In honor of Woodworker’s Safety Week, it’s time for a heart-to-heart. Let’s talk about the magical safety unicorn that is protecting hand tool users from harm.
First off, yes, a big machine with whirling knives is more dangerous than a hand plane. Table saws are very hungry for fingers. Kickbacks can send you racing off to SpleenMart. “Router flour” can cake your lungs in seconds flat. In comparison, a discussion of the dangers of hand tool woodworking might seem like comparing freeway driving at high speeds with a romp in a bumper car with flames painted on the side. Bear with me.
Conventional wisdom recommends occasionally walking away from the big metal beasts and picking up a hand saw for a pleasant vacation in HappyLand. This is definitely “safer” in comparison; that doesn’t mean that it’s “safe.” With hand tools our guard is lowered, and we get sloppy.
When I saw and plane in my office/not-shop, I leave some amount of a very fine dust on everything within a 5 foot radius. Early on, I noticed that dust was being sucked into my wind tunnel of a computer, and it was constantly spewing small amounts back into the environment of my office. I had inadvertently created a dust collection and dispersal box. I would also find dust in my nose, which means that it’s getting into my lungs as well. These things showed me how much dust I was generating, just using hand tools.
I consider the risk of dust exposure to be greater than the risk of mangling a digit. Surely, cutting yourself (or losing a finger) is a horrible thing. But those sweet-smelling clouds of wood aid in the formation of various cancers, and other lung issues. It’s not only the volume of dust that’s a concern, it’s the size of the particles and the amount of exposure. Fineness determines how deeply into the lungs the particles go. The finest particles can settle into lower portions of your lungs, and it’s much more difficult for your body to get rid of them. ”Woodworker’s Lung” was around long before we learned to harness electricity. Some species of wood are directly associated with cancer, and you don’t want any amount of that in your body.
In a power tool shop you might switch on the dust collection system and wear a mask, because you expect it. For hand tools, many people skip lung protection entirely. While it is sometimes reasonable, and currently fashionable, to overlook something as simple as a dust mask, you might be surprised at how much dust can be generated using a hand saw and a plane.
Rip sawing turns each cut into a fine powder, which can easily be seen drifting around, waiting to lodge itself in your lungs.
Planing can also generate some nasty dust clouds. It is not usually associated with dust because you’re aiming for shavings, but a very thin shaving is not like a stable sheet of paper, it’s more like a tight web. Some of that is going to generate dust. As well, some species of wood (generally softer woods) generate more dust than others since the fibers tend to crush before being cut.
At times I feel like I’m an overzealous planer, almost like I’m channeling the Tasmanian Devil. The instructional and demo videos of plane usage on the web are usually meant to show form and technique, at a snail’s pace. This is not how it goes in real life. To really get somewhere (especially if you’re thicknessing a bunch of stock at once) you have to generate a rhythm, and since you have a lot of ground to cover by hand, you tend to do it rather quickly.
When the dust clears, it’s either on horizontal surfaces, in your lungs, or stuck to the mask that you should have been wearing when you first noticed it floating around.
Until next time, may the safety unicorn smile upon you.
