There is a great opening scene in one of the early “Jurassic Park” movies where a big steel container is being moved by some handlers, at night of course, and it is apparent that there is something inside the container that is very big and very strong and very dangerous, a killer dinosaur obviously, that is also full of rage and is really trying to get out. The container is banged this way and that, and it seems to barely contain what is within, but the handlers finally get it under control and you can peek through your fingers again and climb back in your seat. What is interesting is that you never actually get to see the monster inside the container, but you sure believe it from watching and listening to the violent struggle.

Shop table saws are like that container, and especially so if you bought your saw on a budget and your shop floor isn’t flat, like mine. It shrieks in rage, rips things apart with slashing tyrannosaurus-shaped teeth that become invisible when attacking a work piece.  I have worked with a table saw for forty years, and it still scares the Bejezzus out of me every time I use it. Even the old shop vac howls in excitement. Like those angry dinosaur handlers, I have figured out how to get the monster within to do what I want without killing me, building guards and such, but whenever I get done using it for something, I hold up my hands, count my fingers, and smile with relief. Each time working with those invisible flying razor-sharp teeth and a howling vacuum seems like a close call. But it is so darned useful.

Whenever I have taught a beginner how to use a table saw, I start off by asking them if they are a religious person. It is a kind of a trick question, because no matter how they answer I impress on them that they have to start to really believe that there really is a very evil and dangerous spirit that lives inside a table saw, and it is an old-time religion they better learn.  That invisible lurking monster will always be watching you, and try its very best to jump out of hiding faster than the blink of an eye, and maim or kill you before your brain even registers pain. And I look that beginner in the eye and impress on them that I am not kidding, and I repeat it as many times as it takes before I can see they are past thinking I am just being weird, and maybe scary too. Which is just what I want, because it puts them on their guard, and that is just the right place to start from.

A ten-inch table saw blade spins at about 3500 rpm. Which works out to a bit under two miles per minute, or a little over 100 miles per hour. For a fast car, 100 miles per hour may not seem too fast, but when you are working within inches of something that whose invisible slashing teeth are trying to bite you at 100 miles per hour, it is a different situation entirely. You really have to learn to visualize that monster and what it is doing so clearly in your mind’s eye that it literally really doesn’t matter if your eyes are open or closed, because if something bad happens at 100 miles per hour, you won’t see it anyway.

After starting off a beginner with an introduction to an unexpected old-time Shamanistic religious belief, I teach about the “Tunnel of Death”. This is an invisible square tube about a foot on a side that lays on the table saw in the direction the blade is spinning, and no matter what, you must never have any part of your body, or any part of another person’s body, or really any part of anything at all you care about inside that Tunnel of Death downstream from the blade. And best not upstream either, because it will probably interfere with whatever is being fed into the saw, which is one of the great ways to unlock that monster’s cage door.

On the wall next to the table saw in every shop I have ever worked in I put up the enlarged newspaper clipping above – “Plank Stab Near Heart”, which just tells the end of a story. The story really begins when Jose starts using a table saw before he had been taught about or else doesn’t believe in the invisible monster and the Tunnel of Death. One little slip and, quicker than the blink of an eye, that evil thing, saw the opportunity to jump out and throw an eight-foot spear through Jose’s heart. But lucky for Jose, it was out of practice and missed by an inch.

I have been fortunate in never having had a table saw accident in my shop, though there have been the rare close calls. I was taught and so I teach that, when using your hands and fingers on a workpiece near a moving blade, to always apply carefully directed force vectors with each finger, such that if there is a slip of any kind, your fingers will automatically take trajectories away from danger rather than toward it.

I once met a guitarist playing in a band whose left hand, the one he played chords with, had been badly maimed by a saw. All he was left with were his thumb, his first finger, and the first joint of his middle finger.  But there he was, rocking out. I went up and asked him how he did it, and he said he tuned his guitar to open-C Minor. Open C is an open tuning with all the strings playing part of a C chord, with the chord’s major 3^rd being the hi-E string playing its regular E. What this guy did was to de-tune that high E string by one semitone to a minor 3^rd E-flat, so strumming the strings would play a C-minor chord.  With his one good finger he could play any minor chord by playing a bar chord up and down the neck with his one good finger. But he could also play all the major chords too, because the little stump of his next finger was just long enough to be able to push down the high E string at the first fret above wherever he was playing a bar chord, which would turn it from a minor into a major chord. And so he was back in business, the best guitar player I ever met.