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Safety
Purpose of the NWWT Safety Website
This section of our Northwest Woodturners website is dedicated to the topic of safety. Let’s call it "all things safety". This web page is for you, our club members. What would you like to see here? This page will be constantly evolving as we develop our safety knowledge and information.
To start we have created a lead-in section titled “Important Safety Notices". This section will be dedicated to high-priority notifications to all members of imminent safety dangers and actions taken by the club to mitigate those dangers.
The second section is to dedicated to unraveling the topic of safety from everything else that is presented monthly in the club newsletter. This section will be titled “Newsletter Safety Articles". It can be frustrating when you know you saw something in a newsletter, but you can’t recall what month, so you spend hours that you are never going to get back searching the newsletter archives. Human nature would say it’s unlikely you are going to take the time and that equates to a missed opportunity!! The hope is that membership can more easily find topics of interest or need easier. Past newsletter articles will be hyperlinked from this section with each preceded by a short statement telling you what the article was about.
The third section is titled “Safety Best Practices". This section will be dedicated to items identified as a better way to perform a task or to build something with a focus on safety first. If you think of a way to improve this page of the club’s website, please send a message containing your thoughts to the Club’s Safety Director.
If you think there is a way to improve this section of the website, please send a message containing your thoughts to the Club’s Safety Director.
Safety is not a Priority… It’s Just What We Do!
Safety Newsletter Articles
Below are links to the Safety articles included in the club's monthly Newsletter, so be safe and enjoy!
This is a short newsletter article introducing the club’s new Safety Director effective in January 2026.
This newsletter article is the first in a series of articles that build on each other to set the stage for a
step-change in safety performance in your shop. This is the first, most basic step…do you have in place a
culture that will support you as you make safety first in all you do?
March 2026 - What the Heck is the OSHA Hierarchy of Controls?
This newsletter article moves us along with the idea that everything we do in our shops is safety focused first. It explains a simple methodology for deciding how to construct a safety plan around any given activity using controls that range from the most to the least effective.
April 2026 - Who Knows What a Root Cause Is?
This newsletter article continues a progression of basic safety science concepts by revealing the concept of root causes as the most basic reason an incident occurs. Many times, root causes are not obvious and require digging to reveal them. In May we’ll talk about some ways to do just that.
May 2026 – Who Knows How to Determine a Root Cause?
In April I explained briefly what a root cause is. This month I have described a very simple process called
5-Whys that will very easily lead you to root cause determination for incidents that occur in your shop.
June 2026 – Have you Experienced a Near Miss?
This month’s newsletter article defines near misses or close calls. They are indicators that we should pay attention to. I rolled out Heinrich’s and Bird’s Pyramids constructed from real safety data that relate near misses to the frequency of more serious incidents. I then proposed a simple process that we can use in our shops to benefit from analysis of near misses.
This month’s newsletter article introduces the concept of risk assessments and gives you two very simple frameworks that you can use to assess risks before you embark on turning projects in your shop. Implementing a simple risk assessment process is akin to a warm-up exercise before a hard workout.
This month’s article is about constructing an Emergency Action Plan or EAP for your home shop. Some reference materials are provided, and an example of how to walk through the development of one section is described. Developing an EAP is a useful safety exercise because it causes you to think through just how you would handle a variety of emergency situations. If you choose to prepare a document that’s great, but if you just want to think things through that’s great as well.
Because we did not have a meeting in August due to the Annual Picnic and Auction, we decided to
re-publish the Emergency Action Plan newsletter article in September.
This month’s newsletter article addresses chainsaw safety as we approach the time of year when wood harvesting begins in earnest. The article touches on personal protective equipment (PPE), the recommended contents of your “kit,” how to ensure your chainsaw is safe to operate and the area around you is clearly defined, and how to safely conduct a group wood cutting operation.
This month’s newsletter article addresses hearing protection. Many of the activities we undertake in our shops produce sound pressure levels (SPL’s) at or above safe hearing thresholds. This article explains a bit about what we call sound, how our ears work, how they can be easily damaged without protection, and some simple tools you can employ to understand better what your ears are experiencing. Hearing loss can be an insidious thing. It creeps up on you. This article is especially important given the approaching wood harvesting season when many of us will be using our chainsaws.
Safety Best Practices
Coming soon!