Defective Saw Blade Injury Attorneys

If your injuries are medically stabilized, then here is our guide to the most important information you need to know, up front, about how to handle a potential saw blade manufacturing defect case:

1. Preserve the blade exactly as‑is (do not clean it, sharpen it, or “test it again”).
2. Preserve the packaging (model number, bar code, lot/date codes can matter).
3. Save your receipts and any documentation of your blade purchase, including when and where you bought it.
4. Save fragments (carbide teeth/tips/shards) in a rigid container.
5. Take photos of everything early (blade, saw, arbor, guards, setup, packaging, and the scene).
6. Don’t return the blade to the store for a refund and don’t ship it to anyone (including the manufacturer) until you’ve gotten advice.

If you want help thinking through what to preserve, call us at (803) 350-9230. Otherwise, read on to learn more about what to do in cases of sudden saw blade failures, carbide tip detachment, or other blade injuries caused by potentially defective saw blades.

A “defective saw blade” can mean different things in different circumstances. The most common failure types we see people ask about include:

1. Carbide tooth detachment (tooth/tip flies off): Many blades use carbide‑tipped teeth attached to a steel blade plate. If a tooth or tip detaches, it can become a projectile—like a small bullet speeding through the air.
2. Blade cracking or catastrophic fracture: A blade can crack or fracture due to issues like material defects, heat‑treat problems, structural weakness, or manufacturing error.
3. Warping, wobble, or loss of tension: If a blade isn’t flat or stable at speed, vibration increases and the risk of dangerous events rises.
4. Abnormal vibration, noise, or instability that appears “out of the box”: Not every vibration is a defect, but when a blade behaves unpredictably in normal use, it deserves a careful look.

Additionally, while common sense makes it clear that blades shouldn’t fail spontaneously and without justification, there are circumstances in which user error can cause or contribute to a person’s injuries in cases like these. For example, sometimes a blade fails because of:

• Striking hidden fasteners (nails/screws);
• Incorrect blade selection (wrong blade for the material);
• Improper installation, damaged arbor/flange, or missing washers;
• Operating outside the tool’s specifications; or
• Heavy wear, damage, or prior impacts.

Still, when a blade fails in a way an ordinary user would not expect during normal conditions, a defect absolutely may be part of the story—and the only honest way to know is to preserve the evidence and investigate.

• Carbide tip/tooth: a hard cutting insert (often tungsten carbide)
• Brazing: high‑temperature joining using filler metal to bond carbide to steel
• Flux: a chemical that helps the filler metal flow and bond cleanly
• Wetting: how well the molten filler spreads across surfaces (poor wetting can mean weak bonding)
• Porosity/voids: tiny gas pockets in the filler metal that can reduce joint strength
• Failure mode: the “how” of what went wrong (tooth detachment, plate crack, warp, etc.)

If you’re a consumer, we’re not trying to make you feel like you need to become a product engineer or forensic metallurgist overnight. Rather, we share this information with you in the interest of helping you understand why the blade and tooth joint of a circular saw blade can lead to some of the most important evidence in a tooth‑detachment injury. If the joint is bad, then tips can fly off of blades—and that’s when people can start getting hurt.

If a tooth flies off or a blade fails on you while you’re working with a table saw, circular saw, or other piece of equipment that uses a saw blade, the case often comes down to what can be proven later, including though expert investigation and testing of the physical evidence involved. Evidence disappears fast because people understandably:

• Clean up
• Throw away packaging
• Accept a refund/exchange, and/or
• Send the blade back to the manufacturer when customer service asks for it.

The Golden Rule: Don’t “Improve” the Evidence

As a default, we always advise people that they should preserve the evidence and preserve it in as close to its original form as possible. This means:

• Don’t clean it.
• Don’t sharpen it.
• Don’t grind it.
• Don’t use it or otherwise run it again.
• Don’t “test” it.
• And, of course—don’t throw it away or dispose of it! If you don’t have it, you can’t test it, so evidence preservation in situations of saw blade failures and carbide tip detachment is extremely important.

Engineers and metallurgists often need to see surfaces exactly as they were at the time of the failure, so again, don’t try to clean or otherwise change a circular saw blade that’s had a tooth fly off it during use. Preserve the evidence, and get it to your lawyer who can help document its change of custody and get it into the hands of an expert who can investigate its failure mechanism(s).

1) The Blade (As‑Is)

Even if it looks “mostly normal,” missing teeth, cracks, and fracture surfaces are critical. Often the most important and telling information can’t be seen with the naked eye, either, which is why getting the potentially defective blade into the hands of a saw blade expert, quickly, is so important. If you’re with a good attorney and law office that has handled these types of cases before, then they will know the right expert to call for the case.

2) All the Saw Blade Fragments You Can Find

Carbide tips/teeth, chips, shards. Use a rigid container so fragments don’t break further, and search the job site to ensure you are able to capture and preserve as much relevant physical evidence as possible.

3) The Packaging and Inserts

Model number, bar code, lot/date codes, and warnings often matter more than people realize, as does proof of purchase and information from the receipt showing when and where the potentially defective saw blade was purchased.

4) The Saw/Tool and Key Mounting Parts (if Possible)

Arbor, flange, washers, blade nut, throat plate insert, guard components—anything that bears on installation and stability is worth preserving, too.

5) Photos and Video

Take photos and video of the scene as early as possible, including:

• Both sides of the blade
• Closeups of missing tooth locations
• The saw setup and the work area
• The packaging labels, and
• The material being cut (if relevant and available).

6) Proof of Purchase

Receipt, order confirmation email, loyalty account record, credit card statement, etc. Again, it’s extremely helpful to be able to track back when and where the blade was sourced from. Many manufacturers will even stamp blades with serial numbers and lot codes so that the potentially defective circular saw blade can be tracked all the way back to a specific batch number, which can be important in preventing further injuries to other people who might also have bad blades from a poorly manufactured lot.

7) Medical Documentation

For eye injuries, ask providers about preserving any removed foreign object if one is extracted. For eye injuries and all other types of injuries, work hard to document the full extent of your injuries, and to gather all relevant records and other documentation of what’s happened to you. If you’re working with a good law office experienced in handling products liability cases involving failed saw blades, then they should be able to do much, if not all, of this for you.

Depending on the facts, it may be appropriate to:

• Search for product recalls and safety notices, and/or
• Report unsafe consumer products through public safety channels, including entities like the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) or Health Canada.

These entities and others like them are dedicated to protecting consumers from unsafe or harmful products, so if you have been hurt by a circular saw blade that has thrown off carbide tips or inexplicably failed in some other manner, reporting those blade failures and saw blade injuries to the right authorities can be a helpful move that might help prevent others from being hurt in the future.

The key is to get the sequence and order of operations correct: preserve and document evidence first, so you don’t accidentally lose the most important evidence, and of course take care of your physical health and any needed medical intervention first and foremost, before doing anything else. After these things are done, you ought to start researching and potentially talking to attorneys to understand your options, and then potentially consider reporting the injury and saw blade failure to someone like the Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC).

Goings Law Firm, LLC represents plaintiffs in publicly filed litigation in South Carolina involving allegations that a carbide tip detached from a DeWalt‑branded table saw blade that struck the user’s eye. In the publicly filed complaint, the plaintiffs allege that a two‑pack of DeWalt Circular Saw Blades identified on packaging as DWA110CMB was purchased from a Lowe’s store in North Myrtle Beach and contained blades identified as DWA11060 (60‑tooth) and DWA11040 (40‑tooth). The complaint alleges that when the user pressed the power‑off button on a table saw, he heard a “ting” and an object flew into his right eye, later determined to be a metal carbide tip from the blade, resulting in permanent vision loss in the right eye. The complaint alleges manufacturing issues involving preparation/joining of the brazing at the joint between the carbide tip and the blade. The defendants have denied liability and, of course, as with any lawsuit, all allegations must be proven in court. Still, this is a publicly-available example of the kind of case that can potentially be brought by an injured party when he or she is injured by carbide tips detaching from circular saw blades and hurting them.

We reference this case to help illustrate the type of incident this Resource Center is about—and to underscore why evidence preservation matters.

Every case is different, but these factors often matter in saw blade failure claims:

• The injury is serious (eye injury, facial injury, amputation, deep lacerations)
• The failure occurred during normal or foreseeable use
• The blade was new or not heavily used
• There is physical evidence: the blade, missing tooth locations, fragments, packaging, photos
• Medical records support the mechanism of injury (for example, a documented foreign object like a carbide tooth tip striking a user in the face)

If you’re unsure whether your incident could involve a defect, a careful review can usually identify whether:

• It looks like normal wear/misuse, or
• It deserves expert evaluation.

In most if not all cases, however, we always recommend someone hurt by a circular saw blade or tooth detachment incident at least speak to a lawyer who has handled cases of this kind before. Talking to an experienced trial lawyer about a potential case is usually free, and can help you and your family understand what your options are in situations like these.