Chainsaw cutting discs designed for use on angle grinders are causing severe hand injuries, amputations, and lacerations across the United States. These discs, which mount chainsaw-style teeth onto a standard angle grinder, create an extreme kickback hazard that has led the United Kingdom to ban them from sale entirely. Despite this international ban and explicit warnings from major grinder manufacturers like Milwaukee and DeWalt, these products remain widely available to American consumers through major retailers including Harbor Freight, Home Depot, Amazon, and Ace Hardware.
Lawsuits have now been filed against major retailers alleging that these products are inherently defective and cause catastrophic injuries even when used exactly as instructed, with all safety guards in place and the workpiece properly secured.
Doyle APC is investigating injury claims involving chainsaw disc attachments for angle grinders. If you or a loved one suffered a serious hand injury, amputation, or laceration while using one of these products in California, our product liability attorneys can evaluate your case at no cost.
What Are Chainsaw Discs?
A chainsaw disc, also called a wood carving disc or chain disc, is a circular attachment that houses chainsaw teeth between two metal plates. The disc mounts onto a standard 4-inch or 4.5-inch angle grinder, converting the grinder into a handheld cutting tool for woodworking. The most well-known product is the Lancelot disc made by King Arthur’s Tools, which invented the product category around 1991. These discs have grown rapidly in popularity since approximately 2010 and are now sold by numerous manufacturers and retailers.
The fundamental problem with these products is that they place aggressive chainsaw cutting teeth onto a power tool that was never designed for wood cutting and lacks the safety features required for that purpose. Angle grinders are metalworking tools designed for abrasive grinding and cutting discs. While the RPM difference alone is significant, grinders spin at over 10,000 RPM compared to roughly 4,000 to 6,000 RPM for a chainsaw, the real danger is the speed at which the teeth strike the wood. A chainsaw disc on a grinder drives its teeth into the workpiece at approximately five times the speed of a standard chainsaw. At that velocity, the teeth skip and grab rather than cut cleanly, triggering violent kickback. And unlike a chainsaw, an angle grinder has no chain brake, no anti-kickback mechanism, and none of the guarding required on chainsaws and circular saws.
Why These Discs Are Dangerous
The primary hazard of chainsaw discs is violent, uncontrollable kickback. When the chainsaw teeth on the disc contact the wood workpiece along the outer edge of the disc, the teeth can grip the wood surface and violently wrench the spinning grinder out of the operator’s hands. Because the operator’s hands are positioned just inches from the exposed blade, the disc can inflict catastrophic injuries to the hands, fingers, arms, legs, and face within a fraction of a second.
Several factors combine to make this hazard particularly severe. Angle grinders generate enormous mechanical force when kickback occurs due to their extreme rotational speed. Unlike chainsaws, angle grinders have no chain brake to stop the blade when kickback is detected. The standard guard on an angle grinder covers only the lower half of the disc, leaving the upper cutting surface fully exposed near the operator’s hands. The auxiliary side handle on an angle grinder provides far less control than the two-handed grip system on a chainsaw. And many angle grinders feature a lock-on switch, meaning the tool continues spinning at full speed even after it leaves the operator’s hands, effectively becoming a self-powered projectile.
The combination of extreme speed, aggressive cutting teeth, minimal guarding, and inadequate control creates what the United Kingdom’s Office for Product Safety and Standards has characterized as a serious risk of injury or death.
Injuries Caused by Chainsaw Discs
Medical literature and court records document a consistent pattern of devastating injuries from chainsaw disc kickback events. The most common injuries include complete finger amputations, partial finger amputations, deep lacerations requiring extensive surgical repair, severed tendons and ligaments, crushed and pulverized hand bones, and nerve damage causing permanent loss of sensation or function.
A pivotal 2020 study by Tsumura et al., titled “Do Not Cut Wood with an Angle Grinder, or You Might Lose a Finger,” examined injuries at a Japanese trauma center and found that kickback was the cause of injury in 78 percent of cases involving angle grinders used with wood-cutting attachments. This finding is significant because it demonstrates that kickback is not a matter of bad luck or user clumsiness, it is the primary and predictable failure mode of this tool combination. The study also found that most victims had no awareness beforehand that using an angle grinder for woodcutting was dangerous, highlighting a systemic failure to warn consumers. The researchers concluded that the tool combination is inherently unsafe and urged manufacturers to take corrective action.
Injuries from these products are not limited to inexperienced users. Published reports include a professional firefighter who sustained serious leg lacerations during a home project, a woodturner who required over 100 stitches and hours of reconstructive surgery after a Lancelot disc struck his neck and hand, and numerous hobbyist woodworkers who lost fingers while following the manufacturer’s instructions. The severity of these injuries typically requires emergency surgery, multiple follow-up procedures, and extended physical therapy, often resulting in permanent disability.
Banned in the United Kingdom
In June 2021, the United Kingdom’s Office for Product Safety and Standards issued a formal Product Safety Alert for all angle grinder chainsaw disc attachments, ordering them removed from the market. The OPSS concluded that chainsaw discs marketed for use on angle grinders cannot comply with the essential safety requirements under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008. The relevant British Standard, BS 60745-2-3, expressly requires that angle grinder instruction manuals include the warning: “Do not attach a saw chain woodcarving blade or toothed saw blade. Such blades create frequent kickback and loss of control.”
The OPSS risk assessment determined that chainsaw discs on angle grinders present a serious risk of injury or fatality. Retailers across the United Kingdom were ordered to remove the products from sale immediately. The head of OPSS stated publicly that “the chainsaw attachments are not designed to be used with angle grinders and could cause serious injury or even fatality.” No equivalent regulatory action has been taken in the United States, where these products remain freely available for purchase.
Grinder Manufacturers and Industry Standards Warn Against Use
Major angle grinder manufacturers have added explicit warnings to their products instructing users not to attach chainsaw-type cutting discs. Milwaukee Tool and DeWalt, two of the largest power tool manufacturers in the world, now include warnings stating that chainsaw discs, wood carving blades, and toothed saw blades should not be used on their angle grinders due to the risk of kickback and loss of control.
These manufacturer warnings align with the applicable industry safety standard, UL 62841-2-3, which governs hand-held grinders. That standard explicitly requires angle grinder instruction manuals to warn: “Do not attach a saw chain woodcarving blade or toothed saw blade. Such blades create frequent kickback and loss of control.” This means the very industry that certifies angle grinders as safe has determined that attaching a chainsaw disc to one creates an unacceptable hazard. Retailers who sell these discs alongside their angle grinders are effectively encouraging consumers to violate the mandatory safety instructions of the power tools they sell.
Products Still Available in the United States
Despite the UK ban, industry safety standards, and grinder manufacturer warnings, chainsaw discs remain widely available to American consumers. Harbor Freight Tools, a major tool retailer with approximately $5 billion in annual revenue and over 1,200 locations across the United States, sells a Bauer-branded carving disc with chainsaw teeth marketed for use on its angle grinders. King Arthur’s Tools continues to sell its Lancelot line of chainsaw discs through its own website and through major retailers including Home Depot, Woodcraft, and Ace Hardware. Amazon lists dozens of chainsaw disc products from various manufacturers, many of them inexpensive imports from overseas with minimal or no safety warnings.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has not issued a recall or safety alert for chainsaw cutting discs, leaving American consumers without the regulatory protection that their counterparts in the United Kingdom now have. The continued sale of these products in the face of known, documented dangers forms the basis for product liability claims against the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in the chain of commerce.
Legal Claims for Chainsaw Disc Injuries
California maintains strict liability standards for defective products, meaning manufacturers and sellers can be held responsible for injuries caused by dangerously defective products regardless of whether they acted negligently. Chainsaw disc injury cases can proceed under several legal theories.
Design Defect. Under California’s risk-benefit test, a product is defective in design if the risks of the design outweigh the benefits. Chainsaw discs place aggressive cutting teeth on a tool that operates at roughly five times the cutting speed of a chainsaw, without any of the safety features that chainsaws are required to have. The UK government has concluded these products cannot meet essential safety requirements. The applicable industry safety standard prohibits the combination entirely.
Failure to Warn. Many chainsaw discs are sold with inadequate or no warnings about the specific risk of violent kickback and the potential for amputation injuries. Even where warnings exist, they often fail to convey the severity of the hazard or the fact that the product has been banned in other countries and is warned against by grinder manufacturers themselves.
Negligence. Manufacturers and retailers who continue to sell chainsaw discs despite knowledge of serious injuries, international bans, and warnings from the angle grinder industry may be liable for negligence in continuing to place a dangerous product into the stream of commerce.
System Liability. Retailers who cross-market chainsaw discs alongside angle grinders, through shelf placement, “Frequently Bought Together” recommendations, or marketing materials describing compatibility, may bear additional liability for creating an unsafe product system. When a retailer sells both the grinder and the disc and affirmatively represents their compatibility, that retailer is not merely a passive seller of components. It has effectively assembled and endorsed a product combination that industry safety standards expressly prohibit.
Potential defendants in a chainsaw disc injury case include the disc manufacturer, the retailer that sold the disc, and in some cases the angle grinder manufacturer. Harbor Freight Tools, King Arthur’s Tools, Amazon and its third-party marketplace sellers, and various overseas manufacturers may all bear liability depending on the circumstances of the injury.
What to Do If You Were Injured
If you or a family member suffered an injury while using a chainsaw disc on an angle grinder, preserving evidence is critical to your legal claim. Keep the disc and the angle grinder in the condition they were in at the time of the accident. Do not discard, repair, or modify either product. Photograph the products, the workpiece, and your injuries. Obtain and preserve all medical records related to your treatment. If possible, document the packaging, instructions, and any warnings that accompanied the disc when you purchased it.
Importantly, document your setup at the time of the injury. Photograph the vise, clamps, workbench, or other means you used to secure the workpiece. Take photos showing where you were standing and how the workspace was arranged. This documentation is critical because it demonstrates that you were using the product responsibly and defeats the common defense argument that you were holding the wood with your hand or otherwise using the tool carelessly.
California’s statute of limitations imposes strict deadlines on product liability claims. Failing to act within the applicable time period can permanently bar your right to seek compensation. We encourage anyone who has been injured by a chainsaw disc product to consult with an attorney promptly.
Free Case Evaluation
Have you or a loved one suffered a serious injury while using a chainsaw disc or wood carving disc on an angle grinder? If you are a California resident or were injured in California, our experienced product liability attorneys will review your case at no cost and explain your legal options.
We handle all product injury cases on a contingency basis, meaning you pay no legal fees unless we recover compensation for you. Doyle APC brings over 28 years of experience in product liability law, taking on major corporations and their legal teams on behalf of injured consumers.
GET A FREE CASE EVALUATION