How dangerous are lathes?

[Lobby Dosser]

Seems like my random series of events just about always involves a bowl with a hidden weakness. After that, things are moving so quickly I suspect physics may have taken over.

[nailshooter41]

Seeming clear to me, I must be obtuse in my explanation. I think we are saying the same thing, but maybe not.

An accident is an uplanned event. When I said " I think it is a sure bet that careless distraction is certainly a recipe for accidents", I meant that someone that is not paying attention to what they are doing is more likely to have an accident.

But in my mind, someone that isn't paying attention to what they are doing (especially when using any kind of tool) is careless. An injury due to wandering, unfocused mind (distracted?) is an injury due to carelessness. Maybe from negligent stupidity, maybe just from not paying attention to what you are doing. If injury happens in those circumstances, it is not an accident at all, but careless stupidity. It is injury due to dumbass, of which I have suffered my share.

and there are >still events that transpire that you cannot anticipate. Safety gear and focus are the best ways >to keep from having accidents, and to mitigate the results when you have them.

I was agreeing with you, again by saying "sometimes you do all you can". An idiot doesn't care. A lazy ass won't try or care. Someone that doesn't think won't wear any safety protection. Only someone that thinks about the consequences that occur if there is a moment in the Bahamas while using a tool, or someone that has had an actual accident will wear protection.

Pertaining to the lathe, we have had numerous injuries reported while using them, mostly due to improper tool use/bad technique, the wrong tool for the job, or carelessness. That probably takes in 95% of all the injuries. These are injuries (not intentional) due to dumbass.

However, we have also had 3 or 4 broken scrapers (Crown, I think) that shot broken steel out, but only nicked one of the guys. I was turning a very carefully inspected golf ball sized piece of wood at about 4000 between centers, and the piece loosed a quarter sized piece of wood (NOT on the end I was working on) that whacked me in the forehead just above the googles. I had a pretty nasty dent in my head and it bled like hell. I thought as expressed here that all runaway chunks or chips had to go away from the turner when using the lathe.... I had heard that was rule. We even had a really experienced turner in my group that had a bowl gouge break and had one large piece fly off and bounce around unitl it just whacked him in the chest (it was Sorby - cheerfully replaced by Woodcraft). Bowls that break into pieces from UNSEEN defects, chunks of unseen knots or occlisions can take flight.

If you are 100% focused on what you are doing, if you check and cannot see potential problems with the task you are going to perform, if you use the right tool for the right job, if you use the right material for the job, if you use the right techniques and methods for the task at hand AND you still are injured without being negligent to due diligence of your own safety, that is an accident.

Now, was that clear as mud and twice as thick? ;^)

It's just my opinion anyway. In our society today, it is never really our fault. We are all victims of something. I see people do the most assinine things and scream about how they had an accident. Because they didn't anticipate they would pay the price for carelessness, in their minds, that makes it an accident. Injury by dumbass, says I.

Robert

[Patriarch]

"Robatoy" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I have grown sons, all pretty bright. One of them, perhaps the brightest, can be a serious space cadet at times. Loses focus on mundane activities, and puts all around him at risk.

We try really hard not to distract him when he has sharp tools at hand. Riding with him when he drives is serious business.

Patriarch

[bent]

IOW you may want leather around your mid-section too

[Robatoy]

We are on the same page. (CRINGE, I hate that over-used phrase..) Dumbasses and lazy farks take chances. If I rip down some cobwebs from the dusty caverns of my memory banks, I seem to remember that on the Space Shuttle there are 900+ 'criticality #1' items that on launch if ONE of them fails.....Kaboom! The other Kabooms that happen, is when people become careless and arrogant and go beyond what is considered safe---> taking a chance. Nobody has control of

100.00000000% of all parameters.. and that includes a small tectonic plate shuffle which will make your gouge go a LITTLE BITTY bit too far into the bowl. Them's accidents.

'Twas, actually. Thanks for taking the time to respond in such detail.

Yup. Indeed. When you have seen somebody about to do something dangerous and stupid...did you ever fill your lungs with extra air, so that you could express a warning "EXTRA loud", just to realize, that a yell would only startle the stupid fark and make things worse?

I call them 'headshakers'.

r

[B A R R Y]

So, think out of the box!

[Mark Jerde]

After that Mark Foley thing I don't use this cliche anymore... ;-)

-- Mark

[Robatoy]

Mark Foley thing I don't use this cliche anymore... ;-)

Why don't congressmen no longer use bookmarks? They just bend over a page.

[George]

And yet it was the externals of the intern that caught Billie Jeff ....

[Prometheus]

Not true at all. There's a hunk of wood spinning around, and you're jabbing a sharp piece of metal into it. Provided you're careful, it's safe enough, but it's just as dangerous as any other tool, and more dangerous than some.

Depends on what you're doing- I've had it happen a few times when cutting wet wood very thin. It dries on the lathe, and if it cracks, it will explode off at fairly high velocity. More *dangerous* to my mind are spinning chuck jaws that can quickly tear all the skin off a knuckle or remove a fingernail if you get too close, and getting something loose wound around the spindle. Easy to bust up a finger or two if you're sanding the inside of a hollow form like a vase with sandpaper held in your hand.

It's strong enough- unless you're doing something really crazy, like turning wood with live ammunition in it. Think about it for a minute- the rotational force of the piece isn't the only thing that affects how it's going to fly off if something breaks or is not held correctly. Gravity has it's say as well- and from previous exerience when I got my first chuck, anything that could possibly be heavy enough to break the sheild drops just as fast or faster than it is moving towards you. Most heavy things will fall fast, then roll along the floor- not shoot at you like a cannonball. The face shield will easily save you from high velocity splinters and smaller chunks of wood that are moving really fast, and those are the dangers that piece of equipment is guarding you against.

A dust mask is always a good idea, not matter what you're doing to make dust.

As always, common sense will keep you safe as much as anything else.

[Prometheus]

I've got one that is clear, lightweight and comfortable, but it builds up so much static electricity that is sucks every bit of dust it can hold migrates to it immediately, and make it hard to see. So, I hedge my bets a little, and use it when I have any suspicions that what I'm doing might come loose or break apart. I always wear it for doing anything with metal, especially after I looked at the stick I used to true the first disk I tried spinning- getting hit with that would be about as nice as trying to catch a circular saw blade tossed like a frisbee with your teeth. For things like roughing between centers, I don't get too worked up about it.

Of course, any helpful tips on eliminating that static charge would probably convince me to use the sucker at all times.

[Prometheus]

You know, that makes me wonder about something I had forgotten about-

In a high school woodshop I saw during a voc. school class a couple of years ago, all of the lathes had lexan hoods over them that could be flipped back if needed. Why isn't that standard equipment? Granted, many of them would probably be removed and go in the corner next to the table saw guard, but it seems like a good thing to have on when roughing wood with bark still on it or with uncertain chucking.

[Puckdropper]

Prometheus wrote in news: [e-mail]:

It sounds like its negative of reduced access won't impede lathe use much and could potentially save you from injury once or twice. It's not like some of those safety guards they put on things (bench grinder) that do nothing but get in the way.

Puckdropper

[Puckdropper]

"Upscale" wrote in news:2b874$456e0cb1$cef88bc5$ [e-mail]:

I think (but don't quote me on this) that a chuck set sufficiently high to allow materials to turn on the lathe while still slipping if the average human resisted could be employed to prevent loose clothing/wrapping type injuries.

Puckropper

[badger.badger]

Polonium antistatic brush on ioniser?

[George]

Lots of lathes used to come with. Ours had Delta's hybrid of wire cage and plastic windows. Didn't need the cage behind if it was placed up to the wall, and the arm that mounted it actually got in the way of doing that. The plastic windows were a static-plagued joke, and would have become worse had anyone been allowed to finish on the lathe. They were abandoned when they were so bad they had to be replaced.

Mechanicals dreamed up to attempt to escape liability for poor human practice, and probably in full knowledge of their ineffectiveness.

One thing I give them is they would protect the passers-by from the lathe operation. The person using the lathe, of course, had no reason whatsoever to be in the fragment zone, nor any cause to turn the equipment on until firm grip was assured on the main piece.

[Nova]

Try one of the static cling sprays designed for laundry care.

[CW]

Wipe it down with a dryer sheet.

[Doug Miller]

The laws of physics dictate quite the opposite, in fact. To begin with, the mass of an object has absolutely nothing to do with how fast it falls (as was famously demonstrated by Galileo some five centuries ago).

Again -- the velocity of a falling object is completely independent of its mass.

Which direction it goes depends mostly on which direction it's moving when it comes loose (e.g. on the back side of the work, moving upward -- it's gonna launch!); at even modest rotational speeds, the velocity of the circumference of a large workpiece exceeds anything that would be imparted by gravity in the very short distance between spindle or faceplate and the shop floor.

Example: 10-in diameter workpiece rotating at 500 rpm; lathe center at 42" above the floor.

The edge of the workpiece is moving at (10 pi * 500) inches per minute = almost 22 feet per second -- but an object falling only 42" doesn't attain a velocity of quite 15 fps before it hits the floor.

[Brian Henderson]

In the vast majority of cases, yes.

Going by the definition of 'accident' that you give, 'unforseen' and 'unplanned' have no meaning to someone who understands the risks and plans for them. If you're an idiot and don't know what you're doing and don't plan for safety and failure, then you're going to get injured a lot more often than someone who approaches the task intelligently and rationally.