Letter: Where there's Smoke

l'm writing to relay an experience that occurred in my woodshop recently.  I was cutting an open mortise and tenon for an end vise on a maple workbench using my tenoning jig on the tablesaw.  Because the tenoning jig held the workpiece vertically, I had to cut a full two inches into the endgrain of the workpiece.  When I made the first cut, the wood smoked a little, but I wasn't too surprised because I knew this was a very deep cut to make, especially in hard maple.  After the cut, I checked the cheeks of the tenon and they weren't burned - so I set up for the next cut.

But when I made the final check of my setup, much to my dismay, I noticed a red glow inside my tablesaw.  Since I had left my dust-collection system running, I had not noticed the smoke coming from the fire developing in the sawdust below the blade.  A spark, fanned by the dust collector, had now developed into quite a blaze.  I quickly shut the blast gate to the tablesaw and grabbed for the fire extinguisher that I keep near the entrance of my shop.  Luckily, the saw was not damaged and the burning sawdust had not been sucked into the dust-collection system, but if the fire extinguisher had not been close at hand, a minor mishap could have cost me my tablesaw, if not my house.  I had never expected to use that fire extinguisher on a fire ignited by my tablesaw.

Since then, I have changed my work habits to include a cooling off period after I am done working, and I always check my workshop before I go to bed.  I hesitate to think what might have happened if the spark had ignited on the last cut of an evenings' work.

-D. Christianson, Brighton, MI

Reprinted from No. 95 Fine Woodworking, August, 1992


Art Hazard News, Volume 15, No. 3, 1992

This article was originally printed for Art Hazard News, © copyright Center for Safety in the Arts 1992. It appears on CAR courtesy of the Health in the Arts Program, University of Illinois at Chicago, who have curated a collection of these articles from their archive which are still relevant to artists today.