Posted By Chris Packham Richard I would be concerned firstly at the possiblity that hands, whether gloved or not, could be caught in the saw blade! If this is a possibility, then perhaps you should be looking at the safety devices to prevent this. Whether the hands are gloved or not, if caught in a circular saw blade serious damage will occur, so the additional risk from the wearing of gloves would be minimal in my view and probably outweighed by the potential damage to the hands from handling the wood. However, you do not say what condition the wood is in. Is it rough, such that skin damage would be a probability or is it smooth, in which case are gloves really of any benefit? Regards Chris

Posted By Chris Packham Richard Whilst it is normal to consider gloves as a potential hazard when operating rotating machinery, my common sense (??) suggests that with the high speed of rotation of a toothed blade the fact that someone is wearing a glove will make little different to the outcome, since the teeth will "grab" the skin anyway. In fact, a leather gauntlet type glove might actually provide some protection, but I would not want to suggest this as a consideration! Chris

Posted By Chris Jerman As an experienced user of several types of wood saw including table saws, I'm with Chris on the gloves issue. With the speed of the blade, being caught and drawn in is not the mechanism for injury. The blade is designed to cut at high speed. Any chance of being caught usually comes from being nipped between the fence when 'pushing through' or contact directly with the blade when if workpiece grabs and the due to the riving knife being poorly adjusted or missing. Unless your wearing something incredibly tough, normal gloves wouldn't help. However, in my view neither should they hinder. But if we're down to whether we insist on PPE to prevent splinters it's time to give up. Woodworking is one of those areas that is a fascinating subject for discussion in relation to ALARP and ISOFARP. There is no way to fully guard a table saw and have it remain flexible enough for use in the ad Ho way necessary for most joiners. I know, I own one. I have a very healthy respect for it. Now where's my push stick?

Posted By Garry Mcglaid Also consider machinery with automatic feed, spindle moulders, edgebanders etc, as a time served wood machinist i wouldnt dream of wearing gloves on machinery of this type. I suppose its the old adage of risk assessing all the different machinery and materials being used.

Posted By Chris Packham Agree with Merv. Consider also the probabilties (Lion/kitten analogy). Handling the rough wood for pallets gives a much higher probability of splinters and cuts that catching hand in saw blade. So risk of damage to health from wood is higher than risk of damage from saw blade. Since damage will be more severe with saw blade control measures must be more stringent, but lost time from splinters may well be the major problem in practice. Chris