A
terrifying machine frequently found in
wood shops. It consists of a flat
table, usually marked with some
guides and
measurement marks, with a
slot in the middle. Protruding from the
slot, not unlike a
shark's
fin, is a
wicked circular saw blade powered by a large
electric motor underneath the table. On your
classier models, this motor is mounted on a
pivot that can be adjusted so that the blade cuts at different angles.
When it is running, the table saw tends to make a bone rattling shriek that suggests it gains its power from souls of the damned and fingerless rather than plain old alternating current. The worst part of it is that you need to cut boards and planks with the saw by standing directly in front of the blade and pushing your wood towards the blade slowly and steadily. This can get quite scary when the saw is almost all the way through your wood, because if you aren't carefull, your steady application of force will cause you to lunge forward towards the blade once it ends its cut. Just about any old wood shop operator can tell you a few stories of people that have lost fingers or worse this way.
I almost forgot: If you don't want your piece of wood to shoot off the table, fly across the room, and embed itself into some hapless piece of machinery or flesh, then you need to feed your wood into the saw against the rotation of the blade.