Share your accidents and close-calls so others can learn from them?

I wanted to urge people to use protective eye gear with my quick story of a near-miss. Then I figured that what I really wanted was to read of other's mishaps and close-calls to know what is dangerous. Maybe this thread dies with 1 post, I hope not. Perhaps it's been done 100 times or more?

Mine: I was using a Dremel Tool (high speed rotary) for sharpening my lawn mower blade. I was wearing the safety goggles, but it was hot out and I was sweating into them. When I was done I checked the balance of the blade and thought I could use a smidgeon off the very end of the blade to make it balance perfectly.

The goggles were at the other end of the room. I figured it was a sec or two of grinding. I got possitioned over the blade too close with no eye protection. I *knew* the spin direction would throw the shards downward, I've been doing it for nearly 20 minutes. But I figured that I might as well get used to a no-exceptions rule, so I walked across the room, cleaned them out, wiped my face with a towel, and put them on, all the while cursing myself for being so safe.

I had lost track of the position of the dremel tool and the side of the blade I was using. It actually was spinning up toward me in that position I would have used. Shards of metal struck my eye goggles, and peppered much of my face, at a very high rate of speed.

Reply to
Thomas G. Marshall
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Thu, Aug 9, 2007, 5:57pm (EDT+4) snipped-for-privacy@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.com (Thomas=A0G.=A0Marshall) doth query: Perhaps it's been done 100 times or more?

Yeah. Check the archives.

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do things I don't know how to do, so that I might learn how to do them.

- Picasso

Reply to
J T

Several years ago I was doing an inspection in a plant where premanufactured construction was being done. In the area where they were building floors, a young Amish kid was framing with a hammer and 20d spikes. He and a friend were showing off by seeing if they could drive the spike in a single blow (they were able to do it by the way.) Anyway, he hit one of the spikes and it flew. No harm and they both laughed. He set up the next one and took swing. He hit it slightly off and it flew directly back towards him. He screamed and grabbed his face. Some type of milky liquid came running out between his fingers and I could then see the nail sticking out of his eye socket. The eye itself was gone. They rushed him to the nearest hospital and he was then airlifted to a better hospital a few hundred miles away (forget which one, either Indianapolis or Cleveland). Wasn't able to save it. They did rebuild the eyeball, but after that he was only able to see light and dark out of it; nothing else.

Over the years I've seen inexperienced framers cut off fingers, get blown off roof while carrying decking (he was killed), and other stuff. All it takes is a moment of carelessness to cripple or maim.

Reply to
Dennis

A couple of weeks ago a buddy came over to use some of my tools. He's probably got 2x the experience I do in woodwork and around a shop, but he made a mistake. He was using the router in the router table, and put the work pin on the wrong side of the router bit. Instead of giving him protection from being drawn into the router, the pin served as a perfect pivot to throw his small workpiece into the bit. His finger (or thumb, I don't remember) hit the follower bearing on the bit instead of the cutting surface, so he wasn't harmed. He was probably 1/4" away from losing part of a finger. And routers, like belt sanders, don't leave pieces that can be re-attached. They leave meat dust.

Reply to
Kyle Boatright

A few weeks ago I was on a job where another fellow was installing some baseboard. He is 61, been a "handyman" for years. He was cutting some baseboard with his 10" chop saw. He was holding the board with his left hand and had the blade turned to 45. What i think happened was that he was used to making straight cuts and was holding the board pretty close to the blade-then when he turned it for the 45 he didn't realize that the back of the blade was now that much closer towards his hand. Left index finger cut about halfway through. He cut a tendon and was heading to a hand specialist last I heard, likely to surgery after that.

Reply to
mattblack

I had a similar thing happen to me a few months ago. Knocked a good piece out of my left index finger. Just a momentary lack of concentration and bang, those machines never apologise. Went up to the house, poured betadine all over the finger wrapped it in a dressing and drove down to the local hospital. Was a fun drive as the ute is a manual 4sp column shift.(We shift with our left hands in Oz) Nothing much they could do at the hospital as there was nothing left to stitch over the wound, so a more professional dressing was applied and home I went. The finger has a dent in it is still tender regards John

Reply to
John B

Yeah you can get a nearly infinite list of accidents and near accidents from a google search, but it never hurts to repeat this stuff either.

My most serious incident was at the band saw. I was resawing a short board that was a lot higher than my makeshift fence. I was using a push stick, but because of the low fence I had to push low on the stock. Because I was pushing low, and it was a short piece so there wasn't much weight, it started to lift up at the back end.

So now I was paying more attention to what was going on behind the cut than at the cut, which completed unexpectedly. The stock, the push stick, and my hand all shot forward, and my knuckle was introduced to a 1/2" 4 TPI bandsaw blade. Fortunately it didn't go very deep.

It's not usually one thing going wrong that causes problems, it's when a bunch of little things accumulate that you suddenly find yourself in an unexpected situation. At those times, just hit the damn red button and regroup.

-Leuf

Reply to
Leuf

20+ years ago I was putting the railing on my deck and I used a couple 36" flat bar clamps to hold the railing to the posts temporarily. I attached the clamps with the bars pointing out into the yard, not back over the deck. I stepped back a few feet for a visual and then walked towards to railing to adjust it. My eyes were focused on the railing, not on the clamps, so I never saw the end of the steel bar until it hit my safety glasses. It knocked them off and put a rather large gash in my forehead, just above my left eye.

After I bandaged myself up and retrieved my safety glasses, I found a deep scratch that started dead center in the left lens and extended up to the frame. If not for the safety glasses deflecting the bar up into my forehead, it would have gone straight into my left eye.

I still have a scar (and the railing) to remind me how important safety glasses are.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

I always wear safety glasses anytime I am working on a project or using a power tool. I even wear safety glasses when I mow the lawn. However I was careless at my table saw once and the damage cost about $3000. I needed to cut out some drawer bottoms from a 1/4" piece of plywood. Carelessly, I didn't set the blade to the proper height and I was a little careless holding the plywood against the fence. I was wearing safety glasses. The peice of plywood kicked back and struck the fore finger on my right hand. It stung for a moment but the pain went away quickly. When I looked down at my hand the fore finger was bent where there is no knuckle but the skin was not broken. I walked from my shop to the house (about 100 yds) and had the wife take me to the emergency room. The bone in the finger had a clean break. It required surgery and a plate and screws were used to repair the break. The finger still has a lot of scar tissue but it works normally, no tendon damage. Always take the time to set the blade at the proper height on a table saw. If I had set the blade at the right height the kick back would not have been as severe.

Reply to
spebby_92

When I was a noob, I was using a fence mounted stop block to cut equal length parts. A properly sized stop ends well before the blade starts. Unfortunately, my stop was too long, extending to the area between the fence and blade.

A cutoff got trapped between the blade and fence, and was launched like a pitching machine. I got hit in the lower gut hard enough to initially believe I would soon die. Luckily, the wood had hit my thumb first. I broke my thumb, but the emergency room folks thought it took some of the energy away from my abdominal impact.

I've been hit by frozen pucks, hockey sticks, linebackers, the ground and curbing during serious bicycle crashes, I've stuck my hand into large scale r/c propellers and had one serious auto accident. This injury hurt worse than any of that.

A second thought and review of the procedure before the first cut would have prevented the accident.

Let's be safe...

Reply to
B A R R Y

A quick point about eye wear.

Obviously, eye protection helps protect our eyes from direct damage.

A less mentioned benefit is that even nuisance dust can cause an eye to blink, blur or heavily tear. Even though light dust irritation is usually recoverable and only a nuisance, the thought of having my eyes closed while my hands are near spinning blades and bits, or my bicycle is traveling at decent speeds gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Reply to
B A R R Y

A couple of weeks ago i was routing a curved piece of 3/4 MDF on the router table for a form. i was wearing goggles and told my son to leave the workshop until i was done. the edge caught the bit and i let go.... the bit grabbed along the entire length of the heavy piece, accelerating it and shooting it accros the room into a radiator cover i was working on. the impact was as loud as a shotgun, and knocked the radiator cover off the workbench with tremendous force. it was scary and a reminder of what can happen. i was able to fix the damage on the radiator cover, and will make sure my son is always out of harms way.....maybe my wife would like to hang out in the workshop next time ;)

Reply to
splinter

Even when it is late at night, even though it is the last cut of the night, even though you're tired and want to finish up and hit the sack, you still need to move the fence to the other side of the blade to make a safe bevel cut on a right tilt table saw.

The bruise in my side went away after about three weeks. The hole in the shop door was fairly easy to patch.

Frank

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Reply to
Frank Boettcher

The problem I see with accidents and the young people around here, is they do not want to follow rules. Any rules!

The respect they get from their friends grows with the severity of the accidents they have. The worse the accident, the more "respect" they get from their "friends".

Their thinking is: Don't read any rules. Don't follow any rules. Do the opposite!

What they don't understand is that many rules/laws are in place to protect THEM. This is advice handed down from others who have had accidents or by a community which wants to prevent such accidents from occurring in the future.

I'm talking about safety rules in the front of instruction manuals, OSHA rules, driving laws/rules, building code rules, etc.

No one ever thinks about WHY rules/laws were created in the first place. Why it says to wear safety goggles. Why there is a speed limit. Why you should wear a safety harness when working high up. Etc.

Actually these rules/laws are a detailed history of accidents which have happened in the past. So when it says to wear eye protection, this is because someone has used that piece of equipment in the past and had an eye injury. Or the electrical code says to do your wiring in a certain manner - well someone died in the past or was electrocuted because the wiring was not done in this manner.

So these young people can start their lives by reading and following rules/laws. Or they can place their lives in the hands of Darwin... (In my area, Darwin has claimed the lives of 3 young people already this summer.) Needless...

Reply to
Bill

on 8/10/2007 11:11 AM Bill said the following:

All kids are immortal and immune to things that happen to other people.

Reply to
willshak

near-miss. Then I

close-calls to know what is

done 100 times or

Mine is a table saw kick-back story. I had removed the blade guard since I was cutting a lot of dadoes (I know, I know, but Norm does it!). Turns out the fence was slightly out of alignment with the blade, and a piece of plywood I was cutting bound up on the back of the blade. The blade lifted the plywood and the top of the blade caught it and hurled it at my stomach. Ripped a perfectly good plaid shirt, and raised several lumps, though no breaks in the skin. The plywood was all dinged up afterwards too.

Moral of the story. Check the alignment of the rip fence with the blade weekly. Use a ruler, and align with the same tooth at the front and at the back.

Reply to
Dave Gordon

blur or heavily tear.

the thought of having

is traveling at

I find the glasses steam up after a few minutes, especially wearing a mask filter too. One of those whole-face guards that the Normster uses on the lathe is much better. Can't afford a sealing version with the filter and motorised fan though.

Reply to
Dave Gordon

Another less-mentioned -- and less-appreciated -- point is that there are other parts of your face besides your eyes that should be protected. I don't believe I'd much enjoy catching chunk of wood in the teeth, or the nose. Hence, I always wear a full-face shield when operating power tools -- and some hand tools, too, like hammers.

Reply to
Doug Miller

My son (just turned 16) received a painful reminder of his own mortality from a lawnmower at the end of June:

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Fortunately, he wasn't badly hurt, and has almost completely recovered. His left big toe is about 1/4" shorter than it used to be; other than that, he's fine, and has been playing soccer again for a couple weeks now.

Reply to
Doug Miller

If I start working in the shop at 10:00 AM (after my pain meds kick in) I can go for up to three hours and still able to do accurate work, but by

1:30 to 3PM i'm starting to make mistakes and I know it's time to quit for the day.
Reply to
bob

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