I've known for years that when the little voice in my head warns me that I'm in an unsafe situation I need to take action. Some times that means using a tool differently or building a jig to make the task safer.
I was injured recently (not in my wood shop) and I think the story might be useful to someone so here it is. I was removing a tree in my front yard because it dropped balls of sap on my cars and driveway. I got it down to the stump and was digging and cutting roots to remove the stump. My neighbor from a few houses down said he removes a lot of trees and offered to come help me dig out the stump. I could tell right away that this guy was trying way too hard to show how fast and hard he could work. My little voice was screaming at me to either go in the house and let him do it alone or just thank him and say I would do it alone. I was not comfortable having a volunteer work in my yard while I sat in the house, and I did not want to be rude and tell him to go home. I increased my distance from him to around 7 feet, but it wasn't enough. He was swinging my axe trying to remove a root and lost his grip on the axe handle. The axe flew out of his hands and the head of it hit me in the face. The dull end hit and broke my nose into three pieces. The hospital staff rushed me into a CT scan which showed, contrary to their expectations, that I did not have a skull fracture. I was wearing heavy safety glasses that are likely the reason I did not lose an eye. This was three weeks ago. The bone and flesh are not yet healed to the point that I can return to my woodshop. I missed a lot of days at work and I haven't received the big medical bill yet. My point is that you should not let your desire to be polite to someone override the little voice that tells you how to avoid injury. If someone around you is doing something dangerous, it is better to be thought rude than allow someone to put you in danger. I have listened to the little voice for years as a guide to what I should not do. Now I know that I have to make it clear to people around me what the voice warns they should not do. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
