Making Blind Cuts Safely

Being safe when you're working in the shop is something you just can't mess around with. You. Really wanna make sure you're doing everything you need to do all the time. What I'm gonna talk about here is a series of blind cuts, meaning when you're making the cut, you can't see the cutter. So in this case, a data head in the table saw, we're gonna cut a data in the sheet of plywood while we're cutting, we can't see what's going on here. But we need to have down pressure on this board to make sure it stays on the table saw, this is where the grabber pro comes in. So what I'm looking for is a pad that one this separates me from where the blade is. So worst case scenario, the blade somehow comes through this blind cut. The grabber pro is there instead of my grabber. The other thing we've got here is a lot of surface area, great contact with the board, some other features as well that we're gonna talk about as we go. So when I do this, what I'm looking for is maintaining that pressure, even with a pad like this I'm not gonna have pressure right over the blade. I'm gonna have it just a little bit off to the side. I like how this handle is handle is canted and what that does is it gets my hand in a position where with down pressure, I'm also getting lateral pressure, that's gonna help my material stay against the fence. You can see the grip that we have on that material is really good. Now, while we're still here at the table, so we're gonna go look at some other tools. I wanna show you another cut that this is very handy for when you get into a scenario where you wanna make really, really thin strips using your table saw equipped with a riving knife. The grabber pro is really gonna help you out here. We've got a lot going on. We've got a very thin layer here that's gonna go right up against the fence and stay between the blade and the fence. So great support on the board throughout. We know this has a great grip on it. We've also got a shoulder back here that when I engage on the board, it has a positive engagement with this end grain. This is a disposable component. So if you cut into it over time and it gets really cut up, you can just take it off, put a new one on, it's designed to hang back here and help you move forward way it's all gonna work is board against the fence, grab her against the fence, engage on that end, grain off. We go. Right. So one of the things that's cool about this is that stop is in contact with that strip. So even when the cut is complete, that strip isn't just hanging out between the blade and the fence waiting to get thrown back out. That's a really nice aspect of this. So back to blind cuts, let's head for another tool. Face jointing is probably the mother of all blind cuts. I've got quite a wide board here. I'm about to pass over the jointer. H So for safety, we want a bunch of stuff going on here. I like having two pads to make sure that I have pressure, front, pressure back again. I wanna do this with safety gear, not with my hands. The other thing we get out of this is that I'm again retained, engaged against the back end of the board to make sure that's not gonna slip forward. So when it all comes together, makes that face joining easy to do and even more importantly, safe to do. We've certainly got a prevailing theme here which is cutter below down pressure, above making a raised panel. Another spot where a grabber pro really comes in to give us good solid hold on our work angled in toward the fence. So we have down pressure and lateral pressure. And most importantly, we're giving our hands a great distance away from the data head, the joiner head, the router bit, whatever it is. So when you're doing these cuts, blind cuts, make sure that you're using a good safety device in order to do that and stay in control of your work so that, you know, start with 10 and with 10, it's where we wanna be. Yeah.