Think Safety: Work Safety

Danger zones surround the cutting blades of all woodworking equipment, where you should never put your hands or anything else. The danger zone covers the rotating bit on routers. On the router table, defining that zone is simple. However, the danger zone becomes elusive with a hand-held router, changing with the router.

Where and how you operate in your business

OSHA, the much-maligned federal agency, has done a lot of work identifying workplace safety dangers. It's good to learn from their results since your workshop is likely to vary only in size, not in the number of potential risks. Examine your woodworking techniques for anything that might compromise your work or safety.

Maintain a clean, well-organized, well-lit, and well-ventilated shop. Remove all obstacles from the floor and stow any tools. Ensure that electrical fixtures and outlets are appropriately protected, that finishing supplies are properly stored, and that rags and leftover materials are correctly disposed of. 

Construction worker lunch box

Keep all of your tools clean, sharp, well-maintained, and adjusted. Before operating any device or equipment:

• Make sure you understand how to use it properly.
• Know the essential risk zones for each instrument.
• Have all safety protections in place.
• Have enough finger-saving devices, such as feather boards and push paddles.
• Push sticks.

Wear the necessary safety glasses, face shields, goggles, earmuffs, dust masks, and chemical respirators, if needed. Wearing loose-fitting clothes, gloves, jewelry, or hanging things (including long hair) that might get caught in revolving equipment components is not a good idea.

Keep your hearing healthy.

Even during brief durations of router usage, utilize hearing protection. This is why: According to research, a 105 dBA noise level causes some hearing loss after just one hour of exposure. When a bit begins to dull, routers often fall from 105 to 110 dBA and grow worse. This amount of loudness may cause irreversible hearing loss.

Use hearing protection with a high noise-reduction rating (NRR) to decrease the router's scream to a safe level—at least 20 NRR to reduce the sound to a more tolerable 90 dBA. The NRR of hearing protection is printed on the box.

Keep Your Breathing Safe

Individual wood particles of varied sizes make up wood dust, a byproduct of woodworking. Tiny particles that float in the air in your store for lengthy periods provide the most significant health risk. Particles smaller than 10 microns may be inhaled and lodge in the lungs. Inhaled dust particles irritate and damage lung tissue, leading to irreversible loss of lung function and breathing capacity (we can't detect particles smaller than 100 microns). Dust may also limit oxygen intake, and chemicals and sensitizers in dust can cause allergies, shortness of breath, numbness, disorientation, and asthma symptoms.