Did he finish the piece he was working on yet ?
(I remember a table-saw accident that hit our ER twice in one weekend. After taking a piece of his thumb and being unable to complete what he had set out to do, he decided that he should use the downtime to put up a deerstand.)
No, he's actually behaving himself. The project he was working on was essentially finished, actually. It's hard to explain, but I think I know exactly what he was doing. I've done it myself, actually.
Basically, my understanding is that he was user the tablesaw instead of a router to create a gap between the the base of a cabinet and the floor. The base sits on the floor only where the vertical supports are attached. In between, there's a gap of about half an inch or so between the base and the floor. This is in case the floor is not exactly even. It insures that the vertical supports are bearing the load. It's basically a big notch.
The preferred way to do this is with a router, which he does have. But it can also be done on a tablesaw. You crosscut the ends of the notch with the piece held vertically, and then set the rip fence to the height of the piece less the depth of the notch, raise the blade, and lower the piece onto the blade. Then you push it back and forth until it reaches the ends of the notch.
This isn't the safest way to do it, but production cabinetmakers do it all the time. I even did it myself as a youngster when I worked with dad from time to time.
The problem in this case was that the blade hit a knot or a bullet, and threw the piece backwards. He was holding the wood in front with his left hand, so when the piece shot back, the resistance disappeared, and he basically pulled his thumb and finger through the blade.
The surgeon told him don't even try to lift a piece of paper with his thumb. The paramedics did a good job positioning it to maintain some sort of blood supply, and it was still partially attached, so there's a decent chance that the soft tissues will heal. Then they can do a bone graft on the distal part of the thumb. But there's a lot of fancy stitching in there, and the doc doesn't want him pulling the stitches out.
He's also lucky to live in a community where people truly care about each other. It's a very rural area -- not quite the end of the world, but you can see it from there -- yet the ambulance was there within five minutes. The house has been full of people, all volunteering to help do everything from pick up his morning paper (the nearest store is, I think, 15 miles away, and he refuses to read the news on the Internet), to chores around the property.
Nonetheless, my dad is a man who worked with his hands all his life, so I'm sure there's more sadness than he lets on. Being a cabinetmaker is a big part of who he is, and frankly, I fully expect that he'll eventually get back on that saw, one way or the other. But he's not an idiot. He knows enough to give that thumb every possible chance to heal.
As for me, On Monday I'm going to check into whether it's possible to retrofit a tablesaw with that stop device. I doubt it; it looks like it's pretty much integrated into the design. But it's worth looking in to.
-Rich
