If you visit countryside museums with old agricultural or workshop equipment, you can verify they are basically all maiming devices. Things used even in the 1950s. In one machine you push a piece of wood downwards and there's a blade that hacks slices off the bottom. Real tough men pushed right till the end so there was no waste. They often had some missing fingertips. Some really small changes made those accidents avoidable, like using some other pieces to hold the worked piece.