"Isn't it interesting how we all have different opinions on the safest/most dangerous tools! I love that about these comment sections. Cheers, Bert!"

"I am a mechanical engineer and furniture designer-manufacturer. I have worked on and with scores of jointers through my experience of owning and running a luxury furniture design/build business. I readily regard the jointer as the safest machine in my entire shop - with the proper training. There is only one machine failure mode that can cause bodily harm to an unsuspecting user. That failure mode is called "tossing a knife" and is only possible on jointers with straight blades, as opposed to the helical cutterheads. "Tossing a knife" is when a straight blade in a straight blade cutterhead becomes loose and is flung from the machine's cutterhead under an extreme centrifugal force. This is clearly not what happened here for two reasons. Reason one: The machine is a Powermatic 60 HH and the "HH" stands for "Helical Head" which means it has a cutterhead with carbide teeth, not knives - meaning that there would be no knives to "throw." Reason two: The article describes her hand as being "pulverized" implying multiple mincing cuts. That is 100% user error. Any machine failure mode (from a jointer) would have sliced her fingers off nice and clean with surgical precision - unless she literally shoved her fingers into the spinning cutterhead. I believe that suing a maker-space or a "walk-in" shop like this would be a useless endeavor. From my understanding, most shops like these have extensive "no-fault" clauses built into their contracts. As for suing the machinery manufacturer, that is also a lost cause. I would be surprised if they even responded. As for suing Pratt, maybe? Who knows what kind of weird bylaws they have written up to protect themselves from this kind of thing. to the girl who had her fingers amputated by the jointer - a bunch of my friends and family have lost digits to woodworking machines. They lead completely normal lives and are able to do anything. I wish you the best of luck and I am glad you didn't have them reattached. I read a study a few years back that said that the majority of people who had their fingers surgically reattached ended up wanting them removed at a later date because they were more "in the way" than helpful. Best of luck!"