Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025
105,991Records 71,450Employers 85,836Hospitalizations 27,959Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-11-30

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221389620

EXOTIC LUMBER, INC.

Event
Amputated, Amputation, Caught By, Defect, Defective, Defective Equipment, Feeding, Finger, Guard, Instantaneous amputation, Knife, Lumber, Machine Guarding, Machine operator, Pinch Point, Pinched, Safety Device, Spring, Traumatic Amputation, Wood, Wood Board
NAICS
423310
Inspection type
Accident-driven
Activity number
#345520076
Employer profile
EXOTIC LUMBER, INC.
Summary number
221389620
Report ID
0352450

Event description

Employee amputates finger when feeding wood into jointer mac

Investigation abstract

At 2:30 p.m. on September 3, 2021, an employee working as a woodworking machine support the board as it moved through the jointer. The employee then moved into the position where the coworker was and kept feeding the board through the jointer. They discovered that the spring on the guard had been broken for 1 to 1 ? years and would not fully close to stay in contact with the wood board. When the employee was guiding the board with his left hand and feeding it with his right hand, his left pinky finger was caught by the knives. The employee was hospitalized to treat a finger amputation. operator for a lumber wholesalers had just finished jointing the face of a walnut wood board. The employee was using a Powermatic Model PJ1696 jointer machine on the 97-?-inch-wide by 11-inch-long by 2-?-inch-thick wood board. Since it was such a large piece, the employee required help from a coworker. The coworker, a manager, helped the employee set the board up to the jointer working on the feeding side of the jointer. The coworker was feeding the board through the jointer as the employee guided the wood. When the board's length started to shorten, the coworker moved to the receiving side of the jointer to catch and

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 18 M

    Event type
    2
    Occupation code
    733

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.