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What is YOUR worst shop accident story?
March 3, 2011
12:23 am
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Bruce Macmillan
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[QUOTE=Cybo;8119]
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.
Guys like this are one of the reasons why; I watched a joker in a new house stairwell with a dome above. His ladder wouldn't quite reach far enough up the side of the dome to reach over and put in the chandiller lights, he needed another 8'', so this BIG guy with his 20' ladder decides to put a 1gal paint can under each leg of the ladder.........I shook my head and said,what if the cans crumple? He brushed me off and calmly did the job:angel:

"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 3, 2011
12:36 am
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nuge
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My least favorite was using the gas axe under one of my beaters, can't even remember what rig or what part i was cutting but one of them sparks went right into my ear and it felt like it was burning my brain.

March 3, 2011
12:43 am
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J Wilson
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Most commonly heard just before the "Accident": "Hey, Watch this."

Most common explanation of the event: "It seemed like a good idea at the time".

If common sense was really common, more people would have it...[Image Can Not Be Found]

My son is the Blacksmith

March 3, 2011
1:15 am
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Bob Johnson
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My worst accident also involved a ladder; a ladder whose feet slid out and dumping me. The fall was less than 8 feet, and I thought the worst was a finger that got cut on the siding as I slid down the wall. Got it sewed up in the local ER. Then about 2 weeks latter I was getting shooting pains down my legs like I put my finger in a light bulb socket and was having trouble walking. Went to the doc, who sent me off to the neurosurgeon and I was on the table for a spinal fusion a couple of days later. Told I was luck to be able to feel below the waist. Seems I extruded a couple of disc that were pinching off nerves. Had L4, L5, and S1 vertebrae fused around a cage of titanium screws and rods. I wore a corset with steel stays for a while to immobilize my spine while it healed. That was 10 years ago and I’ve learned to live with a 20 pound lifting limit and some dead nerves in my right foot. I still don’t know why the ladder slipped out from under me, but my wife has prohibited me from going above the 3rd step on any ladder.

I really don’t like ladders!

March 3, 2011
1:22 am
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Grant
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nuge;8130 wrote: My least favorite was using the gas axe under one of my beaters, can't even remember what rig or what part i was cutting but one of them sparks went right into my ear and it felt like it was burning my brain.

Maybe it was! Would certainly explain a lot.:bounce:

We used to call that "Rice Krispies", you know; Snap, Crackle, Pop!:stomp:

“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 3, 2011
1:49 am
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JimB
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Personally I prefer SMAW neck burns or the occasional spark that finds it's way in to your hood and lands on the lip 😉

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March 3, 2011
2:17 am
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Bruce Macmillan
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. Summertime, hot, figured I'd wear a tank top to weld in. The job was at the bench, doing build up work so many many passes were put down with the mig. Y'all haven't lived till you've had arc burned armpits! Nooo more tank tops........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 3, 2011
2:27 am
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ironstein
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I am union rodbuster, and i was about thirty feet up a rebar wall installing the last few 30 foot pieces with two other guys. We were all harnessed up with full body harnesses and pelican hook lanyards. The guy to the left of me was a known tweeker, and he was jumping around on that wall, he would hook his wall hook and throw his body weight back like some kind of idiot. I told him to calm down and relax because he was shaking the whole wall. This wall was 5/8 rebar, double curtain at twelve inches on center. The next time he went to throw his weight back, he realized his hook wasn't clipped to the wall, and somehow, i have no idea how, he managed to catch himself. All the momentum he created somehow broke the wall loose and it started falling. Mind you i was hooked off with two pelican lanyards and a wall hook. The guy on the other side just happened to be moving so he wasn't attached to the wall like me. As the wall fell, these guys managed to jump and get out of the way, not me. I was frantically trying to unhook myself to no avail. I went down with the wall, landed on two bundles of rebar about 6 inches from a metal stake sticking up out of the ground about three feet! The wall came down on top of me. I bruised some ribs, and had the wind knocked out of me. Tons of workers came over and picked the wall up so i could get out. Meanwhile the tweeker was adamantly denying his involvement. I chased him the best i could, cause i wanted a piece of him, but was too messed up to catch him. He didn't show up for work for a few days! Probably smart because i would have beat him senseless.

March 3, 2011
2:49 am
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Mark
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This didn't happen to me, but I worked with the guy's son.

I used to work in a malting facility (sister company to Great Western Malting in Vancouver, WA, for you Pacific Northwesters). One of the maintenance guys never locked out bucket elevators before working on them, he would just push the side-travel limit switch over to cut out the motor so he could work on the leg.

He was working on a leg once and the operator in a different area of the malthouse wanted to move some malt and fired up the elevator. The side-travel limit switch was worn out and the belt started up. One of the buckets caught the guy's elbow and ripped his arm off and took it away. His arm was never seen again. It probably ended up in some Japanese beer as we were shipping a lot of malt to Japan at that time.

March 3, 2011
3:00 am
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Mark
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Another malthouse story.

A couple of guys broke into our old malthouse one night. A lot of those older malthouses use Humphrey Manlifts to get up and down between the floors. These are essentially moving belts that go up and down in a continuous circuit the height of the building. They have hand grips and foot platforms evenly spaced along the belt. As one of the platforms goes by you, you step onto the foot platform and hold the handle and ride the belt to whichever floor you wanted to go to.

The malthouse operator saw these guys wandering around the malthouse and started chasing them. They jumped on the manlift and started riding it to the ground floor. At the bottom, the belt goes around a pulley in a pit and starts going back up again. The guy didn't know what to do at the bottom. He landed, sitting down on the platform above the pit with his feet dangling in the pit. The next foot foot platform was on it's way down hit him on the top of the head as he was sitting there, killing him instantly.

March 3, 2011
3:15 am
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Bill Cottrell
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I was riding one of those manlifts once w/ a 12" cresent in my back pocket. It got hung up below a landing and tore the entire ass out of my Carhart's. But I didn't lose my grip on the manlift handle! Wherever that handle is today it likely still has my fingerprints embedded in it.

March 3, 2011
3:22 am
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Mark
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Bill Cottrell;8144 wrote: I was riding one of those manlifts once w/ a 12" cresent in my back pocket. It got hung up below a landing and tore the entire ass out of my Carhart's. But I didn't lose my grip on the manlift handle! Wherever that handle is today it likely still has my fingerprints embedded in it.

A guy in the grain elevator next to Great Western Malting in Vancouver died when he was holding onto a grain scoop while riding a manlift. Like your wrench, it caught on the floor opening and pulled him off the platform. He fell 60'.

We had strict 'no tools' policies. We would set tools in buckets on the platforms and send them up to a guy waiting for them. Ineffecient? Yes. Safer? Somewhat...

March 3, 2011
3:50 am
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Lewis
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I had a blob of MIG weld jump into my shirt pocket. As always it burnt through to the inside, I started dancing around and untucking things. That damn blob came out my left pant leg. It stopped leaving little burn marks about mid-thigh though.

One time I didn't want to toss a knife up to a coworker on a telephone pole, just seemed unsafe. So I climbed up there. Big old co-ax crimpers slipped out of her tool belt and hit me in the face. I shoulda thrown the knife.

March 3, 2011
3:58 am
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JimB
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Lewis;8150 wrote: One time I didn't want to toss a knife up to a coworker on a telephone pole, just seemed unsafe. So I climbed up there. Big old co-ax crimpers slipped out of her tool belt and hit me in the face. I shoulda thrown the knife.

:bounce:

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March 3, 2011
4:31 am
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Lynn Gledhill
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I was forging a hook of some type once and just hitting it wrong, it jumped up and hit me right in the nose. The dang thing was nearly white hot, so it cut, bruised, cauterized all at the same time. Took weeks for my nose and upper lip to heal.:(

March 3, 2011
1:44 pm
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Bruce Macmillan
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The closest I've come to death/dismemberment in the shop was this; I was reefing on some bars using a fork in the vice. The bar broke (un mild steel), the 250# hammer was locked and loaded 6' away and I was headed strait for it. Though not facing it I knew it was there and ready to do a number on me. In the space of a second or so I was able to lower my body enough to avoid the jaws, It did go bang, and my price for avoiding the maw was a few broken ribs........cheap

"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 3, 2011
1:47 pm
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JNewman
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Worst shop accident to me was tapering a finger on the tablesaw, I don't think the blade hit my finger I believe there was a staple in the end of the board which the blade picked up and dragged across the end of my finger. Xray showed piece of metal in my finger. Finger was still too close to the blade. Worst accident I saw was when I had just started my apprenticeship. a guy split his thumb to the knuckle on an overarm router with a 2" straight router bit. I heard the router throw the job on the floor so I looked up he then quickly grabbed the work and went back at it instead of thinking about what went wrong. The cutter grabbed the work again and pulled his thumb in.

Worst blacksmithing accident I have had. I reset a pair of tongs one time and without thinking about it quenched them. I then used them with a link on the reins. As I was using them working on the anvil one of the reins broke. Somehow I had a finger between the reins, the reins slamming together split the end of the finger wide open and made the nail fall off.

March 3, 2011
4:50 pm
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Larry L
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Of course then there was that one time I got hit in the face with a Titanium Crowbar.....

I had forged several and was cleaning scale off on a bench wire wheel, it caught and flung it down and it bounced off the channel the grinder is mounted on and back into my face.. about a 4' long 7/8 ti bar has a lot of bounce...

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Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

March 3, 2011
10:45 pm
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Grant
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So I was visiting my friends at Wrought Iron by George many years ago when I spotted a very suspicious looking 55 gallon drum. One end was bulged out into a hemisphere. On closer inspection I could see a small hole made by a cutting torch. I said to Doug that that looked like a close call. Well, it was more than that, much more than that. He showed me that the other end was completely gone!

Seems one of the guys got the idea to cut the end out of an old lacquer thinner barrel. When he pierced the top with the torch, the barrel exploded, blowing the bottom end off and propelling the drum straight through the roof! They found the guy with the torch buried in his forehead. Paramedics actually had to cut the hoses so the torch could be removed at the hospital!

The guy actually recovered, but they said he was really goofy after that.

“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 4, 2011
2:50 am
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Bruce Macmillan
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I was wondering when the pictures of destruction would surface, what's a good war story without a pic or two!
I was putting the finishing touches on a new 90 lb air hammer. I was fiddling with the connecting rod that's between the treadle and control valve. Under the ram was a 4x4 block of wood with about 1'' between it and the upper die, I decided to remove the block and when I grabbed it, for some stupid reason I put my thumb on top of the block.....Like I said I was fiddling with the control rod......... Duh
My right thumb is still a virgin, and the hammer has a name; ''Nipper''.......b

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"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

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