jayco Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Another title; Shrapnel, where does it go? A few nights ago, I was using a small punch to make holes in some leaf hooks, when suddenly the little 3/8 in. round by 7 in. long punch broke in half. So there I was, holding half a punch........and wondering where the rest of it went. I spent a half hour looking in all the usual places, but found nothing. ( I am stubborn or compulsive........when I lose something , I must look for it!) So now, I'm wondering when or if the business end of the punch will be found. I might find it....6 months from now.....it might be 50 ft. from the forge. Who knows........ Here's a question for everybody........How far have you had something fly from the anvil?.........And How long did it take you to find it? James Flannery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Mulholland - Tetnum Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 my first tongs and im still lookin for them 6 months later Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Be careful about this! Treat all flying metal with a great deal of seriousness. I heard a story of a fellow who daubed hardfacing on the end of his punches to make them last longer. One day, he just collapsed and couldn't bring himself to stand up. One of his coworkers saw a tiny bit of blood on his shirt and the hospital found the end of his punch on the x-ray. Now, this story may or may not be true, but I have a buddy who was a paramedic, and said it is entirely realistic. The guy slumps down like a sack of potatoes and they call 911, then somebody remembers hearing a "ping". This guy always wears a leather apron when hitting anything hardened. Figure he should know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HWooldridge Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 I've seen shards fly on more than one occasion. The most dramatic was while I was sharpening sweeps for an old farmer. I was almost done when he asked if he could do the last one. It took several heats and when he was finally satisfied, he quenched the edge of the sweep from an orange color and then pulled it out to look at. The stress from being forged and quenched too hot was more than the material could take and it fractured violently into 3-4 pieces, one of which hit the farmer in the leg of his coveralls and cut him like a razor. We spent ten minutes trying to get the blood to stop and he eventually drove himself to the ER for stitches. On another occasion, I struck a punch that I had been using all day long on hot work and a sliver came off and bracketed my eye, striking my cheek and forehead. I was wearing a small pair of safety glasses but the piece hit where the glasses didn't cover. "Mythbusters" says these breaks can't happen, but they haven't spent years in a shop. It is a serious issue and safety gear should always be worn while working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KYBOY Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Saw a chuck key left in a metal lath once..It ended up taking a hunk out of the wall on the far side of the shop when the lath was turned on.. I had a piece of slag from a capweld end up IN MY BELLY once when a helper thumped it with a slag hammer befor I moved..Cut right thru my shirt and lodged in my belly..Had to be cut out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torin Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 "Mythbusters" says these breaks can't happen, but they haven't spent years in a shop. It is a serious issue and safety gear should always be worn while working. Well, they changed a bit. The first run through, they were working on 'chip/break/explode'. The second time through, they got a clue, but they changed the 'myth' from 'chip/break/explode' to 'explode'. So they could still say 'busted' but then they warned that pieces really could fly off. Don't mind me, I had a nice video rebuttal to their first run through, and then they changed the parameters on it right after I'd gotten it done. Making my work mostly moot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 IForgeIron.com > The Smithy > TS0004 Boss on the Run Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ironantlerforge Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 I was once using a bench mounted belt sander to debur a big pile of thin steel squares. After a while of doing this I started getting complacent with the whole process and for some reason that I don't recall now I decided to angle one of the squares in an upward direction instead of the safe down direction. Well, the sanding belt grabbed the steel and shot toward my belly! I head a ting and then heard it bounce off the floor. After looking at my apron for any holes or blood I went back to the monotony. when finished I turned and started to walk out of the sanding room when I thought to myself " my pants feel loose" then I heard a cling. Looking down I saw half my belt buckle bounce across the floor. At the time I wore those rather large pewter belt buckles and that thin steel square had struck it and broke it clean in half! Just a little lower and... well, you know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeaverDamForge Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Be careful about this! Treat all flying metal with a great deal of seriousness. I heard a story of a fellow who daubed hardfacing on the end of his punches to make them last longer. One day, he just collapsed and couldn't bring himself to stand up. One of his coworkers saw a tiny bit of blood on his shirt and the hospital found the end of his punch on the x-ray. Now, this story may or may not be true, but I have a buddy who was a paramedic, and said it is entirely realistic. The guy slumps down like a sack of potatoes and they call 911, then somebody remembers hearing a "ping". This guy always wears a leather apron when hitting anything hardened. Figure he should know. "Daubed hardfacing"? Have I missed something? Things don't have to be hardened to fly when struck. I heard a story about somebody getting a shard from a mushroomed chisel in the knee. Just a small hole, but by the end of the day he couldn't stand on it. After surgery it was a good while before his knee was right again. Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coltpax Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Never had anything big fly away without me getting mad and throwing it. But i have beed using one of them cheap HF hammers, and when i accidentaly hit the edge of the hammer against the channel locks i was using for tongs, the chip hit my arm and cut it. wasnt nothing bad though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psilogen Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 The mushroomed chisel is a good cautionary tale. Knee injuries are nothing to scoff at. I'm not sure about you guys, but I use my knees a lot during a normal day. Even during a lazy day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan W Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 I hit a piece of metal too hard once while using the hot cut hardie, ended up with a cauterized laceration on my right cheek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Leppo Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 My shop has a dirt/gravel floor. I never have to sweep, but it makes it a challenge finding that tiny rivit i just dropped, which i spent half an hour making!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Leppo Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 I was using a cheap Chinese 4" grinding wheel at vice / belly height when the wheel broke apart, sending a chunk at me right below the navel, and giving a heavy-duty bruise! This with a heavy leather apron! Probably would have gut-shot me without the apron! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucegodlesky Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 A friend brought a pair of cutters off a large lathe, 2x2x5, thinking I could forge them down for blades. Standing there slapping them together, I felt a sharp pain in my earlobe. Danged if a piece didn't break off and hit me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
draper84 Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Nothing Yet has come my way while forging, but i was using a grinder to cut some exhaust pipe and the wheel exploded tearing apart my middle finger knuckle, and putting a quarter inch dent in the metal wall of the shop i was in that hurt for a while, and i still have a scar:( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
canuk Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 was in shop class one time and a couple kids where at the bench grinders shrapen something, when it caught and went flying across the room and hit the wall, turns out it was a ninja star type piece of sheet metal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabre Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 well ive never lost any thing yet but i was working on some pipeinf and drilling little 1/4" holes in it when the bit slipped and i drilled a nasty chunk outa my thumb...bled alot and hut for a few hours but i got over it just continued working did that 3 days ago! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solvarr Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 we had an anvil go flying 76 feet vertically. This was back in 94 or 95 and we used a bunch of gunpowder at an abana meetup in north carolina. Some nice gentleman was nice enough to show my buddy Cem and I how to do it. I still giggle maniacally when I recount that day... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1860cooper Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Yeah I'll say the steel doesn't have to be hardened. I was working at a museum, upsetting a small piece of 3/8 mild stock, I was holding it on end with the tongs hammering it down... I probably kept hammering after it was too cool, it abruptly shot straight away from me and hit an 8yo girl who was watching me, behind a split rail fence designed to keep the public a good 10 feet away or so. You know when the steel doesn't bounce off skin, but sticks instead? That's what it did to her, but she shook it off quick. Still it burned her good. Her parents were there and saw the whole thing, and THANKFULLY were understanding. I had a burn kit right there so her mom fixed her up. She cried a lot but her parents weren't irked. Of course I felt really bad. Since then I think I used larger tongs, didn't pound so much on cooling steel when set on end and turned a little if there were people standing at the fence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Father was a metal spinner and taught me to stay out of the plane of rotation before I can remember. For those who don't know, metal spinning resembles throwing pottery but in a heavy duty lathe out of sheet metal. You clamp a blank of sheet metal against the die mounted in the head stock of a lathe. It's clamped there by the tail stock and a live center. The next step is forming the blank over the die with various tooling from simple hand tooling to scissor tooling (Dad had a scissor tool shop) to modern hydraulics and CNC while it's spun in the lathe. Being a production shop we didn't turn the lathes off while we removed the finished part and placed a new blank. You did this by eyeballing center on the blank and die, hold it lightly between thumb and forefinger and closing the tail stock on it. With practice you can hit it pretty much dead center requiring only a little adjustment with the centering stick. Unfortunately if you're very far off center, say 1/4", centrifugal force can rip it out of the lathe. Guess where your left hand is? By time I was 10 I was good at stopping major bleeding and didn't react (shocky, etc.) to an emergency till after it was over. My own included. There's a very distinctive sound when a blank comes out of a lathe turning around 3,000rpm. It's different and preferable to the sound of a partially spun part getting loose. A flat blank will cut flesh and bone like a meat slicer bone saw combo but USUALLY goes pretty straight. This is why all the lathes in Father's shop were angled so no one stood in the plane of rotation of another machine. A partially spun part on the other hand will take off like a demented demon chasing a panicked crack addict humming bird. It's a nightmare, all you can do is take cover and hope it hits something solid before it hits anyone. I can't count how many grinding and cutting disks I've been hit by, the grinding disks hurt more but I've never been more than bruised. (sound of furious wood knocking:o) I've never taking a hit from a chip off a mushroomed tool. Striking a mushroomed tool would get you 86ed from metal shop or Father's shop. The shop teacher kept a selection of mushroomed tools to use as pop quizzes. He'd replace one of your chisels with one and see what you did. Early consistent hard core training has saved me any of those injuries. I've lost lots of struck items from finish nails to large stuff on the anvil to 30" tent stakes to . . . etc. Been hit by a few of them too, usually in the legs and usually without any kind of armor. There's only one safe assumption. It WILL go flying and it WILL go flying at YOU. Take precautions. The best defense is not to be there when it comes knocking. Stay out of the plane of rotation, this applies to hammering at the anvil as evidenced by how many stories of hammers hitting guys from rebounding off the anvil's face. It may not be as efficient but I swing in a plane next to my head, not one intersecting it. Wear your safety gear, keep it in good condition and exercise your most important piece of safety gear constantly; your brain. Mythbusters gets quite a few things wrong, they were looking for exploding hammers. Then again that IS the myth folks wanted them to test. When they brought in a real blacksmith with real hammers and tested under more or less real conditions they got plenty of flying chips. Still no exploding hammers. I'm relieved. Frosty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike BR Posted August 18, 2008 Share Posted August 18, 2008 Worst I've had to do is pull a wire from a wire wheel out of my leg. I can't be the only one that's happened to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayco Posted August 19, 2008 Author Share Posted August 19, 2008 Well, I found the other half of the broken punch. It had fell behind the anvil and the stump in one of those dusty little corners of my shop. I just happened to look from a certain angle, and the light was just right........and I found it. I guess I could say I was lucky, and no harm done. But, what if it had went a different way? What if my grandson had been standing nearby without safety glasses? What if something like this happened at a crowded demo? It also occurred to me that the flying tip could have lodged in the vent holes on my bench grinder motor, or any other power tool that might have been nearby. One more thing, in case anyone is wondering.........I ALWAYS WEAR SAFETY GLASSES! I didn't used to wear them........but I had too many close calls with flying stuff. I put them on when I enter the shop. James Flannery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trollhammer Posted August 19, 2008 Share Posted August 19, 2008 Mike BR: No, you're not the only one that's happened to. My wire wheel on the bench grinder unleases the fury on my and if I'm not wearing leather from head to toe, I'll be pulling little wires out of all kinds of uncomfortable places. Once had one stuck in the webbing where the top of the ear meets the head. I thought it was a splinter and pulled out a quarter inch long wire right out of the skin. My girlfriend got sick watching me do it. Mickey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 19, 2008 Share Posted August 19, 2008 Wire wheels are the worst. Keep out of the plane of rotation and all you'll get hit by are ricochets which almost never penetrate. Very far anyway. Plane of rotation and safety gear helps but I've pulled lots of wires from my hide. I hate wire wheels but sometimes nothing else will do. Frosty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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