How dangerous are lathes?

[Ralph E Lindberg]

I wear a full face shield/filter, and add a dust collector (with the nozzle at the lathe) to the above whole shop air filter

See my other post in this thread....

[Eddie]

I agree, the guy is a d*****ad! I have been using metal and wood lathes since I was 15, (now 55) and I can remember one poor chap at work getting a piece of wood that broke off stuck in his forehead! very nasty.. You should all ways work with great respect for machinery, accidents can and will happen if you don't. Eddie.

[J. Clarke]

More of a girl/Hippie/suit problem--the first two get their hair caught, with the third it's his tie.

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

I don't live in fear of being killed using a lathe. OTOH, I've lived through two plane crashes and have a full understanding of the concept of lightning not always striking the other guy. That being said, there's no point in being stupid. You do what you can do but there is a point of diminishing return. I look for the most bang for the buck in concepts of safety. If I don't consider the return high enough, I'm not likely to bother.

I have a 1 micron dust collector piped into my big tools and also have an air cleaner mounted on the ceiling of my garage, uh, I mean workshop. On occasion I end up out in the driveway with something that produces clouds of dust or chips. If I do, I wear a respirator. I never need to wear one when I'm cutting boards at the jointer, band or table saw. The dust collector handles them well enough to suit me.

Irregardless of what I'm doing, if a cloud of dust exists, I wear the respirator. But that's the only time I wear it.

[Lee Michaels]

"Toller" wrote

I will give my standard rant concerning face sheilds.

When I was setting up a small metal shop, I asked a friend of mine who worked in steel mills where I should go to buy some basic safety equipment. He referred to to an industrial safety suppplier. Most cities of any size have them.

There is an amazing assortment of safety equipment at them and most of is is much better quality than what you get at the borg. I ended up getting a red hard hat with a face shield attachment. The face shield was a sheet of flexible polycarbonate with holes in the edge that matched the frame on the helmet. It quickly changed out from the old one to the new one.

Polycarbonate, although tough, does have a tendancy to get scratched up. So replacement shieds are a must. One of the reasons why I bought this setup was because my steel mill friend had some tall tales of how they saved somebody's face/eyes. i have had a number of solid objects impact the face shield when grinding down metal parts.

One time it hit hard enough to knock me over onto my ass from a forward bending position. I have also taken hits on the hard hat as well. If I am going to do anything in the shop, metal or woodwork, that has a potential to do me bodily harm, I armor up. Hard hat, face shield, ear protection, safety glasses and dust mask are a minimum. I often wear a leather apron as well with a break away strings on it in case it gets caught in anything.

Call me a safety freak. But I grew up around all kinds of industrial accident victims. I vowed from an early age that nothing like this was going to happen to me. And I have been a bonafide safety freak ever since.

[Toller]

That is what I have been using also. Rather more comfortable than the plastic ones with replaceable filters.

[bent]

I don't know what is done in shops or at homes alone, but I have been hit bit a flying cutting tool that sliced through my arm, and flew across the room. I was cutting with the ~16" gouge facing away from me at the time.

[Locutus]

Those masks are designed to keep "germs" from leaving the mask. not sure how effective they are at keeping dust particles from entering.

[Bill in Detroit]

I've never seen a paper mask that didn't have gaps at the edge that are plainly visible.

Bill

[Larry Blanchard]

Try the "DustBeGone" mask. It's a little spendy, but it'll be the last= dust mask you'll ever buy. I've had mine for 12-15 years and it still works= fine.=20 Also, it won't fog my glasses, doesn't warm my face as much as the pape= r masks, and is easier to breath through. The last two comments are of c= ourse my subjective experience, but every other user I've talked to says the = same thing.

No, I have no interest in the company :-).

--=20 It's turtles, all the way down

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

You need to look at the N95 paper masks. We use them to work around TB patients. They don't gap around the edges at all.... rather they are shaped and they have a flexible nose bridge that you squeeze to form a fit.

If they won't let TB in, I doubt they'll let dust in either.

[Robatoy]

Is he nuts?

r

[Lew Hodgett]

Check out Moldex, much better than 3M, IMHO.

Lew

[George]

Not to mention, they're really cheap when the staff's not looking!

People seem to get hung up on the sieve theory of filtration, which isn't really what's happening here. If the dust hits a fiber, there's enough fuzz and too little vacuum to have it go further. That's why you see a faint trace of dust around where your smile gaps open the mask. Also why silt precipitates in slow water.

Not to mention that dust particles have to enter into your nasopharyngeal cavity, which is equipped with hair to cause turbulence, mucous to trap anything, and cilia to take out the trash.

It's fumes, not cellulose you should be concerned with. Or in the case of wood, the poisonous extractives the tree uses to fight off critters, fungi, and bacteria that want to eat it. Dust carries or contains them.

Of course, these problems are not unique to lathes, and are actually much less of a problem than with many other tools in the shop.

[George]

Probably just experienced. What he doesn't realize that others may not follow what he's teaching and the safety that's automatic to him. That can mean trouble.

[Doug Miller]

No, he's nuts -- and *not* experienced, either, if he really thinks that "no one ever got hurt on a lathe".

The OP said "the instructor is very casual about safety" -- that doesn't sound like safety is "automatic" to him; quite the opposite, I'd say, and that

*does* mean trouble.

I don't mean to suggest that lathes are vicious, murderous tools, lurking in the corner of the shop waiting to leap upon some unsuspecting rookie turner and strangle him, but, like *any* power tool, they do have the potential to cause serious injury. To suggest, as the OP's instructor apparently did, that one need not worry about safety precautions at the lathe because the tool is inherently harmless, is dangerous and irresponsible.

[Don Dando]

Well obviously that statement is a bit ambitious. All you have to do is loop a piece of sandpaper around an object you've just turned and hold the sandpaper with the index and thumb of one hand. Often your hand will be pulled into the wood piece and pinch your fingers pretty badly. I have finally learned not to loop the sand paper around but instead hold it across the wood with both hands, one in front, one in back, then the paper doesn't pinch shut and drag you into it! That is only one of several occurrences that can yield pain. While the lathe is a relatively safe tool say compared to a table saw, to say "No one ever gets hurt on a lathe" might not be a real good statement! But it makes for good small talk !

Don Dando

[Joe]

I read somewhere that most woodworking power tools can maim you. The lathe, however, can kill you.

Seems a reasonable statement if an unbalanced chunk of something starts heading toward your noggin.

When you hit that power switch, *don't* be standing in the line of fire.

jc

[Upscale]

Is this where we start talking about the new LatheStop on the market and the

200 pounds of shielding around the piece of wood being turned to prevent it from flying off the spindle and impaling someone in the forehead? Of course, maybe it might be more prudent to invest in the BodyStop personal armour. :)

[Doug Miller]

I think the IdiotStop that somebody suggested in the SawStop thread might be more appropriate here... starting with Toller's instructor. "Nobody ever got hurt on a lathe". Sheesh. What an ignoramus.