I had my wedding band on a total of 1 day on our honeymoon when I went surfing and a wave made it slip right off into the water. (And please, let's not go into whether surfing is foolhardy or not again on this group!) I dove under and barely managed to grab it for a second before it slipped out of my hand, lost forever. The 2nd band my wife bought lasted about another week before it came off when surfing again. Were these rings trying to tell me something? In any case, while she forgave both incidents and bought a 3rd ring, I have to this day to wear it in the water, the shop, or anywhere else! This, however, she does not like!
I had a scary moment with my wedding ring on the back deck a few weeks ago. I was working with MDF and I knew I was wearing the expensive, titanium wedding ring when I started. Then 6 hours later, I wasn't married anymore! I don't have shop yet and so I work on the back deck. I swept every dustpile carefully, I crawled underneath the deck in the mud, and an hour later it was lost. I am still a newlywed and my wife was none too pleased. The MDF dust acted like talc and off slipped the ring.
The great thing is I found it 2 days later when I went out at night with a good flashlight and searched the herb garden next to the end of the deck. There it shone, ready to wear.
That's the second time i hear that titanium wedding rings are extra expensive. Why? The material cannot be the reason, you get it (at 90% purity) for 37 CHF per Kg....
Actually, the ring can create a problem even without any power-tool or electricity involved. I know a person who is missing a finger. He was lifting a heavy object from the ground to his shoulder behind a mini-van that has its rear door raised open. Unfortunately, his ring got caught with the door hinger, and he ripped his finger off. That didn't involve any power tool or any welding equipment. The only things involved was the force that he applied to himself and a tiny metal object that was sticking out.
No, I don't wear a ring when I work in my workshop or when I move anything.
Not all of them. There have been quite a few CP frames about (although mine is 6/4).
My wedding ring was Ti. Piece of scrap that one of my friends rolled up and filed to shape for me. Never did work out how to put a decent black finish on it though.
OK, it's not too bad. $149 for it and I must say it's very nice. It's very light on my finger, I don't worry about it bending and its quite comfortable.
SWMBO got all the diamonds and gold, I'm happy with Titanium.
Be very careful wearing those titanium rings. My (then) fiancee and I were thinking of them until we spoke to a paramedic. If you're ever injured in the hand or finger, you may lose the finger. They can't cut them off you--too hard for their metal shears. If your finger starts to swell it'll cut off the circulation and then that's it.
Gotta tell you all about our Shipping supervisor's encounter with ring removal: The fellow said he was replacing his wedding ring, which was too small, after being mounted on his finger for 22 years. Couldn't twist, pry, soap or grease it off, so he decided to cut it away. He jams a pencil underneath the ring to stand it off his finger....and reaches for his Dremel with one of those abrasive wheels mounted on it. Me: "What about the heat....?" Him: "Wait. I'm getting to that." So he proceeds to slice through the ring, and given gold's excellent conduction of heat, breaks through at the same instant the heat really begins to burn his finger. This generates a reaction in which he places his hand in his mouth to assist in cooling. Of course, saliva and moist skin are relatively poor heat conductors, and the poor fellow burns the tip of his tongue and lower lip. Made some interesting marks on his face, I can assure you, however, there was more. As the ring was cut, internal stresses in the metal caused the band to contrict tightly around his finger, still in the "very GD hot" stage. He suffered 2nd degree burns on the root of his ring finger, which looked pretty ugly a week afterwards. This is one of those things that tickle your funny bone before moving on to the sympathy zone. My boss once said "You can find sympathy in the dictionary between sh*t and syphillis."
You're making my point very well :-) We all do things that might not be textbook-perfect from time to time. You've just given an example of where you've done something that improves your safety situation, even though you are doing something which is still technically a no-no. Even though it improves your situation and is perfectly safe in this case, there are a whole raft of passages in the NEC that make what you are doing not quite kosher. But again, I'm not saying there's anything really wrong with your cords on the ceiling, they are certainly safer there than on the floor - but dedicated outlets would be neater and safer.
Personally, I think that if you're close enough to a tablesaw blade that the ring matters, you'll soon have no fingers left, ring or no ring. And I'm sorry, but the kickback scenario where the ring got smashed just seems extremely unlikely - if you set yourself up for that kind of kickback, you could just as easily be killed by a board through the throat or something.
On the other hand (couldn't resist :-)) I can imagine cases where wearing a ring in the shop would be dangerous. My brother was a welder and maintenance supervisor at International Harvester. Nobody wore rings in his department. This may be a myth, but they were told that there had been an instance of a guy falling off of a steel I-beam, catching his ring on the edge as he tried to grab the beam to save himself, and having the skin completely ripped off of his ring finger as his entire body weight hung from the ring caught on the beam. Nobody was quite sure if this was true, but they all chose to not wear rings, because it seemed like something that could actually happen to even a reasonably careful person. This is very unlike the ring-around-the-tablesaw question, which requires several concurrent stupid decisions in order for an accident to occur.
Second that. In my case it was a young man shinning down a Lightning Mk6 ladder dirung a scramble start (Cold War days, guys) who slipped, caught his ring in a step tread and managed to peel most of his ring finger like taking a condom off.
The other big nono about wearing rings was the skinny dipstick whose ring didn't fit and managed to drop it in the starboard equipment compartment of the same aircraft type. We spent most of that night stripping the bloody thing to find it before the aircraft could fly again.
I accept that it's slightly different when you're wearing a ring in your own woodworking shop, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just another thing in the way, so I don't wear one. I don't wear a wristwatch either.
Essentially that same thing happened to a friend of mine in college. He was climbing in (or maybe out) of a second-floor dorm room window, when he slipped and grabbed at the window ledge. He caught his wedding ring on the aluminum track of the sliding window and pretty much skinned his finger to the bone. It was a very ugly mess and I'm not sure he ever regained full use of that finger.
Frankly, the danger of a ring around power equipment is probably pretty slight, if you are close enough to catch it all you might be doing is increasing the severity of the injury. Sort of like wearing gloves when using the TS. I do on rough lumber, but never on smooth stuff. You just need to understand the risks and take steps to minimize them.
I went to Vocational school, I've worked on Uncle Sugars Nuclear Missiles, and earned my A&P. The machinery I've worked on is used on earth, sea, sky and outer space. Compared to some equipment I've worked on, the nastiest machine in your home shop is pretty pussy.
Woodworking is a past time for me but the safety rules still hold: No adornment of any type while working. No rings, chains or watches.
From my point of view it's funny as hell to read dumbasses justifications for wearing jewelry around machinery. Bottom line is, if you wear a ring in the shop your a Pollyanna.
Everyone has brain farts.
It's been three days since my right eye's been right. Seems I got a piece of metal stuck in it from grinding. I was installing outlets in the ceiling for my shop lights. I needed to move one but I had ring shanked it to the truss and the easiest way to get it off was with my die grinder. I put on the safety glasses and ear muffs. I ground off the heads making sure the sparks didn't go near anything valuable, especially myself.
Later, while washing up in the shower, I get this pain in my right eye. I figured it was soap. The next day it was a bit scratchy but I couldn't see anything in the eye. WTF???
It was a bit of dark gray grinding bur in my cornea. Somehow this ball got lodged in my eye *after* I was done using the grinder. I think it got washed there in the shower.
(hospital story omitted)
Went to the opthamologist. Real freaky listening to a needle twang while their picking at your eyeball.
I submit this story to illustrate how one can follow safety procedures and still get bit.
So go ahead, wear your rings, work safely and if you get bit tell us why it shouldn't have happened.
I had to cut Dad's ring off because it was causing him pain. I used an Xacto razor saw to get most of it, then cut through with tin snips. Worked fine.
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