OT - Kenny Everett at the BBC

Hooray, it's Reg Prescott, who is to power tools what Sir Ranulph Fiennes is to frostbite.

Any real life Reggies around? I have an uncle who lost a couple of fingers to a circular saw bench. Me personally, got away with it so far, although I did stick a chisel in my finger in school woodwork class (Teacher - "what did I tell you never to do with a chisel?" Me - "use it to prise out a nail sir")

Reply to
Halmyre
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In message , Halmyre writes

Nothing physical but I did angle grind the cable off my lead lamp recently.

If you care to extend the terms I do have some experience of *brittle roof* syndrome and once overbalanced while cycling along a barbed wire fenced farm track:-(

Reply to
Tim Lamb

I know someone who lost a top finger joint to a staircase.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I know someone who lost a finger tip to someone's letterbox. He had to ring the bell to ask for it back!

Reply to
John Rumm

do you need puncture resistant tyres for that?

Jim K

Reply to
Jim K

I watched a neighbour demolish (intentionally) his single storey extension, prior to building a new one.

He knocked over one side wall. Then he knocked over the end wall. He started to knock over the other side wall, but at that point the flat roof fell on top of him.

He was a 'professional', not a DIYer though. It was a concrete roof, the only reason he survived uninjured was that he fell into a hollow in the rubble and the roof bridged the gap.

I was quite young and watched him thinking 'There's something supporting that roof that is hidden from my view'. I couldn't believe that people were made that stupid.

True.

Reply to
Onetap

This one was only a few weeks ago. He was on a ski-ing trip and a bit 'under the weather'. One of those fire-escape type staircases with small square holes in the cast treads. Fell, trapped finger and continued falling.

They packed the finger in snow and a plastic bag and gave it to his girlfriend.

She lost it.

Reply to
Bob Eager

as careful as she was with her virginity?

Jim K

Reply to
Jim K

Middle finger of his dominant hand? She'll miss that...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Nah. Little finger. She was lucky.

Reply to
Bob Eager

formatting link

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

prior to building a new one.

roof fell on top of him.

fell into a hollow in the rubble and the roof bridged the gap.

that roof that is hidden from my view'.

That's like cutting the branch you are sitting on.

Reply to
Gib Bogle

I doubt they had been invented:-)

As with most farm tracks, it was deeply rutted so I was unable to steer myself away from the fence....

Reply to
Tim Lamb

My grandfather owned a clothes factory. The cutting table was a very large table where many layers of fabric were stacked from the roll, the pattern pinned to the top one, and a very sharp knife used to cut through all the layers in one go. He cut the tips off two fingers when doing this on one occation. They were sewn back on and looked normal, but I don't think he regained full feeling in them.

Shortly after doing this, he invested in an electric cutting knife which was suspended from the ceiling.

There were also several incidents where the girls operating the sewing machines managed to stich a finger into the garment seam. A bottle of brandy was kept in the office for such incidents, but when my grandmother took over the running when grandfather was ill, the brandy treatment was switched to antiseptic treatment, and strangely it never happened again.

At school, a woodwork teacher cut the end of his thumb (IIRC) off on the rip saw. It was sadly ironic as he was an incredibly safety concious person.

When I worked for GEC, one of our installation engineers lost a finger when a large 19" rack unit was being installed, and part of the rack frame broke, bringing the rest of it down on his finger. The jolt also snapped the backplane of the computer in the rack.

Again at GEC, one development engineer got a very nasty burn when his metal watchstrap shorted out the 5V bus rails. I think the system had a 200A 5V supply that didn't even notice the extra load. The watchstrap spot welded on when contact was made and he had to wrench his wrist away a few times before the strap broke free. It was one of the chain link type, and he had it on his desk as a momento afterwards. One side was still fully flexible, but the links on the other side were all spot welded together and didn't bend at all. Ather this incident, all the racks were labeled with warning messages about high current conductors - remove all watches/jewelry before gaining access.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Your woodwork teacher wasn't a Mr.I.Brown by any chance? (Or else there are at least 2 without thumb tips...)

Reply to
Phil

Brings to mind a case where a trials engineer was working in a rig room down on the larkhill MoD proving ground... he was fiddling about in the back of CRT based display unit at the time, and shouted out to his co-worker to "turn it on"; which he did. There was a scream, which caused the power to be shut off rather sharpish, and our man was left sat in a corner for about 10 mins breathing, but obviously shaken and not saying much. Turns out he had the units 35kV EHT supply in his hands at the time.

Shortly after notices appeared in our development lab: "Warning 35kV is dangerous" - to which some wag had added "Yes, yust ask "

Reply to
John Rumm

Tales like that are why I keep my watch - sans strap - in my wallet rather than around my wrist :-)

Reply to
Jules Richardson

I've been zapped by a CRT EHT supply once before, and it's not something I'd ever care to repeat. I've had a few 240VAC shocks over the years, and that's just a bit of a tingle; in comparison the CRT made my entire arm hurt for several hours after :-(

Reply to
Jules Richardson

The one time I did that, I blew the 50 microamp fuse in the EHT output. I was about 13 at the time, and trying to convert the TV set into an oscilloscope, at which I had a limited success due to the fixed horizontal timebase frequency.

Reply to
John Williamson

No.

It's probably the bit workwork teachers are most likely to lose...

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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