It followed me home

[ThomasPowers]

I have a friend who managed to remove both his index fingers using a table saw---11 years apart.  Luckily they managed to re-attach them. He is no longer allowed to have a table saw---he does brass casting now!

[JHCC]

So much safer!

[PHDforge]

Teaching people have Respect versus fear of power tools is important. Too much fear will drive them away. Tools are safe if used properly. I’ve been teaching college machining courses for 29 years. The first two lab weeks  are entirely about safety. Safety is constantly monitored by faculty throughout the entire course. We stress thinking before acting and having prior knowledge before attempting any thing. If a student is unsure or questions any procedure they are encouraged to ask for help. There are no stupid or silly questions. Having the proper knowledge is a tool in itself.

Bob

 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Ouch! I’m glad they were able to save his fingers, that kinda reminds me of the carpenter in the UHF movie, 

Thats why I’m very selective on who I loan tools or machines to, some people I feel are competent and I’ll loan the tool to them

and some people I’ll do it for them but I won’t let them operate certain tools or machines because I know they are gonna hurt their self if I let them. 

[Frosty]

Thanks for the reminders. The only time Dad ever struck one of us was if we did something stupid with machinery and it was a cuff to make the point.

Nothing makes a point like running a piece of equipment when one of Dad's employees running the punch press behind me forgets one of Dad's hard and fast rules. A part stuck and Johnny S. reached in to pop it loose without turning the press off and standing up. 

That punch press was the second piece of powered equipment I ran in his shop and I recognized the blank sticking in the dies by the sound and I heard it hit again but the sound of Johnny's right hand being turned to liquid by a 50 ton punch press was a new one. The spray and red mist that painted the wall in front of me answered that question.

Took his hand in a straight line from the last knuckle of his thumb straight across to just inside of the first knuckle of his pinky finger. Dad and his Foreman Glen got the wound "dressed" and Johnny ready to head to the hospital while everybody shut down for the day and went home. Dad gave everybody the next day off too, no way he was going to let folk so shocky run dangerous machinery. It's hard to beat a metal spinning shop for dangerous.

The upside was the press had taken Johnny's fingers off so cleanly all the surgeon had to do was stretch the skin a little and suture him up. It didn't even require debriding, just a food flushing out, hardly any bone chips. 

Even as close as I was I didn't see anything but the red line on the wall because Dad grabbed me off my lathe, spun me towards the office and gave me a hard shove. I was 10 or 11 yro, and Dad didn't want that picture in my mind.

The other incident I have a little connection to involved an Alaskan club member, Gordon, who used to snowbird between Anchorage and his place in Utah. A neighbor said hi as he walked to the corner store for something. Gordon was in his garage knife shop with the open and wire brushing a blade. 

When his neighbor came back by he looked in because he could hear the brush running unloaded. What he found was Gordon laying on his back with the blade through his heart.

Gordon was one of those guys who was very likable but had zero shop sense. At meetings we'd either keep him talking or have a keeper stick with him if he wanted to do anything. Not only did staying out of the plane of rotation never click, Gordon believed guards made anything "SAFE darn it!" Never let the leading edge touch a wheel? You're talking to the hand. He was always talking about how happy he was working in his home shop where nobody bugged him.

The coroner said Gordon was dead before he hit the floor. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[SinDoc]

Those are two crazy stories Frosty. I can only imagine how hard and fast the wheel had to fling that knife to cause it to piece that deep, or how pointy and sharp it already was. Shivers

Known a couple good and also sadly younger electricians who have died due to negligence. One was a younger guy around 22-24 and didn't keep his work area clean and he tripped over trash on the ground and fell into a live ~2000A switch board (why it was still energized, I have not the slightest clue).

Another guy more my age (early 30s) and his foreman were cleaning 3000A switch gear that was supposed to have been dead. Come to find out, the upstream disconnect had a blade that failed to properly disengage and remained energized. When they opened the back of the switch board up, the kicked up dust allowed an arc and resulted in an explosion. I remember hearing stories from the plant workers who rushed over after hearing the explosion and found both of them dead and cooked on the floor. I wont mention what happened to their hard hats as it is a bit graphic. Granted the accident was due to a piece of faulty equipment, but it could have been easily prevented.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

One of my main things I’m wary about letting people operate  is chainsaws, ive got many years experience using and repairing small engine equipment for different industries and I’ve seen first Hand just how wicked and gnarly a chainsaw cut looks like on people’s flesh, 

apart from kick back and people dismantling their chain brakes and chain catches, one thing most people don’t think about is the rivets breaking and that chain flying off at several thousand rpms, ive just been tuning saws in the shop and had a chain snap out of nowhere and take a good size chip out of the concrete, 
 

ill get people who show up at my shop with some rusted stiff saw chain wanting me to free it up an put it on their saw, I also get people who buy random used saw chains at yard sales or auctions that are not the correct pitch for their sprocket or bar and want me to put them on there saws all the time… I refuse an explain why that won’t work an why it’s dangerous sometimes they listen some times they don’t an just get angry at me. I also turn down working on anything that has the safety’s dismantled… 

But I’ve seen legs, hands, arms and one guys face after either chain failure, or getting complacent with the machine or kickback so I take it pretty seriously,

some of my personal saws are professional logging saws with enough power to split someone in half in a blink of an eye so the only time I’ll let someone use one is if I feel they have enough experience and respect for the machine,

but if I don’t think they can handle it I’ll go over and cut whatever they need cut but I won’t let them use the saws, same goes for a lot of machines and tools I own, 

[SinDoc]

Chain saw was one of the tools dad would never let me operate when I was growing up. He knew how dangerous it could be and would prefer he get hurt then me. Thankfully he was smart enough to keep all safety features intact. I don't own one as I have little to no use for one, but can operate them if needed but don't like it. The one saw I will personally avoid at all cost because of the fear of kick backs and such are circular saws. I bought one last year for a project that I swore I would need it on and it is still in the box completely unopened.

[Frazer]

There shouldn't be any kickback if the part of the board that's being cut off hangs off the end of the table/sawhorses and is allowed to fall freely after it's cut. Very little risk of the blade getting pinched that way.

Regardless you should always keep your digits away from anything that's spinning and maintain a firm (not a death) grip, with both hands on the saw. 

[JHCC]

TW and SinDoc, you remind me of a great story about my old friend Dick Adams. Dick was the quintessential backwoods Vermonter, from whom I learned how to run a chainsaw, make timber frame houses, boil sap to make maple syrup, and many other similar skills. Our mutual friend Peter told me about one time that he and Dick were sitting around with a bunch of friends, and the other guys started to compare chainsaw scars and tell each other horror stories about how they got them. After listening for a while, Dick said, "So, do you want to hear MY chainsaw injury story?" Everyone perked up their ears and said, "Yeah, yeah!" with great eagerness, thinking that Dick would have the chainsaw injury story to end all chainsaw injury stories. Dick leaned back in his chair and said with an air of great satisfaction, "I haven't got one."

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

4 hours ago, JHCC said:

My old woodworking teacher always said that you should never fear a machine, but you should always respect what it can do

That is the same thing my grandfather taught me. This was after a 3/4 in chuck hand drill I was using, laying on my back drilling under a dashboard of a truck. The drill bit locked up in the work and before I could release the trigger the drill wound me up and threw me out of the cab. Luckily only my pride was hurt, as most teenagers thought we were invincible.

[Randy Griffin]

6 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I have a friend who managed to remove both his index fingers

I knew a fellow who cut all his fingers off. When he got to the hospital they asked him why he didn't bring the fingers.

Said he couldn't pickem up. 

[JHCC]

I knew a guy who went to the hospital to get his leg amputated, but they cut off the wrong leg. Then they had to cut off the right leg. Now he can't even sue them, because he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

[Stash]

A buddy of mine lost the better part of a finger due to a moment of inattention while working a log splitter. He immediately threw the glove off, wrapped it with a bandanna and went to the hospital. He had to send a friend back to the site to retrieve the glove with his finger still in it. He can only count to 9 now.

Steve

[ThomasPowers]

Another accident and he can become a Computer Scientist!

[Ted Ewert]

SinDoc, I've used circular saws for years and haven't had any kickback issues. Worm drives are particularly stable. 

I don't own a chainsaw. For cutting up smaller trees and branches I use a Sawzall. Cuts like butter, no kickback and a lot safer and quieter.

[Purple Bullet]

I worked for a while in a profession that lots of guys lost fingers in; commercial diving. When you do most of your work blind and things are moving around semi-randomly due to wave action or current, and some of the things you are working with are several tons, it's easy to drop a digit here or there. I knew one who lost part of two fingers trying to set a subsea well protector and another who lost a couple putting together 6 ft diameter corrugated pipe (like what is used for culverts only large enough to walk through).  

I managed to keep all mine intact (except for a few scars here and there). I did it the same way I work now; I'm always thinking about what could happen IF !!!

There are no dangerous tools... only dangerous fools.  I've never seen a tool stalk a human or do anything that some human didn't make it do. Outside of a "Terminator" movie that is. 

[SinDoc]

We have a guy at my work place that lost a finger when a full master bundle of EMT conduit dropped onto the bed of a truck, where his hand was. From what he said, it smashed it clean off which just sounds horrible.

[Gazz]

A bit of thread drift here....

[Frazer]

On IFI??? Never. We always stay on topic!

There are 506 pages of this thread and within those pages are innumerable side discussions and digressions all of which eventually circle back to things following someone home. You never know that you'll learn when you click on a tread; the title doesn't always tell the full story.

[ThomasPowers]

Not always 'on Tropic', sometimes we discuss temperate things, (and Frosty is often positively polar!)

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

All these stories followed their tellers home 

[Frosty]

Every topic has a converse. Losing digits is appropriate in the negative as it did NOT follow me home. 

Was that negatively polar? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Frosty, everyone knows that negative latitudes are in the Southern Hemisphere and so Antarctic---penguins but no "polar bears"!

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

A guy I know lost 4 fingers on one hand at an angled cut. I told him that he can count fractions now. He had a good enough sense of humor to get a chuckle out of that. 

I have had a couple of close calls myself, and luckily they were only close calls. They serve as good reminders when doing similar work today.

Offloaded some big bucket teeth I bought at an auction.  The round nose are pushing 100# and the pointy one around 70# by guesstimate. I also have some smaller versions of the pointy one that are about half the size.

I have 2 of the big round nose, 20-22 of the big pointy, and 5 of the small pointy, and all are brand new. Now if I can find someone who can use them .......... otherwise they are yard art. A dealer in AZ has them listed for $445 / $280 each on the large sizes.