Glad you're still in one piece, Brad. Thanks for the post. Good to keep us all vigilant.

Pat

Why were you climb cutting when making a mold?

Overhead pin routers are considered one of the most problematic machines for injuries. Never ,never climb cut or back up
unless you have more strength than the horse power, (are you stronger than a horse? ). Second, and most critical, never grasp the item with your fingers or thumb on the same surface as that being cut. There is no way you are going to release the item in time before you are drawn into the cutter when it grabs. Make a jig to hold the item, then you hold the jig.

One of my employees didn't follow these rules and lost all four of his right hand fingers in a millisecond. Lost his occupation. Lost his ability to do the sports he loved, all because he didn't want to waste the time to make a jig. Sad. And I lost a very good person.

Stop and THINK first. First rule of safety.

I'm glad to hear you came out of the incident with no real damage...

I too, as a 25 year veteran of wood working, have my scars of luck...some were very close to permanent damage (knock on wood)...

the real issue, IMHO, is what caused this? I am guessing that you were trying to take off too much material at one time and also didn't have things properly clamped....I very recently had to make about 60 parts for a buffet style bench of about 50 LF...yep, made a template and used a flush cut bit to make all the parts exactly the same...I used my skilsaw and jigsaw to cut very close to the line and then screwed the template to the blank, then clamped it to saw horses, then used the router...I very quickly found that the blanks I had cut to within 1/16" of the line were far easier to pattern than those I was about 1/8" away...

Thank goodness you're all right, Brad! Whew!

I really appreciate you posting this. It seems like it's been a long time since we've heard much about any accidents here. I hope that means there haven't been any, but I fear it means people are, understandably, embarrassed to go public with it. I think we'd help each other avoid accidents if we have the courage to come out and tell these stories. To the extent that we're able to analyze what happened and how it might have been avoided, and discuss those things as well, I think that would really help a lot. If someone has an accident (or near miss) and they're not sure exactly what caused it to happen and what they could do differently to avoid it happening again, others with more experience may be able to shed light on a safer way to do the operation that was being done. Also, if someone is preparing to do an operation with a power tool/machine and they're uncertain as to the safest way to do it, this would be a good place to get input from others before doing it. We might feel stupid for asking a question that we think reveals some ignorance, but we'll feel a whole lot stupider if we don't ask and then get hurt. I really want to encourage these kinds of posts and discussions.