards. Say you've got an 8-foot board and you're trying to rip it down. If you're standing several feet back from the saw, there's a tendency to feed the board in at a slight upward angle rather than flat, that's levering, and it acts like a lever arm against the blade.

The fix is twofold: move in closer to the saw table, and if you suspect you're dealing with a long board that might lever, start by resting the leading edge on the table and lowering the rest of the board down until it's flat before pushing it forward. You'll be able to feel when it's sitting flat. Doing it this way keeps the board flat throughout the cut.

The danger with levering is that when the blade meets a leading edge that isn't sitting flat, it may not cut cleanly, it can grab the board and try to jerk it out of your hands. How likely that is depends on feed speed, blade type, and tooth count, among other factors, but the result is the same: you lose some degree of control over the board.

The opposite problem shows up at the end of a long cut, once the board is coming out the far side of the saw. With 8 feet of board hanging off the outfeed end, that weight needs support, either a second person to catch it, or an outfeed table.

I use my workbench for this, since it sits just a touch lower than my saw table, and I adjust the saw's angle slightly so the cut pieces land flat on it. Long boards need support on both ends of the cut: leading edge support to avoid levering going in, and outfeed support coming out.

This connects to another risk with long boards and sheet goods: having a second person pull the material through from the far end, or walking around to the other side of the saw yourself partway through a cut. Either way means your arm crosses the blade at some point, which is dangerous, and it also means you no longer have positive control of the board.

If someone's helping you, their job is to support the material, not to pull it or help control it, the motive power to move the board through the saw always needs to come from the front side, because that's where the real control is. If a helper tries to actively guide the board against the fence while you're also trying to control it, you'll end up fghting each other.

Avoid Plunge Cutting

Some people try plunge cutting on a table saw, starting with the board held up off the blade, then lowering it down onto the spinning blade to create a slot. There are saws designed for plunge cutting.

A table saw isn't one of them. If you need to make a plunge cut, a handheld circular saw is probably your best option, a jigsaw can work reasonably well, and a plunge router will also do it. But the table saw shouldn't be used this way.

Plunge cutting on a table saw is a strong setup for kickback, because the blade catches the board without it being properly supported or controlled. On top of that, you can't see where your cut mark actually starts, since marking the board in that spot means the blade itself is hiding the mark.

Most people end up starting the cut too far back and then pulling the board backward to correct it, and that's asking the blade to turn the board into a projectile. Avoid plunge cutting on a table saw entirely.

Ripping Narrow Strips Safely

I do a lot of projects that call for narrow strips, an eighth or a quarter inch thick. Often these come from offcuts, but sometimes I need enough of them that I have to rip them intentionally on the saw.

The natural tendency is to set the gap between the blade and the fence to that thin measurement, then run the board through and cut on the fence side. That approach has two problems. First, with a standard throat plate, that thin strip can drop down into the slot and get chewed up. Second, it's another setup for kickback.

The proper method is to set things up so the narrow strip is cut on the outside, treating what looks like the waste cut as the actual piece you want. You can set your saw up for this just as easily as the other way.

There are gauges made for this, and one style mounts into the miter track, letting you set a fixed distance so you can make repeated cuts, cut, clear the piece, shift the fence over incrementally, and repeat for as many strips as you need. It's a much safer way to produce that kind of stock.

Two Things That Matter for Saw Operation

These last two points aren't about safety directly, but they matter a lot for how well your saw performs.

Don't run a dull blade. Most saws today come with carbide-tipped blades, and if you replace one, you'll likely replace it with another carbide blade. They hold up well, but they don't last forever.

How fast a blade dulls depends on several factors: blade quality, whether you're ripping or crosscutting (crosscuts are harder on a blade since you're cutting across the grain), the density of the wood, and how fast you're feeding the board through. Eventually every blade will dull and need replacing.

The clearest sign is that the board becomes harder to push through. To check the blade directly, unplug the saw first, always unplug it before touching the blade. Once it's unplugged, you can feel the teeth to check sharpness, or shine a flashlight on the cutting edge.

If you see a shine or a thin white or silver line reflecting off that edge, that's a flat spot, and a flat spot means the edge is dull. A sharp edge shouldn't reflect light that way. I keep three or four blades in rotation. As they dull, I pull them and send a batch off to get sharpened once I've got two or three ready.

Carbide blades can typically be sharpened two to four times, depending on how much carbide is on the blade to begin with, thinner-kerf blades might only get one or two sharpenings, while standard thickness blades can usually handle three or four before there's not enough carbide left to sharpen properly.

After that, it's time to retire the blade. Keeping a rotation like this means you always have a sharp blade in the saw.

Never trust the gauges on your saw. There are three you'll typically rely on: the scale for setting the fence, the protractor gauge on the miter gauge, and the protractor gauge for blade angle. None of these are built to be highly precise, and even if you've calibrated them as best you can, they're still not reliable enough for exacting work.

Set a miter gauge to what you think is 45 degrees for a picture frame, and you're likely to end up slightly off, maybe 44.5 degrees, which is enough to leave a visible gap at the corners.

For angle-dependent cuts, use an angle finder or a digital protractor to set the miter gauge or blade angle instead of relying on the built-in scale. For the fence, even after setting it as accurately as possible, measuring directly from the inside tooth of the blade to the fence with a metal ruler gives a more accurate result than reading the printed scale.

For rough cuts, this level of precision doesn't matter, being off by an eighth of an inch on a random 3-inch or 6-inch piece is fine. But for anything that requires precision, like joinery or furniture work, always verify your setup independently rather than trusting the saw's gauges.

Final Thoughts

None of this is complicated, but it adds up. Most of these mistakes feel harmless until the moment something goes wrong, and by then it's too late to fix. A little extra attention to hand position, blade height, board condition, and setup goes a long way toward keeping all ten fingers where they belong.