Scary Stuff

[nuplowboy]

Let's see, dangerous tools in my shop...

1. Foundry (molten Aluminum holds my attention pretty well!)
2. Table saw - I keep guards on when possible and hands far away from the blade.
2b. Circular saw, a lot like the table saw, but less tied down.
3. Welder - amps, bright lights, and hot metal to burn fingers when its done!
4. That clock on the wall! Haste causes a lot of incidents.

[murphy625]

Scariest at the shop: Forklift drivers who have "other" things on thier mind.

Scariest at home: Table Saw / Radial Arm Saw and the water heater vent pipe that I keep banging my head on at least once a month for the past 15 years.

Murphy

[Epik]

What about the piece of brass that sits there all innocent....... little do you know how hot that puppy is =) Or my personal two favorites.... chuck wrench left in chuck ....or Tailstock hole not adequately drilled deep enough.... or at that.. TOO deep!


Epik

[Epik]

Scariest at home...... my beloved 045 AV super chainsaw....... Cuttin 8 inch Beech tree branch under pressure...... flung saw...... saw blade took off hat while cutting above my head...... I went with hittin the dirt missed 20 foot limb bein' pulled by my tractor to keep tension but manage to wrestle saw with one arm .... got right back up and did it to the next limb........ when the jub has to be done...... its gotta be done...... Cept this time The limbs didn't have the tension from the other half of the 80 foot tree log on them.

[ccm]

I've managed to get 2 steel splinters, and 1 aluminum chip in my eyes at various points in time. One of the steel splinters, I had on 2 pairs of saftey glasses, the spark bounced off my cheek and went up and under the goggles and glasses. I didn't even know anything happened until the next morning when I woke up with one eye swollen closed. I left work and had to ride my motorcycle with no depth perception to my wife's house( girlfriend at the time) and she took me to the hospital to have my cornea scraped, which was the roughest thing I've ever had to endure, and the liquid they put in your eye to numb it up feels like brake cleaner. The best part is the Dr. has me on this table, and while he's holding my eye open with a black light on to see the rust orbit which has formed around the splinter he says to me right before he goes in " Don't move a F*cking muscle!!... if you flinch or move in the slightest way, you're going to have much bigger problems" needless to say... I didn't move.
As for things that happened while I was present, I've had my mill grab a rag while machining steel, and keeping the extra cutting oil at bay.
The scariest thing was my friend was machining some aluminum on the lathe in our shop, and the cut was running right up to the Chuck, well he was taking to deep of a pass, which makes the power feed on the tool post turret hard to shut off due to the torque on the lead screw, and it got way to close to the chuck for comfort, he slammed the lever down to prevent destroying the cutting bit, and in the process I heard " SNAP " then he started jumping around like MC hammer, he got his right pinky finger under the lever when he pushed it down, snapping his finger (between the edge of the bench and the lever ) in two places in one shot. He reset the tooling and went right on working, wasn't until a week went by that he went to the doctor's, had an exray done and found out he broke his finger, which took months to heal up correctly.

I'll leave out the sunburn from tig welding with goggles on, yes you do end up looking like a raccoon... lol.

-Art

[sendkeys]

not sure how many of you seen this one but it's sure is funny

[vacpress]

so. i hate shop accidents. please be carefull! DO NOT LET YOUR SLEVES GET CAUGHT IN ANY SPINNING PARTS!! Also, USE A F-ING VICE, OR CLAMPS. NOT HANDS

. heres a hint for you guys, checkout the newish movie "the machinist". its a smaller indipendant film and you will probably greatly enjoy it. i did. it is a paranoia inducing, and the story is allrite. i like alot of indi films and i wanted to see this one badly because it combined my interests in machining, with my interests in film.

robert.

[jdebuck]

(Collision Repair Shop) I was building a mobile truck rack to hold truck beds @ work while the veh or a bedside is under repairs, replacement or refinish. I had thought that I was finished with all of the welds and had took off my welding gloves. Upon the final inspection of the rack, I had found one inch and half weld on a piece of angle iron that I had missed. I figured no big deal and turned the welder back on. I did not put my gloves back on thinking that this would take but just a few seconds...what a STUPID thing to do...a piece of slag popped from the weld and had landed on my gold wedding ring, not yet knowing this, I pulled my hand back thinking it had was just a burn to the skin but the pain was still unbelievable...I shook my hand so hard that a watch that I had on came off and broke apart when it hit the floor. I then saw the small 1/16 piece of slag had welded itself to my ring. The slag and its heat had traveled thru the entire gold ring almost instantly. I quickly tried getting the ring off...and in doing so, it peeled the skin off for about 2/3 of my ring finger along with it. I do know that wearing any type of jewelry is dangerous around tools at any time...I was a line tech for 15 years before getting into management and although I had not forgotten this rule, I simply ignored it thinking that it would never happen to me. COMPLACENCY and being overconfident = careless, in any given situation and can be very dangerous.

I also had a strut spring compressor have one of its arms break off, releasing the spring under its full tension...the spring had only grazed across the top of my right hand, but it probably would have taken my whole hand off with it, had it been directly over the top of it. This spring actually flew straight up and at a slight angle until it had hit the 14 foot ceiling of the shop, bounced off it and went for about another 30 foot before richocheting off of a cars hood and it finally stopping after hitting a wall...thankfully no one else was in its path when this happened. I was lucky that it did not break any bones...but my whole hand was black & blue for about 2 weeks. The owner of the shop had the metal of the compressor checked and it was found to be fatiqued in the area that it broke. Was it a design failure? Your guess would be as good as mine...the purpose in mentioning this is to only remind you that safety checks should always be performed before using any type of equipment that has the potential to cause you bodily harm or possibly even death.

If you have read this reply in its entirety...I do hope that by reading over my mistakes and mishaps, it will possibly jog your memory the next time that maybe your thinking "It will just take a second" or not thinking of the possible dangers in whatever you may be doing.

[miljnor]

the most dangerous peice of equipment I got in the shop or at home is........ the old faithfull Crainium.

lets face it boys and girls no matter how much safty equipement you have it that big old widget machine you were standing next to lets go and your in its path your going to the hospital or worse.

you got to be as carfull as you feel is neccesary but it only take that one mistake at the wrong time and its done.

I have fallen into a running fanbelt, had a table saw suck me into the blade, radiator hose blew up in my face, hand caught in fan blade, lathe chuck hit me in the head. splinters in the eye and a shifter lever threw the foot... the list gets longer and none of those were permenent injuries!

and with the exception of the hand in the fan blade. I had all the proper safety equipent on. I aint dead or missing any fingers! so some of it worked.

The splinter in the eye happened while hiking and I had glasses on!

if you consider the amount of accidents I am unlucky, but, if you consider how little damage I have taken I am very lucky.

so be carfull and wear you glasses and keep you hands clear but keep it real! Life is dangerous but I would trade it for nothing

Michael t.

[miljnor]

or is that "Iwouldn't trade it for nothing".. doh!

one of these days I going to hav ta learn to typo!

[skippy]

Most modern day concrete trucks (the ones that deliver ready mixed concrete to the job site) have their bowl (?) driven directly from a geared down hydraulic pump but previously they were driven by a huge chain that went around to circumference of the bowl and the chain was connected to a car motor and automatic transmission. These chains were about 100mm (4") pin to pin centres and about 75mm (3") wide. I was taking off one of these chains one day and instead of using a puller I decided to punch out the joiner link with a hardened steel punch and hammer. Well you guessed it. Hardened steel against hardened steel doesn't go. My apprentice suddenly screamed from 3 metres away and there inbedded in his leg near his knee was a good size lump of chain link. By the time we got him to the hospital the piece of steel had worked its way down the artery and ended up near his ankle! Didn't I feel bad. Lucky it wasn't an eye.
Skippy

[trilect]

The nastiest thing I ever saw in a shop. I saw a fella try to hand choke a running cummons diesel engine, sucked his hand in to the wrist and we had to take him with the manifold on his arm to the hospital where it was cut off due to swelling of all the broken bones.