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What is YOUR worst shop accident story?
March 2, 2011
2:57 am
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Larry L
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I have been working on a really big set of gates... 35' span and 8' tall, each leaf weighs about 400-500 pounds at the moment... I had them stood up and leaned against my table and I was welding on the top of one.... I stepped from the table to the ladder and got tripped up on the welding torch and fell and managed to drag the gate over on the way... it hit me pretty good on the shoulder and I buggred my ankle a bit but I managed to get clear of the gate before It hit the ground.... Really lucky... if my head would have been between the floor and the gate when it hit Id be dunski... Anyway... Glad to be home with a sore foot and arm instead of in a hospital bed or a bag...

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Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

March 2, 2011
4:12 am
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Lewis
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Glad you're mostly OK.

Thanks for the reminder. It's sometimes easy to forget how squishy we are compared to what we work with. (Welding cables, I swear they leap up off the floor. Barked my shin when the torch hose grabbed my ankle yesterday.)

March 2, 2011
4:29 am
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Bruce Macmillan
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It's amazing how much mayhem and pain is caused by falling a mere 30''...........bm

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Dr. Seuss

March 2, 2011
5:15 am
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Lynn Gledhill
Junction City, Oregon
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Good Job!! Ever catch an oxygen hose on fire!!??? Don't know whether to try to turn it off or RRUUUNNN!!!

March 2, 2011
5:37 am
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glad you are OK buddy.

March 2, 2011
6:30 am
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Grant
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Darn near 20 years ago I was standing on a shop table working on a machine. Well I took a step backward and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and foul, unrepeatable things were coming out of my mouth. Took inventory and everything seemed to be it's assigned place and working properly, a few bruises but mostly to my pride. Once I got to my feet I took in the situation, and I couldn't believe that I had missed being impaled on the horn of my 300 pound Hay-Budden. Now this anvil was mounted on a 600 pound iron and concrete stand so it wasn't moving. There is no way I should have missed it, guess I curled up or something when I went down. Musta been that Saint that watches over fools and Irishmen. Funny thing is I'm not Irish!

Glad you're OK Larry, you Irish?

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

March 2, 2011
6:36 am
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Lynn Gledhill
Junction City, Oregon
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Sorry you got bunged up, Larry!
Can't help but say... Beautiful gate!!:D
Happy it didn't kill ya!

March 2, 2011
7:05 am
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poleframer
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Well, the last that comes to mind was a piece of wire wheel that went into my middle finger. I dug at it with razors till the whole finger bloated like a sausage, went to the doc, got it x-rayed.
It had gone deep, and was close to the bone, he didnt want to cut there, so we decided to let it encapsulate there. It bothered on and off, till one day, one year and a month later it came out the other side, it was a half inch long, man was I glad to get rid of it.
Be careful bro, if something heavy can come down on ya, rig it.
Those are nice gates, admire the craftsmanship there.

March 2, 2011
1:53 pm
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Bruce Macmillan
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Lynn Gledhill;8096 wrote: Good Job!! Ever catch an oxygen hose on fire!!??? Don't know whether to try to turn it off or RRUUUNNN!!!

Depends on how much insurance you have:running:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Dr. Seuss

March 2, 2011
2:01 pm
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Mark
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Cut the end of my pinky finger off with a table saw.

March 2, 2011
2:25 pm
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Bruce Macmillan
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Near misses count ?
In the midst of re building a chambersburg utility 200 I had the 200# hammer free of everything. I needed to pick it up and set it outside for sandblasting. The bugger is hard to rig for lifting, so I put a bessy clamp on it to make a lift ring. Now most of us who have bessys probly have see on the side ''do not use for lifting'', but I reasoned I'd keep an eye on it.
Hoisted it up 4' and was proceeding in a southerly direction,when the trolley stopped because of some obstruction and I turned to see what it was. The hammer swung out and slipped the clamp, all I heard was a deep thump. When I turned to see what the thump was there was the hammer........2'' from my foot!
I used two bessys after that :rolleyes:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Dr. Seuss

March 2, 2011
3:20 pm
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Lewis
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Worst accident would probably the time I expressed adipose tissue out of my right index finger. Funniest would be the one where an exploding whiskey barrel knocked the over head door off its tracks covered the ceiling in burning alcohol. Unfortunately, both fall under the category of "stupid" and "shoulda known better'.:hot:

Moving a big four head drill machine into the shop on rollers. Slid my long (5 feet) prybar under one end to lift it up and the bar slipped out. I had my hand wrapped around the bar so my fingers were under it and my full weight was on top. Never thought my scrawny ass falling four inches could make my finger bust open like a sausage. (Always push open handed on a tool.) One of the worst pains I ever felt, the guys at the machine shop next door drove me to the hospital because I was holding on to their floor to keep from falling over.

Most expensive free tool I ever got and the guys next door were wrong if they thought giving me the drill would be simpler than dealing with the scrapper. Heh.

Never toss a match into the bunghole of an empty whiskey barrel.

The bunghole is too small to evacuate the products of combustion and when the end blows out it will be with sufficient force to shoot the oak board through 3/4" pine and lift my 12 x 12' over head door off the track. I'm also missing the period between match insertion and hiding behind the MIG with boards falling on me.

Explosions are weird. I was literally running in little circles while I tried to figure out who I was, where I was, what I'd done, and where the fire extinguisher was. Ran past the extinguisher twice after I started looking for it.

Not nearly as entertaining as a match in an empty whiskey bottle.

March 2, 2011
3:50 pm
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Greg Obach
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3rd deg burn to my hand.. catching a falling bar that i shouldn't have.. (who says fast reflexes are a good thing )
- its bad.. when you don't feel any pain from the burn... well, cept for the week off work

March 2, 2011
4:43 pm
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Steve H
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Not as close a call as yours Larry but here's some safety stories:

An old shopmate and I were playing paddy-cakes one day, joking we still had 10 fingers and 10 toes when our landlord walked in - a 30 year boatbuilder. He had his hand all gauzed up and calmly said 'I just don't know what happened' as he took off the better part of three fingers on a table saw the day before. The irony was not lost on the two of us.

Burns are definately bad. I tell students that the really bad ones are where you go to grab something and it slips out of your hands so you go to pick it back up, by which time the neurons are transmitting that it's F*&(@! hot! The reason it slipped out the first time is that your fingers turn into bacon with the fats and oils frying off.

A close call came when I was making a hook on the horn, my tongs gave way, the hook circled around and came flying back towards me. Problem is I never heard it hit the ground:unsure:. It had nestled in my hoodie, inches from my ear~! I could hear sizzling as I was like Sh*T! and shook the clothing violently to get it out. Fortunately the thing didn't hit flesh but the sunburn on the back of my neck was like radiation poisoning~! close call, although I've heard branding is the new thing!~

As far as installation disasters- had a 10 foot rail section fall into a stairwell at a client's home, narrowly missing an antique $$$ grandfather clock. Unbelievable they were so happy with the job they didn't care there was just a nick on some wood trim from the accident :redface: Got away lucky on that one.

Play safe- moral of the story with large, ungainly things like top heavy machinery or gates: brace, brace, strap, strap.

They only remember you when you SCREW UP~!!!

March 2, 2011
5:22 pm
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Ries
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I have been really lucky, careful, and a wuss- so I have only really injured myself once, and it was with a router- damn woodworking tools are MUCH more dangerous than metal ones, ya know- and it was at 11 at night, on a jobsite, doing something I sure shoulda known better than to do.
And even then, it was only a few stitches, and a newfound ability to predict changes in the weather.

My best accident, though, only injured my pride.

I was in the old Triangle scrap yard, in Interbay- long gone, it was next to the bus and semi truck wrecking yard that also has been gone about 20 years. It was a great junkyard, 5 acres of rusting metal, conveniently located minutes from home. It was across the street from where Utilikilt used to be, also long since moved. Tells you how old I am- all my landmarks were demolished in the last century.

So I was digging around, and I found an entire stack of 4x8 sheets of perforated metal. This was way before McNichols existed- told you I was old- and so, in Seattle, in those days, perforated metal was a special order, with shipping and pallet charges thrown in- it cost at least a hundred bucks a sheet, and in those days, that was what I paid a month for rent on my shop, and it included all the 3 phase I could use.

So I was in peanut heaven, as they say- really excited to buy, at scrap, all kinds of cool patterns and hole shapes- squares, big and small rounds, funny basket weaves, some aluminum, some even stainless.

It was leaning against a wall, with the 8 foot dimension side to side, and the 4 foot up. So I stands in front of the pile, and start paging thru, pulling each sheet just a bit out from the stack to see what the next one was.
And, all of a sudden, in my excitement, I pull enough sheets out to shift the center of gravity, and the whole stack starts falling towards me.
I fall back, and, luckily, since it was a junkyard, a couple of pieces of junk stop the stack from squashing me flat.

But there I am, lying on the ground, pinned down by a ton or two of sheet metal that comes up to the middle of my chest, tucked right into a perforated metal bed.

And I cant budge.

I lie there for a few minutes, wriggling against two tons, in vain.

Then, squeakily, I rasp, help.
Louder. HELP!

Takes about 5 minutes, and one of the junkyard dudes finally puts down his copy of Jugs, and peeks out of his little shack, and comes to see what the idiot kid did.

He is wearing the dirtiest pair of coveralls known to man, with somebody elses name embroidered on it, a yellow wife beater, (hey, it was white once) and a half chewed, unlit cigar in his mouth.

He sees me, swears a bit, and wanders off, to come back, another few minutes later, with another Fred Sanford type, and, together, it takes em about 5 minutes to slowly, one by one, peel the sheets off me, and stack em back up.

I ended up completely unhurt. But pretty embarrassed.
I did buy a half dozen of em- I think they charged me a quarter a pound.
Still have a few scraps left, almost 30 years and 4 moves later.

March 2, 2011
5:27 pm
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Larry L
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I have had plenty of close calls and down right dumb accidents... Ive lost the ends of two fingers, one while I was in a forklift man basket doing crane work I was trying to watch what I was doing and was holding on to the edge of the basket and the guy driving ran us into a beam... squished off about 3/4" of my first finger... the one next too it I lost in 2nd grade when a desk fell over on me.. I have come real close to very bad things a couple times when I worked on the crane crew.. we almost lost a 60' 10 ton bridge crane off a forklift once... I dropped a 40' runway beam off a forklift from about 15' in the air at the Ingersol Rand plant in Seattle (It had too much weight on a single fork and when I stopped it pivoted around on that fork until if fell, made a lot of noise but didn't hurt anything) Ive seen machinery dumped and forklifts tipped, all manor of dumb stunts..

But in the end I feel pretty lucky, I have been around industrial situations my whole life and have never been involved in any really bad accidents.. no loss of limb or life... just a few broken bones and trips for stitches...

That one yesterday was quite scary though because I was under the gate as it was falling... I was stepping from the table to the ladder so I was close to the tall edge... I was trying to push from the falling ladder as it fell and the gate hit my arm hard on the way down.. It must have hit the ground no more than a foot from my head, and my head would have been the only thing under it... Im pretty sure it would have bifurcated my noggin, at the very least I would have never been the same... The fiberglass ladder was in far enough that the center bars squished it... Its a mangled broken mess...

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

March 2, 2011
5:46 pm
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Bruce Macmillan
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Yes, stairwells are a natural for disaster.I was installing an L shaped rail once, finagled it to the top balcony,and stood it in place over the stairwell. The superintendent looked it over and said it would be ok there while we went to lunch, after I suggested we pull it back to a safe distance. I should have heeded that ''little voice''inside me. Didn't make it to the door when the sound of thunder shook the house, someone had leaned on it. The newly finished stairs were in for a long repair, and fortunately no one was on them, or went down with the rail. And it was also fortunate it wasn't my idea to leave it like that. I'm sure his boss was none too pleased:furious:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Dr. Seuss

March 2, 2011
6:53 pm
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Steve H
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Ries- my new space by the locks was one of the early Utilikilt spaces, maybe even before the one near Tsubota (now Whole foods) They used to build PT boats right out back of my place.
Bruce-
There's a statistic that I use to drum up work and that is 50,000 people a year are killed or maimed falling down stairs and ladders. How ironic would it be to get hurt or killed on an installation like that? I'm sure stranger things have happened. What's really tricky is bracing a leaf with it open on one side. I always (now) bring plenty of clamps, 2x4's and bar stock on installations just for that purpose.

They only remember you when you SCREW UP~!!!

March 2, 2011
11:02 pm
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ArtWerkz
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Well it wasn't blacksmithing but shop injury just the same.
Just finished putting inner and outer primaries and clutch etc on a buds scooter when we decided to take it down off the jack stand. Now for those of you at home the cheap and dirty bike lift is a rectangular configuration in the shape of a box with a handle on it. You slide the box under the frame of the bike and first class lever it up off the ground. Anyway we went to take the bike down and it slid and the handle split my lid open for 15 stitches. Blew my glasses across the shop..Good times, good times.

March 2, 2011
11:37 pm
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Stumptown Forge
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Wow glad your alright Larry. My worst injury was from a wire wheel on a grinder. Caught a piece of work and impaled my thumb. I hate wire wheels since that point I only use air grinders with wire wheels....Just too many close calls.

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