Do you ever Free hand on the tablesaw?

[HausWerks]

Thats how its done. Thats exactly how i scribe base.i free hand it either right on or within a 1/16 and finish with a hand plane. If you dont think its safe then dont do it. I have not had one unusual experience doing this, but with any power tool i use i grip it like my life depends on it or in this case hold the work like my life depends on it. Most importantly keep the fence way away when your doing this, that would be dangerous. Im on jobs with dedicated safety guys too. Hard hats, safety glasses, gloves, no radios. The deal is you take off the safety guard and when your done put it back on.

Safety first.

I probably sounds dumb to alot of you guys and thats fine. Im sure that if any of you guys who say you wouldnt eventually would if you were working on the projects i worked on. You get sent out to work on the ginormous projects like ,hospitals, multiple floors on highrises,symphony ochestra halls, colleges and theres a tablesaw and chopbox on every floor,there might be 4 jigsaws for 10 guys same as power planer and maybe 1 pc router for 10 guys. Maybe 4 sets of saw horses for all those guys. Theres many ways to get it done, tablesaw gets it done fastest with best results. Dealing with finished materials things slow down bigtime if your gonna run a saw over the face of it because youll damage it rather easily. So you have to protect it, but you dont have a work table or horses to work off of, so path of least resistance is TS. Im now out of that environment but thats still how i do it.

What i think is dangerous is cutting small pieces on a Ts against the fence. Im sure everyone wouldnt think twice about doing that and thats way more dangerous.

[..Kev]

As a Safety guy that's worked a lot of years in major industry, if I saw you doing it, I'd escort you to the gate.  It's dangerous and just flat wrong.  There's always a better way to do it.