scms and safety

[engineerone]

when using the scms as a cross cut saw as scrit often suggests, how safe are your working practices.

at the moment i am using mine on a stand in the workshop, but hoping within a couple of months to re arrange the space, and put it on a cabinet which will be nearer the left wall than the right.

so the question is if you are right handed is it safer to have the longer piece of wood on the right hand side and should you clamp it every time you cut.

we all use sort of unsafe practices, but would like to take even more care, so

paul

[jasonb]

I'm right handed

With both the mitre saw and RAS I tend to hold the saw handle with my right hand so that means I use my left to hold the wood. Generally hold the bit I want and leave the waste to the right, its also easier to see the cut mark this way. If its a very small bit of wood I want then hold the longer bit with the left hand but have the piece I want to the right of the blade. I seldom clamp the work.

There are times when this has to be reversed usually once you start flipping the head over if the machine will only tilt one way.

Having said that 95% of my cross cutting in the workshop is done with the sliding table on the table saw, mitre saw mostly gets used on site.

Jason

[Scrit]

May 14, 2008 16:33:40 GMT engineerone said:

so the question is if you are right handed is it safer to have the longer piece of wood on the right hand side and should you clamp it every time you cut.

Like Jason I'm right handed, but here I'm going to confuse the issue. If I'm cutting a large number of identical pieces (e.g. door stop lats which are quite short) I tend to set-up a stop block to the right of the blade, operate the machine and clear the cut pieces with my right hand and feed and hold the work with my left hand. I, too, rarely use a clamp. For one off pieces I generally have the piece required to the left of the blade in tha same way Jason does, and for the same reason - it's easier to see the cut line. Clear as mud, eh? ;D

Unlike Jason I don't use the table saw as much for crosscutting mainly because it saves having to swap blades all the time or alternatively run a combi blade.

Scrit

[engineerone]

thanks scrit

it is interesting isn't it that so many of us tend to kind of abuse the scms since we conceive of it being quite safe. where as we will be pretty scared of doing the same thing on a table saw

must come from the idea of the scms being seen as a site saw, unlike the table saw.

reason i asked really

paul