I had one of the little pins snap off and hit me in the face. Could have been blinded. I found the broken-off bit with my powerful magnet after about ten minutes. It was on the carpet. Inspection under a linen/printer's microscope showed that the metal had simply fractured, but not cleanly. Must have been a duff pin, but I'm not taking any chances in future.
Wear eye protection when hammering in these little beasties.
MM
That's normal advice for any hardened steel (masonary) pins. They are more likely to fracture than bend.
And cable clips with hardened pins. That moving hammer head imparts a lot of energy to that tiny piece of metal, so it really travels.
Bill
Curiously, I would have used eye protection had I been hammering in cable clips, which I have been doing for 30 years off and on, because I knew about them. But the thought never crossed my mind with these little picture hooks with the tiny little pins. Anyway, I was lucky. The broken off piece must have rebounded against my face, then richocheted down to the carpet. Another couple of inches and it would have been in my eye. Isn't it strange that true accidents are always unforeseen? I.e. we only get wise after the event. Makes me wonder which other areas in DIY and in life in general where I need to take more care and have just blithely carried on a particular practice regardless for years. As I grow older I take special care about rucked up rugs, not touching switches with wet hands, ensuring the stove is off when leaving the room etc, but events, it seems, are always there to surprise us in completely unexpected ways. And these picture hooks are being sold in huge numbers apparently, so there will be very many users fixing them who have normally no interest whatsoever in DIY and won't even know what "hardened steel pin" signifies.
MM
Trouble is there are so many safety warnings I tend to ignore them unless it is a new solvent or something. Very wary around my angle grinder and circular saw though.
I am not involved in health and safety but I guess someone dong a risk assessment should think that pins designed to go into a hard surface must be hard and therefore probably break easily. Must admit it didn't occur to me and I don't recall having any snap on me.
Many years ago I used to wear reinforced glass specs and one pair once got damaged by a capacitor exploding in a mains portable radio I was working on.
My latest brainwave this morning is to use a nail punch on the pins (as well as eye protection anyway). By enclosing the pin inside the small 'cup' in the end of the nail punch and enclosing the tip of the nail punch, too, between one's fingers, anything that breaks off should not cause a problem, except perhaps very locally, to the fingers only.
I've even used one of the large hooks to hang a lightweight plastic laundry basket on the wall. Dunno whether it will hold. Maybe there'll be an almighty crash when I'm least expecting it. But it's been up for a couple of hours now.
MM
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