Of course, a giant 12 inch spinning blade on the miter saw has inherent danger, but I made a super bone-headed mistake. Please do not do this.
I had a super close call in the shop yesterday and want to share the story so you don’t make the same mistake. It involves my trusty DeWalt 12″ Miter Saw (+ our product review) which I normally use for cutting long pieces of 2×4″ or 2×6″ lumber. When making these cuts it’s no biggie — I hold down the left side of the piece and make the cut so that the off cut is supported and rests on the saw table after the cut. All is good.
Working with Smaller Pieces
But I’ve been recently making wooden toys, involving small pieces to cut. Well, I now know I need to use different strategies. Let’s take a look:
In the picture above, you can see I’m designing some wheels using a 3/4″ stock of Cherry. I’m using the Hole Dozer to cut out 1″ diameter circles. After cutting through half-way, I flip over the work piece and then cut from the other side to make a clean cut.
Now we have the wheel cut out, I did some sanding and figured the wheel is too thick.
Looking at the thickness of the wheel relative to the thickness of the car body, it doesn’t look right. So the wheel needs to be cut in half. I first tried using the scroll saw, but it kept jumping up and down and was not cutting properly. So I thought, let’s use the miter saw.
How Not To Use the Miter Saw
Hopefully you can see the mistake above. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS! My thinking was that the wheel cylinders would rest perfectly in the holes where they cut from. In this way they would be supported when I attempted to cut them in half. NOT SO!
Making the Dangerous Cut
You can see from the picture above how the whole thing exploded midway through the cut. Wheel shrapnel rocketed around in every direction and small pieces flew everywhere. Fortunately, I had all my protective gear on and I wasn’t injured. But it’s one of those feelings: “I knew this didn’t look totally safe.”
Lessons Learned
Thankfully, I was wearing all the protective gear I should be wearing, especially eye and ear protection, and I didn’t injure myself. But I also re-learned the importance of making sure the work piece is secure and held down when making these types of cuts. Additionally, I think the band saw would have been a better choice in this case. Or better yet, just using a hand saw. Nevertheless, cutting small pieces with power tools does require extra attention to safety.
Also, I’d like to point out this was not the fault of the Dewalt Miter Saw, rather, it was an operator error.
Be safe and let me know in the comments what else I should have learned!