Dancin' as fast as I can boss...

[lsfoils]

Some time ago I worked in a repair shop. We fixed lots of machines which included wood lathes and the chucks to go with them. One day, one of the other technicians, who's english isn't too good, was going to check the runout of a wood chuck and he asked me how to do it. Just so happened I was going to check out a wood lathe which just happen to have the right kind of threaded spindle. Well, I had him clean the mounting surfaces and mount the chuck onto the spindle of that lathe (I'd already checked the runout of the spindle and it was within a few tenths). Had him mount a drill blank into the chuck and I clamped a dial indicator onto the tool post mount and without further fanfare turned on the machine. Just at that point I realized that the lathe was set to its highest speed, which was too sinking fast and without thought, turned the switch back off. Well, the lathe spindle stopped almost immediately, but the chuck didn't. And soon it was slamming against a wall in the shop and then over to the work bench whence it came and then back to the wall. Of course there were two bystanders who happened to be in the way and one of them is screaming at the other in Vietnamese about how the other's house should catch on fire, who's dog should be run over and who was going to suffer a broken nose as soon as he could stop dancing... not understanding a word, I made my escape as soon as it was prudent...

[kong]

That is a good story, I can just picture the scene

[ger21]

When I was in 7th grade woodshop, a kid loaded a lathe with a 4" x 4" x ~18" piece of wood, and without checking, turned on the lathe at full speed. it flew off and a corner hit him exactly right between the eyes, splitting his safety glasses perfectly in half. (one half slid over right in front of where I was standing ). About 2 seconds later blood began to flow like I've never seen since. Because of the safety glasses, all he needed was a few stitches, but he had two very black eyes for quite a while.

[BarnBurner]

I first started running a metal lathe in a really low budget high-school. We didn't even have tooling for the lathe I was using, so everything I built was with files!

And the files didn't even have handles (did I mention low budget?). Everyone in the shop was so interested in seeing the machine run, and what I was making, I was constantly turning back and forth from the work to talk to them. I kept hitting the turning chuck with the file, and got stabbed about 14 times. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to make me appreciate a file handle when I saw one for the first time in Trade school!

[jhwatts]

I left the chuck in a rather old Leblond lathe once and switched it on. Rather ugly. Not to mention my purple hand afterwards. That’s right up there with the time I tried to pierce my ear with a drill bit. For some odd reason I was trying to plunge a drill bit completely through a mold on a tree J250 CNC. Did I mention don’t try to pull long stringy shavings out of lathe with your bare hands.