I can barely contain my fury!

Bill Lantry

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Hey, folks,

I'm surprised I haven't broken my keyboard, I'm pounding away at it so hard! I'm not going to say which University I work for in this post, but suffice it to say we have music and drama students. That means they need to build sets. That means tablesaws. That means eager helpful young students who are more accustomed to pianos than to spinning blades.

It had to happen, eventually, and last week it did. Evidently, some old timers had heard about sawstops, but hadn't gotten around to them, or something, who knows, all I know is something bad happened. So now, finally, we're going to get rid of all the old (90's) things and get sawstops, and get a training program in place before anyone new can turn one on. There's much more I could say, but this is a public forum, and I'm so mad we didn't have the sawstops in place *before* something happened, I'm afraid I might be indiscreet.

Grrrrrr....

Thanks,

Bill
 
I understand your fury Bill, that is just wrong, but it is also way it works :bang:

It really, REALLY should NOT be the way it works, but it is.:doh:

Just down the street from us, on the new road in front of my shop, which was widened to 4 lanes, there is a spot that everyone jaywalks, they put up a barrier in the middle of the road to stop the jaywalking, but a bunch of "Citizens" complained to the local power broker and the barrier was removed from just the one spot. The head of the local merchant association asked the local cops about it, the cops said that the big shot made the city change the barrier, and the cop was just waiting for someone to get killed so they could change it back :eek:

Knowing that I make double sure that we NEVER jaywalk.

Sick eh?
 
Actually, as a Former safety Coordinator I think its pretty cool that the company in question planned to purchase Sawstops. I have suggested safety ideas way too many times and had them rejected outright on account of costs not to be impressed by that fact.

Myself I think the system fell down because there was not enough planning on part of the entire group that decided Sawstop's should be purchased. I think too much faith was put into the mantra "things will be safe once we get the Sawstops."

Well what happened to what us safety professionals call "Stop Gap Measures"...or procedures, policies and training put into place BEFORE the Sawstops arrived? Since an incident did occur,what should occur now is not finger point and blame allocation, but a formal meeting, and a true Round Robin approach made to implement some stop gap measures NOW!! A round robin meeting is where the leader of the group goes around and asks everyone there if they have any input. You can't force people to talk, but by giving them the chance, many who have ideas and wish to stay mum, will say something.

Some ideas for Stop Gap Measures now may include:

  • Tablesaw training for those that use the current saws
  • Limiting the people to trained or experienced tablesaw users that use the saws until the Sawstops come in
  • Assign someone to investigate why the Sawstops are slow at arriving
  • Do a safety check of the facility and find out if other machine scould use some help in safety areas (guards, training, repositioned tools, etc)

I could go on and on, but I don't know the exact specifics of the incident. The point here is to take your anger Bill and try to do something positive with it. You obviously enjoy what you do and want everyone to be safe.Well right now you have the attention of the CFO and CEO and Board of Directors...don't waste that chance to do something positive by pointing fingers and assigning blame. MAKE SOMETHING GOOD COME OUT OF THE INCIDENT!!
 
Actually, as a Former safety Coordinator I think its pretty cool that the company in question planned to purchase Sawstops. I have suggested safety ideas way too many times and had them rejected outright on account of costs not to be impressed by that fact.

Myself I think the system fell down because there was not enough planning on part of the entire group that decided Sawstop's should be purchased. I think too much faith was put into the mantra "things will be safe once we get the Sawstops."

Well what happened to what us safety professionals call "Stop Gap Measures"...or procedures, policies and training put into place BEFORE the Sawstops arrived? Since an incident did occur,what should occur now is not finger point and blame allocation, but a formal meeting, and a true Round Robin approach made to implement some stop gap measures NOW!! A round robin meeting is where the leader of the group goes around and asks everyone there if they have any input. You can't force people to talk, but by giving them the chance, many who have ideas and wish to stay mum, will say something.

Some ideas for Stop Gap Measures now may include:

  • Tablesaw training for those that use the current saws
  • Limiting the people to trained or experienced tablesaw users that use the saws until the Sawstops come in
  • Assign someone to investigate why the Sawstops are slow at arriving
  • Do a safety check of the facility and find out if other machine scould use some help in safety areas (guards, training, repositioned tools, etc)

I could go on and on, but I don't know the exact specifics of the incident. The point here is to take your anger Bill and try to do something positive with it. You obviously enjoy what you do and want everyone to be safe.Well right now you have the attention of the CFO and CEO and Board of Directors...don't waste that chance to do something positive by pointing fingers and assigning blame. MAKE SOMETHING GOOD COME OUT OF THE INCIDENT!!

Oh Travis you are priceless. Former safety coordinator:rofl: You :rofl: with all your mishaps :rofl: Thanks Travis now I have coffee all over my keyboard. :rofl:

I do agree with you that the sawstops are not the total answer and education is. Someone is at fault for not overseeing the training or superviosion of that certain person and they should be the one in front of a review board as it is not the saws fault. Saws cut and it did it's job. I have all my digits still and it was due to a great instructor when i was in school. We can't just rely on the machines to replace our own common sence. "Sometimes ( as my 17 yr old says ) we need to thin the herd. It happens in nature that some people are just not ment to make it. They are the ones that become the lessons to the rest of us." I am lucky to have kids with sound common sence. I hate to sound morbid and not caring about it as it is tragic when anyone gets hurt. The fact is though that it always happens when someone is fooling around and not paying attention or just being silly. These are non forgiving machines and it is wrong to blame them for our stupidity or carelessness. Life is full of lessons and I remember when we witnessed accidents like a J walker being hit by a car my dad telling me that was the reasons that we use the cross walks. That was enough for me to learn. Of course I still J walk but always have that in the back of my mind and pay more attention to making choices of what is right or wrong. I had an apprentice once ( Travis you will appreciate this one) that reached across the top of a running chain saw blade to grab a chunk of wood I was cutting while replacing a guard rail on the train tressle. I just stopped instantly and looked at him and he looked at me with a knowing look and he said in a humbling voice" that was pretty stupid, huh? " Like my son said "Thinning the herd".
 
I understand your anger, Bill. It is typical of bureaucracies to respond to tragedies rather than to try to prevent them, and I believe that your anger derives from that. But I don't think the real answer to the problem is a different, safer machine. While set building has been thought of as part of the job in other than professional performing arts, it is really an art in itself which includes serious industrial arts aspects.

And beyond the use of some quite dangerous tools, there are other dangers involved that need to be addressed. Off the top of my head, one particular danger that seems likely is that of the safety of the props themselves. These are normally temporary set-ups, so one is not concerned with building to last, but with building to get by. While I'm sure that something which needs to support one of the participants, say the balcony for the, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" scene will be built with sturdiness in mind, a city street facade for West Side Story might be just knocked together. Flimsy construction can have a tendency to fall over or down or whatever, and if one of your performing artists happens to be in the line of the fall, then . . .

Maybe this is an opportunity for the College to open a new program of study, or, at the least, maybe a few required courses prior to being allowed to participate in set building.
 
Jerry,

Thanks for your note. You're right about that one. In the very same building I was at a performance of Agamennon. At one point, the lead tenor (who happened to weigh about 250) comes riding slowly across the stage on a chariot. You guessed it, the chariot was under-designed, and collapsed halfway across. Jeff was just plain lucky he fell right, it could have been very bad. And Doorlink herself, in the same theatre, doing Cosi Fan Tutte, refused to mount a balcony that she considered unsafe. She made the director reblock the scene. I'm sure every theatre has similar stories.

Still, the worst thing is this imagined exchange, which I'm sure happens all the time in theatres across the country: "Ever run a tablesaw, kid?" "Sure, lots of times." "It's over there in the corner. Cut four inches off this 2x4."

Arrrrgh! :(

Thanks,

Bill
 
Bill, your fury should not be directed toward not purchasing the SawStop. It should be directed toward those "Learned" individuals who think they know it all and that anyfellow can opperate power equipment safely. These students should be taught by qualified "Teachers" who are trained in safe operation and who are trained at relating safe operation to the students. the SawStop is a device similar to the Airbags and Seatbelts that are there to intervene in "YOUR" mystakes. Practicing good shop safety procedures and following safety procedures conveyed by trained teaching professionals is a far better way to approach such a situation. Unfortunately, Local/state school districts have opten in most states to drop the Industrial Arts or Manual Training, or whatever your locality calls it, because it is "non-productive" in Career development, or it is not instrumental in the development of their intellectual well being. Hog Wash! :eek:

A recient event in my former (I am retired now and they closed my shop), similar in nature, where the dramma teacher was having students build sets in the evening, She could have asked the Industrial Arts department for help or she could have asked the Carpentry Classes in the adjoining Vocational School, but WE were beneath the more intellictual department of much higher education than the lowly WWing dust bunnies. It should be noted that in the more than 40 years of my experiences in the educational field that not one student left my classes or any of the classes within our departsments, with less body parts than they began. Not to say that the Dramma department is careless, they are ignorant of the tools and procedures, and their arrogance to think that they know all and being "Smart" allows them the privilige to do anything w/o help is the Root Problem, not the equipment.

Having the choice, I too would love to have one of those SawStop Features, but foremost is the use of good safety practices which can be provided should the "Powers that be" understand that Industrial Arts and WWing is a viable part of a student's education and had that student been properly instructed on the procedures and processes by a compitent Teacher and not a Music instructor, thing might be different.

That is why I say you direct your fury at the wrong source, and you are looking at a Stop-Gap solution for a deeper imbedded problem. To snatch a quote from NRA, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people". The same holds true in this instance, Tools don't hurt people, People hurt people... Iggnorance and arrogance is what creates these types of problems.

I'm climbing down from my Soap Box, thanks for letting me sound off a bit.
 
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Actually, as a Former safety Coordinator I think its pretty cool to slide in broadside, throughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...WHAT A SNOWMOBILE RIDE THAT WAS!!:eek::thumb::):D:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I though the two parts went together pretty good a Travis....
 
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