Dave Campbell

Jury sides with Ryobi in tablesaw liability lawsuit

Written on August 14, 2012 at 10:46 am , by Dave Campbell

About 2 years after a Massachusetts jury awarded Carlos Osorio $1.5 million when he mangled his hand in an accident with a Ryobi tablesaw (a verdict that is still under appeal), an Illinois jury has found in favor of Ryobi and its parent company, One World Technologies, in a similar product-liability lawsuit.

In early May 2007, the suit’s plaintiff, Brandon Stollings, was using a Ryobi model BTS20R-1 table saw to cut a piece of laminate material when the piece “kicked back” at him, causing his left hand to make contact with the saw blade. Two fingers were severed and three were injured. Stollings filed suit, alleging three “design defects:” that the anti-kickback pawls were permanently attached to the blade splitter, so removing the splitter meant removing the pawls; that the blade guard provided with the saw clouds with sawdust, necessitating its removal to see the cut; and the saw lacks flesh-detecting technology that causes the blade to stop and/or drop away when skin touches the moving blade. Stollings admitted at his deposition that he had not read the warnings in the saw’s manual and that he understood the risks of removing the blade guard and cutting freehand.

We’re told the jury announced its verdict on Monday, August 6, but at this time, no case summary is available to give any insight into the jury’s verdict. We’ll pass that along as soon as it’s available.

 

 

25 Interesting Facts about Deputy Editor Dave Campbell

Written on August 6, 2009 at 3:25 pm , by Dave Campbell

In honor of WOOD Magazine’s 25th Anniversary, we posted 25 Interesting Facts about each of the folks who put out your favorite woodworking magazine. Here’s my list:

1. My earliest memory is of helping “John the Carpenter” put down new subfloor in my folks’ house. I was a preschooler with a hammer—what could go wrong there? Read more

Wood Movement Experiment: The Results

Written on June 29, 2009 at 1:24 pm , by Dave Campbell

You may recall a few weeks ago when Tom Iovino initiated a grand experiment about seasonal wood movement. He cut identical boards of several different species in his tropical Florida shop, and sent one set to me in Iowa and another set to The Wood Whisperer in arid Arizona.

We measured the boards when they arrived and Read more

Wood Movement Experiment, Part Deux

Written on June 10, 2009 at 1:33 pm , by Dave Campbell

The boards arrived a couple of days after my last post and I immediately measured them with a digital calipers. I recorded the thickness at each of the four corners of each board. I also charted the width of each board at four locations: across the top face and bottom face at both ends. Finally, I noted the length of each board at each edge on both the front and back face. Read more

The Great Wood Movement Experiment

Written on May 27, 2009 at 1:40 pm , by Dave Campbell

Couple of weeks ago, I was talking a little shop with Tom Iovino of Tom’s Workbench (and an active blogger here at woodmagazine.com) when the subject of seasonal wood movement came up. It’s kind of a key concept because project parts change size as they absorb and release moisture as the seasons change. Fit a solid-wood part perfectly into a dado in the winter when the shop air is relatively dry, and come summer, when the humidity kicks up a notch, that part may swell enough to blow the joint apart. It usually happens so slowly, though, it’s hard for some folks to grasp. Read more

Head. Hands. Heart.

Written on April 16, 2009 at 1:47 pm , by Dave Campbell

I hear woodworkers all the time who watch Norm on TV and say, “Sure, I could do all that stuff, too, if I had a shop like Norm’s.” But the more really talented woodworkers I meet, the more I’m reminded that woodworking is in the head and hands, not in the tools.

The point was driven home again when I drove home for Easter last weekend. Read more

Proper Motivation

Written on January 5, 2009 at 2:25 pm , by Dave Campbell

I’ve mentioned in the past how I have “completion issues” sometimes when it comes to projects. I’ll get 90% of the job done, then lose interest.

We’ve been in our “new” house for almost 11 years now. The people who built the house didn’t put any cable TV or phone jacks in the upstairs bedrooms, which I thought was going to be a major nuisance when our kids got computers in their rooms. Of course, that was in the old dial-up modem days, so it turned out to be a non-issue Read more

Merry Christmas!

Written on December 22, 2008 at 2:30 pm , by Dave Campbell

This is my last day in the office before Christmas, so I just wanted to wish you safe travels and good times with family and friends.

In my family, we usually do a sort of “random” gift exchange, where we never know who will end up with the gift we give. Could go to my 72 year-young mother, or my 22-year-old pro-football-playin’ nephew. Years ago, we decided as a family to stop spending money on gifts for this exchange and instead give gently-used “white elephant” type gifts. I persisted in making a small wooden gift each year.

Until this year. Two reasons: First, my competitive older brother complained that my gifts were always the ones that got “stolen” most during the exchange, and I think he was a bit jealous. But mainly, it’s because I had a couple of other projects on the bench I needed to wrap up, so I just didn’t have time to make anything this year.

The first project is a wall desk for my parents–a “commissioned” piece that my Dad designed, but wanted me to build. The other was a pair of light boxes–solid oak enclosures to hide the ugly 8-foot fluorescent fixtures in my mother-in-law’s dining room. Nothing fancy, but I managed to squeeze them in between kids concerts, etc. I’ll try to get some pix during/after installation and post them here.

Hope your projects went as well as mine.

Merry Christmas!

dc

Planing *really* thin parts

Written on December 9, 2008 at 10:29 am , by Dave Campbell

The other night, I was working on a wall desk I’m making for my parents. After a long day at work and a Christmas concert at school, I finally got out into the shop and starting making the two drawers using lock-rabbet joints. Call it a miscalculation, inattention at the hour, or just plain stupidity, but the drawers ended up about 3/16” narrower than the Read more

More Bad Translations From Tool Companies

Written on November 18, 2008 at 10:57 am , by Dave Campbell

Here are some more bad translations about oscillating spindle sanders from a Web site. (I couldn’t make this stuff up, folks–it’s actually hard to write this poorly. I should know!)

This, regarding Jet’s JBOS5:

“JET’s fixed end in opposition to this instrument was to plan the charles herbert best spindle sander on the Read more