A reminder to wear eye protection when using grinders

I have been preaching that Safety glasses protect the eyes and a face shield protects the face and gives some extra protection to the eyes. USE BOTH!

Ayup, either is better than nothing but still not enough. I've had crap sucked out of my eyes behind both more than once. Happily it was just laying on my eyeball, not embedded.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

I wear safety glasses always. I have prescription glasses and I am far sighted so I pretty much have to. When I am rough grinding annealed steel I also wear a full face shield to prtect my face from the shower of metal splinters. At the forge I don't like the shield so I wear sealed polycarbonate goggles. This means taking my glasses off, but at forging distance I see well enough.

I've had a couple of close calls and decided that I like using my eyes enough to put up with the safety gear.

You can *aim* the sparks by the position of the grinder and rotation of the grinding disk. AWAY from you is always better than toward you. You should be mindful of where the sparks go and where they finally end up. If it is important, like the wife's car, the sparks will embed into the glass and paint. If it is not so important the sparks will look for dust and debris and try to catch it on fire.

 

Edited June 10, 201511 yr by Glenn

Can't remember if this was  already covered or not, but it is also generally frowned upon to pepper the people working around you.  Try to keep an eye on whoever is around.

  That being said, it is on them if they move into where you've been aiming for the past 5 minutes without giving some form of heads up, especially if it is behind and to the right of you.

  Finally, if you have no choice but to aim toward someone, politley ask if they could move to one side for a second while you hit that one hard to reach spot.  If they have half an ounce of sense, they gladly will.  This happens a lot when you're working with large, hard to move objects with multiple people working around the same area, or when you're working out of a vice for your own safety.