Don't do this!

[azotto]

I've had my share of "oh shits" over the years. Shirts set on fire while grinding, burned hand from picking up the wrong bracket I just made etc...etc... Had a 8" wheel explode on my bench grinder once with parts hitting me in the gut and further south. That one hurt. Made a few trips to the ER to have "objects" removed from my eye. Funny thing is I always seem to get eye injuries when I wear safety glasses. The last time it still hurt several days later so made the trip to have it checked out again and found out there was a rust ring from the sliver they removed earlier. The doc broke out a pin vise and drill bit and after the eye went numb, drilled out the rust ring. It's a really weird watching a drill bit come towards your eye.

 

[jklingel]

It's a really weird watching a drill bit come towards your eye.

And you sat still for that? Man, it hurts just reading about it. I drilled a gas tank on an old Chevy once, so I could drain and remove it. It had a rotted out frame, so I figured I'd just put a screw and neo washer in the hole when I was done and it would last the life of the car. After the tank drained, I crawled under to work. Too bad there was one more drop of gas in the tank and if fell in my ear. By the time I crawled out from under the car, my head was locked on my shoulder from writhing in pain. You may as well have driven a 20 penny nail into my brain; God that hurt. My mom drove me to the doc, who washed it with soapy water and said to go home and wait till it quit hurting. About 3 hours later I could breathe again. I wear ear plugs now.

 

[azotto]

He had some "magic drops" and I didn't feel a thing. My vision changed during the procedure from his applying pressure and I did have a death grip on the chair arms though anticipating the pain that never was. When he finished, he put a antibiotic on it, covered it with a patch and sent me home. Felt sooo much better.

I've been cut, burned, nailed, screwed, stapled, poked, scraped and bruised and there are really only 2 kinds of pain I just can't deal with...tooth ache and ear ache. They send me over the top.

 

[engineer2]

Same here. Both times I gut rust in my eye I was wearing safety glasses. One time they got it out with a needle, another time the ER doc used a dental drill. I swore off doing exhaust work for a while.

 

[knucklehead]

i got a REALLY bad paper cut on my eye once from "aggressively" flipping through a set of blueprints in my office. that hurt just like a punch in the eye! took well over a year to heal up properly. mabey i should be wearing safety glasses while reading blueprints in my office!

 

[Robbo]

I've gotten the old "dental drill to the eyeball in the ER" routine as well. Was stupidly using my regular glasses as a substitute for safety glasses while grinding a shelf bracket and a small sliver flew under them.

I didn't really "feel" anything but you are right, watching the bit come towards your eye is a little unsettling... not to mention the way my vision started "vibrating" as the bit cut out the sliver.... I was watching my wife across the ER exam room as he did it and she started to sort of vibrate and get blurry....

Rob

 

[dirttracker18]

I was about to leave on a trip when I noticed a piece of the motorhome that was flapping in the wind. I reached under with the cordless drill to drill a hole so I could rivet the peice on. When I was pulling the drill out from under the motorhome my finger hit the trigger and the bit caught my sleeve on the arm that was on the ground. By the time I let the trigger go I was sure the bit was deep in my arm as it twisted in my sleeve tight to my arm. I carefully clicked it into reverse and backed it out. To my amazement (and my wife who witnessed the whole thing) there was just some minor scrapes from the edge of the bit and a whole lotta bruising. The tirp was still on but with a very sore and bruised bicep but no major damage.
I can happen so fast.
I also witness a 14 inch cutting disk on a chop saw blow apart and hit my father in the stomach. It resulted in a herniated navel. Ya, strange but true. Always spend the money for good cutting disks. Those cheap ones always seem to come apart.

 

[jklingel]

Glad you survived the Mad Driver. I am forever screwing sheet rocks screws into something and it is COLD as hell. I thus bare my hands and suffer, or, too often, I keep my thin polypro gloves on to hold the screws till they start. More than once I have twisted a finger tight against a sheet rock screw that is boring into wood and trying to take my flesh along for the ride. Those rock screws **** up a poly pro glove right now. Even worse is when it happens on a drill press, but I've pretty well resigned myself to just suffer then; one or two close calls on a drill press was enough.

 

[welderwink]

took a 4in grinder off my chin when the wire wheel gripped the metal. maybe i should have been a boxer cause i got a strong chin apparently.

 

[Spareparts]

When working on a Hi Line project (Power Line) in western Ks we were hauling poles on the right of way we seen a truck pull up to a barn, someone went into the barn. As we got closer to the barn (about 10-15 min) another truck pulled up to the barn and a guy went in, then he came outwaving his arms and then started hitting on the hood of the truck, you could tell something was wrong. I was a field mechanic, and on a job like this I would be out in front to open and close gates, when we seen this guys actions the foreman and I both headed towards him. When we got there the guy was almost crying and really upset, he would head towards the barn then turn towards the truck and hit it again. The foreman tried to calm the man down and I went into the barn, and there was what was left of his son, he had started a tactor and some piece of equiptment and got his coveralls tangled in the PTO shaft, it was a mess. The rest of the morning was consumed with Sheriff, Corner, Neighbors, and EMT's for the Dad.That was the second PTO accident I had seen the first one was kinda funny but this one was seriously disturbing.

 

[crewchief888]

a few years ago working down in fl, i was torching off a bucket cutting edge.
it was mid afternoon, summertime, all i wanted to do was finish that cut and take a break. i was soaking wet with sweat, and my gloves were smoldering.
i fianlly finished the cut , stepped back, shut off the torch , and took my gloves off. i realized one foot was a little warmer than the other. i looked down, my boot is smoking, and my pants smoldering. i got outsaide and turned a hose on my pants leg to put it out, and pulled off my boot. my sock was scorched from the steel toe. my boot shrunk up bad enough i couldnt get it back on.

looked kinda dumb walking through the shop with my pants 1/2 gone, and my boot 1/2 way on

 

[tj2]

I did something similar with a loose t-shirt and a grinder with a wire wheel, damn thing took a good few inches of skin off my belly when it grabbed the shirt and wound itself up tight.

Been there, done that. In my case it was a sweatshirt and a 4 1/2" DeWalt grinder. I was stripping rust off of some angle iron, and it caught my shirt when I bent over. Left a nice spot on my belly where the skin was taken off before it would enough shirt into the grinder to stall it out.

 

[rcjohnson]

A few years ago I decided to make a knife. Everything went fine until the final buffing on the blade. I have a large bench grinder so I took one of the wheels off and put this huge buffing wheel on it. I loaded up the wheel with polishing rouge and started on my artwork. 3450 RPM and the blade hangs up! Luckily it went away from me and inbedded itself in the wall. If it had gone the other way I'm not sure I would be here. Never touched it after that.

 

[Professur]

I'm super **** about safety, and I really wish I could post that I'd never been tagged ... but I can't. Putting down a still spinning 4.5" grinder with a cutting disk. It was turned off and just spinning down. It wasn't perfectly flat on it's spine and it rocked slightly. Not much, maybe half an inch. Just enough to tag my knuckle. Took skin and meat in a nice clean 1/8" x 1/2" groove up and down on the knuckle. Took ages for it to heal,and bled like a stuck pig. That was just an graze, at maybe quarter speed.

Now,the tool is fully stopped before I put it down. Costs me maybe an additional 20 minutes a day standing like a statue holding tools uselessly, but I can live through that.

 

[OccupantRJ]

Back years ago when my Dad was still living, my then 35 yr old
brother-in law Jeremy was talking about wanting a router to try out his
woodworking talent. My Dad got up from his chair and went out to the
workshop to get one, and Jeremy followed, after finishing the conversation
with my Mom. Dad and Jeremy met at the top of the back steps, so they just
stood there and talked about the tool. The router had a 3/4" through-slotted
cutter in it, protruding about 3/8". Jeremy wanted to hear the router run,
so Dad directed him to the overhead soffit, where there was an electrical
outlet used for Christmas lights. Jeremy, holding the router in his left hand,
dangles it down by his left hip as he stretches upwards with his right hand
to plug the unit in. The toggle switch on the router was apparently in the
"on" position, un-noticed at the time, where Jeremy had been absent-mindedly
flipping it back and forth while talking. When he plugged the tool in, it of
course instantly started. Dad said he heard a heavy propeller-like sound and
saw something big go flying by his head into the yard, so he turned to see
what it was. There was the router, now unplugged, with a pair of men's
briefs hung up in the cutter, lying on the ground!! Dad whirled back around
to see Jeremy shaken, face white as a sheet, and eyes big as saucers.
Jeremy FLEW to the bathroom to see what damage had been done. (privates
seemed to be a major concern) The only physical damage was a 3/4" hole in
the left hip seam of his jeans, with a slight band-aid wound on his hip
where the router bit had nicked him. The router had sucked his entire pair
of underwear out of his pants in hundredths of a second! Luckily, nothing
critical was hurt, but he ended up with a bruise in his inner crotch at his
left leg, and a severely injured pride. In-law visitation dwindled for a
while after that.
For years afterward, my Dad could not tell the story without crying from
laughing so hard, telling how he stood outside the bathroom door, along with
my HIGHLY concerned sister asking "Jeremy, are you all right?"
Jeremy never mentioned wanting to take up woodworking again.

RJ

 

[Big_John]

I've seen a number of dumb things done over the years. When I was a kid in high school, one of the other kids had some deal going on where he had to wear a tie. The shop teacher told him to take it off and of course... he didn't. He managed to get it caught in one of the lathes just as it was coasting to a stop. Fortunately, he didn't get hurt but he was stuck bent over with his face a few inches from the chuck. The shop teacher heard him yell and went over, saw he was OK, just stuck.... So he just walked away and let him stand there for a while and think about it. He came back about 20 minutes later and cut the tie.

High School shop in a Vo-Tech was the greatest back then. All my teachers were tough WW2 and Korean vets that went to college on the GI bill. They didn't take any **** and we all respected them for it.

 

[Big_John]

Oh yeah.. and back to the OP. You can use a long extension cord with a small strand of copper wire stuck in the slots to set off the Oxy-acetylene bag. Put that end in the bag and plug the other in the wall when you want the bag to explode. Oh, and and a nice mix of oxygen in the bag with the acetylene too.
Not saying I ever did that and had the cops come... really... it wasn't me... honest.

 

[rustbucket49]

If any of you guys have ever worked for Halliburton on an HT400 frac pump you can relate to this. Back in the early 1980's I worked on a frac crew during the summers while going to college. The HT400 has a couple of big Detroit diesels that started with air starters. So you had to crank up an auxiliary engine to air up the system so you could crank the big engines.

I was wearing an old Dickies work shirt - untucked of course - one day. You see where this is going..... I cranked up the auxiliary engine and my untucked shirt got caught by the end of the crankshaft. Not quite 11,000 rpm like one of you other guys mentioned, but very quickly it was sucking my shirt and me into the shaft. Luckily my shirt ripped and it basically ripped the entire shirt off of me. Needless to say, I had no other shirt that day and ended up getting more than a little sunburned...

 

[yotarover]

after a few nights of dreaming and sketching i had a plan a new bumper. so i had 3)6' ft sticks of cast iron pipe and a ****** kawaisaki grinder last inch or to of cutting the wheel jumps off and onto my left hand 75 stitches and 2 scars never felt a thing

 

[hoopty388]

I once got my grinder caught in my t-shirt and it ran up across my stomach!
heart like hell.