13 Commonly-Used Power Tools That Can Be Incredibly Dangerous

Mankind invented tools to make their lives easier, and when electricity came around, they evolved to become "power tools." Today, power tools have the potential to make our lives easier than ever, but they're also incredibly dangerous if misused or operated without proper safety precautions.

Power tools usually involve taking something like a saw blade or screwdriver and slapping an engine on it for maximum strength. This means they're very efficient if used correctly, but it also exacerbates the effects of misuse. While you might poke or cut yourself with a steak knife, an electric power knife can saw right through your entire hand if you absent-mindedly lose your grip and cut into the wrong slab of meat — and injuries can get a lot worse than that. 

In this list, we'll explore various power tools that, while tremendously useful in the right hands, are also downright dangerous in the wrong ones. Modern handymen might find these tools indispensable in their everyday lives, but they also know how important it is to follow proper safety procedures because it can be distressingly easy to accidentally maim yourself or, even worse, someone else.

There's a scene in the James Bond movie, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," wherein a skiing henchman accidentally falls into an industrial-sized snow blower that spews red paste all over the snow, prompting 007 to say, "He had lots of guts!" There's also the unrated Director's Cut of James Mangold's "The Wolverine," which sees the heroes commandeer a huge snow blower to turn ninja baddies into a chunky salsa. 

There are plenty of other examples of snowblowers used to violently rip people to shreds in movies ("Cold Pursuit," "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer"), and they're scarily based in reality. In real life, a snow blower can, indeed, turn human flesh into mulch, not unlike a wood chipper. Thankfully, most snow blowers built for personal use are too small to effectively swallow someone whole, but they're still very dangerous. When one gets jammed with ice or debris, one might be tempted to reach inside to fix it, but that's a quick and easy way to lose a finger or five.

The business end of a hedge trimmer looks like a stick with a bunch of knives sticking out. While a cool design for a "Dungeons & Dragons" sword, it is not a practical, multi-purpose cutting tool. However, the hedge trimmer uses a built-in engine to move the blade back and forth quickly so it can slice through twigs and branches and keep hedges from getting messy and unruly.

Hedge trimmers are curiously balanced. The blade half is pretty lightweight, and the engine half on most models is usually quite heavy. That means, if you're not conscious of the blade's position, you can easily whip it around and accidentally cut yourself. Another thing to be careful about is debris. Twigs cut from a hedge can go flying in all directions, but trust us, they'll always end up poking you right in the eye. 

The 2006 slasher film "Hatchet" features a psycho killer in the vein of Jason Voorhees who goes around killing wacky teens using a variety of improvised weapons. One notable kill sees the killer maim a young victim by taking a belt sander to her face, ripping her jaw off. The sequel ups the ante with yet another belt sander kill, this time pressed up against the back of an unlucky victim's head until his skull is completely ground to dust, exposing his brain. It's gross, but an impressive display of practical gore FX and an almost tongue-in-cheek homage to the increasingly insane kills of 1980s slasher movies.

We doubt that the film's depiction of belt sanders is particularly realistic, but the point is obvious: belt sanders, like any power tools, are pretty dangerous. They work by using a spinning belt to sand down a surface. When used on a surface, particularly one made of wood, belt sanders create veritable clouds of dangerous sawdust, and you absolutely need to wear a facemask to avoid breathing that in. You also, obviously, don't want to sand down your fingers, so stay alert!

Have you ever sewn your own hands together? It's the worst, but just a moment of inattentiveness behind the controls of a sewing machine can lead to such accidents, or worse. Sewing machines are a miracle when it comes to allowing fabric to be transformed into clothing in a fraction of the time it would take to do so by hand. However, hand sewing requires piercing material using a sharp needle, and that invariably leads to painful accidents. That's why thimbles were invented.

Still, a thimble probably isn't enough to save you when it comes to a powerful knitting machine, which can quickly carve a path of stitching across inches and feet in a matter of seconds. If there's an upside compared to most of the other power tools on this list, it's that you're unlikely to receive fatal injuries from a sewing machine. Sure, nobody wants to disfigure their hands, but it's not as bad as sliding face-first into the blades of a snow blower.

The video game "Power Wash Simulator" introduced a whole generation of people to the single coolest power tool ever devised. It's not as clumsy or random as a firehose, but it still feels powerful and elegant in the hands of a trained expert. However, while a high-powered water gun might not seem terribly dangerous, a power washer is not to be underestimated.

Power washers, also called pressure washers, can shoot water at incredible speed. When using a zero-degree nozzle for maximum strength, the torrent of water is strong enough to knock someone down and even cut through skin. It's not as powerful as a water-cutter laser or anything, but you can do permanent damage, especially if you hit someone in the eyes or ears. Power washers can also cause property damage. If they're powerful enough to clean decades-old bird poop off of concrete, they're powerful enough to punch right through glass, and broken glass is just an accident waiting to happen. 

If someone had never seen a hand-held rotary saw or cement saw before, they would surely assume it to be a weapon. After all, it's basically a giant mechanical saw blade attached to a handle. Players of the "Dead Rising" video game series have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of zombies using a rotary saw (look for it in various construction areas!).

While a rotary saw might prove handy in the event of a zombie apocalypse, its intended use is for cutting through material like wood and metal. It's usually employed at construction sites and used by skilled professionals. Like any saw that cuts through metal, rotary saws create massive showers of sparks when employed against steel. Sparks certainly look cool, but they're also extremely hot shards of metal. 

Anyone using a rotary saw needs to maintain control. Even when wearing proper clothing and safety gear, there's always the possibility that a random spark can find its way into one's clothing and cause a minor burn or even a fire on any number of flammable surfaces at a job site or in a private garage. If a rotary saw operator panics, they can cause grievous injury to themselves or anyone nearby if they lose control over the deadly machine. 

If you've seen "Final Destination: Bloodlines," then you know why this one is on the list. That film features a notable death involving a runaway lawnmower turning an unlucky victim's face into raspberry pulp. Not a pleasant way to go. There's also the 1992 classic, "The Lawnmower Man," which features a notable kill via a telekinetically controlled lawnmower flying towards someone's face. In real life, the odds of getting killed by an errant lawnmower are pretty low, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

If you have one of those big, rideable mowers, you need to be careful; keep your eyes on the grass in front of you in case a chipmunk or toddler happens to wander into the path of its blades. Even if you use a simpler, smaller model, it's still easy to accidentally run over someone's foot. And like with the snow blowers mentioned earlier, you have to make sure the power is completely off before you try to unjam and clear it of dirt or debris, or else you might accidentally get your hand caught in the path of violently spinning blades.

When you need to cut through something as precisely as possible, you need to use a table saw. They're best used for slicing wooden boards in half, but like most saws, table saws can cut through pretty much anything if you try hard enough.

Unlike most power tools, table saws are stationary, which theoretically reduces one's risk of injury, as long as they keep aware of the deadly implement just inches away. The 2020 slasher comedy "Freaky" features a memorable kill involving a table saw, where Alan Ruck's character is dragged through a table saw, slicing him in half. It's a clean cut, but messy all the same. "Freaky" also has a sequence involving a chainsaw, but that's the subject of a different entry on this list.

The best quality of rotary tools is their versatility. These devices can be fitted with any number of attachments for a variety of purposes, from aesthetic touches like engraving text or art onto a metallic surface to sharpening knives and buffing/polishing surfaces, among many others. Anything involving carving into metal produces a mist of metallic particles. These can be inhaled without proper PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment.

Another potential issue with rotary tools comes with the various attachments. If not properly fastened, they can come loose or even fly off, becoming a dangerous projectile. It's vital to replace old attachments after regular use, lest they become damaged and thus unwieldy. Failure to maintain your equipment can damage not only the rotary tool, but also the surface on which you're using the tool. It's easy to replace a rotary tool, but when attempting to polish gold, silver, or copper, it's easier than you might think to accidentally ruin a priceless family heirloom.

Angle grinders are versatile tools that are used for cutting, grinding, polishing, sharpening, and otherwise sculpting materials that are otherwise difficult to work with. An angle grinder uses steel disks that can rotate at speeds upwards of 12,000 RPM. Suffice to say, you don't want to accidentally brush against the business end of an angle grinder. These disks move at a speed intended to cut through brick and steel, so they have little trouble cutting through flesh and tearing straight to the bone. There's also the issue of tiny particles of metallic dust that are generated by an angle grinder. You do not want to breathe that in, so be sure everyone in the immediate vicinity is wearing a proper safety mask to avoid coating their throat and lungs in metallic poison.

Another issue people have with angle grinders are with the disks themselves, which are meant to be replaced after use. Of course, there's the possibility for injury when using parts that are clearly past their due date, but it's also important to make sure replacement disks are rated for their intended use. If a disk is only rated for 5,000 RPM, you don't want to crank your angle grinder to 10,000 RPM. You will end up with chunks of metal chipping off at dangerous velocities. In the military, they don't call it "shards of flying metal," they call it "shrapnel."

The 1979 Abel Ferrara film "The Driller Killer" isn't as violent as its reputation suggests. It's certainly a grisly movie with some nasty kills, but its reputation comes from its title and the sheer terror of the idea of a man running around town murdering people with a power drill. Hurting oneself (or someone else) with a power drill is such a visceral thought that it has ingrained itself in the human psyche. The film was even on the UK list of "video nasties" that were banned for their supposedly explicit content, but that only made it more popular as a forbidden cult classic.

Power drills do exactly what their name implies, rotating a screw at speeds magnitudes faster than a screwdriver ever could. It's a tremendously useful power tool, but if you miss the target, you might accidentally drill a hole in your hand. If you're not actively careful at all times, it's surprisingly easy to accidentally lose your grip and cause a screw to slip and go straight through your skin.

Any connoisseur of action movies knows how dangerous a nail gun can be. While the projectile-launching nail gun seen in "Casino Royale" is less than realistic, "Lethal Weapon 2" has a famous action scene where Murtaugh takes down two assassins using a nail gun before dropping the exasperated one-liner, "Nailed 'em both." There's also the memorable scene in "Final Destination 3" where poor Erin (Alexz Johnson) is killed by a malfunctioning nail gun that sends half a dozen nails through the back of her skull.

While a Final Destination-esque nail gun death is unlikely to occur in the real world, nail guns are still terribly dangerous and, like all power tools, need to be used responsibly. Nail guns operate by using powered pistons to drive nails into hardened material with a simple pull of a trigger, rather than having to pound it in with the flat end of a claw hammer. We've all certainly bonked our thumbs with a hammer, and while that's certainly a painful experience, it's nothing compared to the pain of driving a nail straight through your entire hand.

As far as pop culture goes, chainsaws are more famous for cutting through flesh and bone than for cutting through pesky tree branches. Between the "Doom" video games and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies (the phrase "chainsaw massacre" pretty much speaks for itself, right?), the dangerous nature of chainsaws is well understood at this point. They're deadly and only to be used by professionals and Ash Williams of "The Evil Dead."

We all know how easy it is to accidentally cut off an arm or a leg with a chainsaw, but that's not the full extent of a chainsaw's capacity to cause human harm. When a chainsaw rips into a tree branch, it creates a spray of sawdust and splinters. Breathing in too much sawdust is a guaranteed respiratory disaster, and nobody wants shards of splintered wood getting shot into their eyes. It's simply an unpleasant experience. That's why proper safety equipment is key to avoiding injury when wielding dangerous equipment.