DIY death

Sounds like the fault may have been with the disc rather than the grinder itself.

NT

A disc on a "home-made angle grinder using a lawnmower motor"? What motor? What disc? Disc mounted by what means? Lots of questions, more than these very bacic ones, to be answered before real comment may be made.

Ye-es fair comment, but I once had to attend a fatality where a guy was working on a roof using a (as it happens stolen) 9" angle grinder without a guard. The police thought at first he'd been electrocuted, but it turned out the blade had shattered and embedded itself into his skull. Not a pretty sight. The moral, I guess, is *never* use an angle grinder without a guard.

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Did you hear the one about the chap who tried to get a pair of trainers off a powerline using a pocketknife tied to a copper pipe? At the Darwin Awards his mother stated: "We will never know what happened."

Like mother like son, eh?

Or his "grinder" was spinning it too fast (much more than 80m/s at the outside edge and the things can fly appart. (most common cause of disc failure is leaving them to get damp).

I'd say never use an angle grinder ever. They scare the s**t out of me. There are always other ways of doing the same thing.

Short answer. No guard. Any disc can explode. That's why you have a guard.

I'd heard dropping them also, often in the supply chain before you bought them.

Feeding them into the work to fast can also cause them to bust, the same applies to bench grinders and cutting disc's.

Blimey. One of the most useful tools I own.

Angle grinder disks don't explode. There's a large mesh moulded in there to stop them doing just that. They can burst, and they can throw chunks, but they should _never_ under any conceivable circumstance "explode" in the way that an unreinforced wheel so easily can.

I bet this guy was using an unreinforced wheel, such as a bench grinder wheel. Store it damp for a few years, mount it unevenly and over speed it, it's bound to happen.

I like angle grinders. Of all the whirling abrasive machines out there, they're far safer than most of the others.

They do if you don't wear good eye protection.

As I've got older my attitude to PPE has changed from blase to paranoid. I cringe when I see builders cutting slabs with no eye, ear or hand protection, for example.

Oh, I have a few, but use them for stripping paint and rust etc on steel so with a 'soft' disk. Or in a stand as a metal chop saw. It's hand held cutting of stone etc that worries me - probably because I'm not skilled at it.

Although they frighten the life out of me, they are safer than a lot of kit. I got attacked in the leg by a (slowing down) diamond disc on a 9" grinder. It caused a fairly deep abrasion but didn't cause a cut, No bleeding at all - although I still have the scar from 2 years ago.

Dave

bleeding at

AIUI injuries from grinding wheels (and their relatives) are one of the most awkward to deal with as there is not 'cut' flesh as such, any trumer being lots of tiny tears from the grinding action - flesh is lost in other words. You seem to have been luck to say the least....

Can't say I have ever been that worried by them... if you do come into contact with the blade, they will do far less damage than many tools employing a sharp cutting edge.

(Having said that, every time I spin up a new abrasive disc for the first time, I hold the tool such that I am not in a radial line with the disc, and let it run flat out for a few seconds just in case anything is going to fly off it. Nothing ever has is has to be said)

Perhaps, but sometimes the "other ways" are far from being ideal... and there is not much chance of fragmentation with a diamond disc anyway.

I would have thought you would be hard pushed to make a neat job of cutting the edge off a concrete path without either an angle grinder or a stone cutter. Don't much fancy the job of cutting a few hundred roof tiles without one either!

Other than ordinary knife type blades (chisels etc) most tool related accidents are going to remove flesh rather than simply cutting it - most cutting edges have a kerf of some sort.

Abrasive cuts also have a greater possibility of leaving fragments of abrasive in the wound.

Fortunately part of the reason that abrasive discs don't cut flesh as well is because the skin is reasonably resistant to abrasion, and is mounted on a nice wobbly substrate. Having said that, if you run a 9" disc at full speed and plunge it into your thigh with a bit of force, it will cut it quite effectively! (there is a nice demo done in a Makita training video where they do just this (on a pork thigh!)).

Certainly a lot less hazardous than a circular, band or chain saw when it comes to exposure to a moving blade. Although a big grinder is likely to kick if not used carefully I've never done more than scuff the toe of a safety boot with one.