Shop accidents!

[toxo]

I didn't want to tag this onto the sewing machine accidents post so I'll say it here.

Many years ago an engineering pal told me about the day when when a 1 1/2 inch by 12 inch grindstone came loose at full speed. It whizzed around the workshop 3 times causing much damage before coming to a stop such was the inertia.

My worst nightmare accident is getting a tie caught in one of those. You wouldn't be able to stop it in time. Makes me shiver. Is why ties are banned.

[Samalan]

I was a roofer, worked on church steeples, and was also a cement finisher and cabinet maker, all of which were dangerous jobs. I fell 3 feet from a steep ladder, and that was a life-changing event. you never know. LOL

[Gezzer]

Had a 1/2 x 2 1/2 carbide door panel bit come out of a running router , hit me in the stomach . Got some minor cuts and lost a shirt , wasn't my time as it  should have come out my back ....

[toxo]

15 minutes ago, Gezzer said:

Had a 1/2 x 2 1/2 carbide door panel bit come out of a running router , hit me in the stomach . Got some minor cuts and lost a shirt , wasn't my time as it  should have come out my back ....

Close shave. Did it wrap around your shirt?

[Gezzer]

33 minutes ago, toxo said:

Close shave. Did it wrap around your shirt?

 I was wearing a tee shirt which wrapped it up ,  had to cut  the bit out  of the shirt .

[AlZilla]

3 hours ago, Gezzer said:

 I was wearing a tee shirt which wrapped it up ,  had to cut  the bit out  of the shirt .

That armored tee-shirt saved you. Sucked up the energy of the spinning bit.

EDIT: 7th grade wood shop teacher was missing a couple of fingers and had a scar on the same wrist, having almost lost the hand. Years earlier his necktie got caught in a wood lathe. Maybe that's why I don't have all the great war stories you guys do ...

[Mulesaw]

I managed to get my finger caught in a rotating bit on a spindle moulder. That didn't look so pretty. 
But nothing was really harmed, so just a bit more scars to the collection. :-)

I have always been a bit scared of the Z-blades for the moulder, those things are aggressive, once a board got caught while I was shifting it around, smashed the end into a wall and made a big dent in the mortar covered wall. 

[Northmount]

Try 20 feet with an extension ladder sliding out from under me.  Landed on my feet, crushed right ankle that the MD couldn't even bother to look at the x-ray or radiologists report.  Came down between 2 rising stem gate valves on 6" lines.  Right side of my shirt was ripped open, slight scratch on my chest.  Could have ripped my shoulder off if I had been a few inches further forward.  Very thankful that didn't happen.  The ankle was bad enough, limped for 15 years.  Still can't bear to lace up an ice skate to go skating 54 years later.  For years, too much or too little exercise on that ankle resulted in severe pain.  Had to keep moving, but not too much,

We have lots of safety standards.  They are there for a reason.  If I had waited for my fellow worker to come back and brace the ladder before I stepped down onto the rung, this wouldn't have happened.  He was called away because a couple 1000 scfm air compressors had tripped and had to be restarted immediately else the whole utility plant that supplied steam, compressed air, 54MW of electricity, utility water, boiler feed water, cooling water would have been lost and the whole process including a refinery would have shut down.  We were in a isolated location 100 miles from the electrical grid.  I should have just sat there and waited!

[mbnaegle]

Had some mishaps over the years, always due to being an idiot with a tool or using it without the proper guards. Personally, I don't like trying to make machine's "idiot proof" as it seems that they keep coming up with better idiots, but if something had a guard when it was new, it's better to keep it in place and adjust your job rather than take it off and forget about it. Ultimately, no guard will compensate for someone not keeping their mind on their work or trying to do it faster than is safe. It's better to treat the machine like it would kill you if it could, like a tiger on a chain, not a kitten to play with. 

I was cutting up some 3x3x3 hardwood blocks a few years back and didn't plan ahead and cut them to length before I sized the height/width on the jointer or planer. Being in a hurry, I made the idiot decision to run the short blocks through the table saw. One bound up and kicked back into my face, making a comical *ploink* noise and I later found it had a dent in the side where it hit the floor AFTER hitting me. It momentarily dislocated my jaw, knocked my safety glasses off my face, vision went blurry for a bit, and I was bleeding pretty good. Got a ride to the hospital and was EXTREAMLY LUCKY that it just skipped off my face doing no bone damage, no bruising, and I only needed 14 stitches and some superglue to get put back together. Also fortunate that the ER guy on duty that day specialized in facial sutures, and he dug some wood shrapnel out of my face. Got a neat scar out of the deal, but better than that I gained more respect for using a table saw correctly and I replaced the missing blade guard. I finished the blocks later (belt sander), which were being cut into some support rests for a tool, and the one with the buzz mark across the side where the blade caught It I kept visible for a personal reminder.

Speaking of table saws, long before my time my dad worked with a leather shop that did silver work as well. He was doing some silver work on a mechanical die press and it took the last 1/4" off of one thumb. He went to the hospital but didn't bring the severed bit, so they had to pull the bottom edge of the wound up under the nail (which he said hurt the most). For the longest time, he had one thumb shorter than the other, which made for some fun stories, until one day he cut 1/4" off of the OTHER thumb while using a table saw. This time the doctors didn't want the bit and stitched it up like they had the other thumb, so for many years he kept the severed bit in his desk in a little jar of formaldehyde. He used to say when he was buried he wanted us to burry ALL of him, but when he passed we couldn't find it (I miss him anyway and don't mind if he wants to haunt me).

Speaking of thumb's, another time I was making adjustments to a band knife splitter, which required the machine to be opened up but running so I can see how it was moving and make adjustments. While I was sitting and giving it a moment to run, I noticed one of the blade wipers was vibrating. I thought that it was covering the blade and I stuck my thumb on it to see if the vibration would stop, and when I did it slid back letting the blade slice into my thumb about 1/2". The guy I was with wanted to call 911 but after I had a chance sit and to breath through the wooziness, it didn't seem so bad once I taped it up, so I finished my work for the day and went home. When I got there my visiting father-in-law helped me re-dress it and told me 'Nope. You're going to the hospital.' Once there, the nurse messed around with it cleaning it out and by-golly that was x10 worse than when it happened. They recommended stitches but too much time had passed (6 hours), so they would have to cut it back open If I wanted it to leave less of a scar. I was more concerned with infection than cosmetics and they confirmed that I didn't NEED stitches, so they taped it up and gave me some antibiotics. As it healed, I realized I had cut through a nerve as the end of my thumb had lost feeling, but it closed up fine and didn't hurt. After 3 or so years I've got about 90% feeling in the end again. I've gotten nicked by non-moving band knives plenty of times over the years, but I still cringe when I think of getting my fingers that close to a moving blade again.

 

[bruce johnson]

When I first got my business license I had a county inspection - some work place guy and a fire dept inspector. Not  pain in the a** guys, they just wanted to know what they’d up against in a fire or industrial accident. I’m a one man shop so mostly formality probably. Really pretty cool guys. The work-place guy noticed I didn’t have a workplace safety poster in place. He said to just send him a picture when I got it and he’d sign me off. I came up with this. He said it was official enough for him and one of the best he’d seen.