A cut-off wheel grabbed a piece of 3/8 plate on me today and I'm still thinking about it
Not a bad one, nobody got hurt, but it kicked. Plate was warm from being in the sun all morning, sat it on the sawhorses to trim a corner and the wheel bound up maybe two inches in and climbed. Whole saw jumped. I let go, which is the only reason my wrist is fine.
Thirty years and it still happens when I get casual. Which is the point. I do the same three things every time now before the saw comes out, even when the cut takes ninety seconds: check the guard is where it should be, check the plate is actually clamped and not just sitting there because I'm in a hurry, and stand off to the side, not behind the wheel. Behind the wheel is where the piece goes if it goes.
The corner I was cutting was for a base plate, one of a set of four for a garden piece. Three are done. That last one is going to sit there a while, I think. Not superstition, I just don't want to go back at it today.
Anybody else get spooked and then have to walk away from the bench for the rest of the afternoon.
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The plate being warm from the sun is the part I keep coming back to. Everyone focuses on the clamp and the guard, but heat changes how the metal grabs, especially if it's been sitting out and the wheel bites into something that's expanded and moved a fraction. Two inches before it climbed tells you it was already loaded.
I don't do metal, I cut stone and smalti, but the same rule applies with a wet saw and it's the same lesson: the material is never just sitting there waiting for you. It's under tension, or heat, or both. The moment you think a cut is routine is exactly when you stop checking. Thirty years and it still teaches you that is not a bad thing to admit.
You're right about it being already loaded. In hindsight the plate had a bit of a bow in it and I didn't look. Warm plate, bow, and me feeding it like it was flat stock. That's three things, not one.
Stone's worse for it than people think. You cut a slab that's been in the sun and it moves on you. At least steel tells you it's coming. What do you cut, mostly, smalti or slab?
The bow is what gets me here. My dad did metal work his whole life and he'd say the same thing, a plate that isn't flat is a plate that's already got ideas. I've never touched a cut-off wheel but I do acrylics and I've learned the hard way that a panel with any warp at all fights you the whole way, so I can only imagine what it does at that speed when it's hot on top of it. Glad your wrist is fine. The warm plate thing is going to stick with me next time I'm impatient with something.