What is YOUR worst shop accident story? | Page 3 | SAFETY | Forum

This is the worst accident a friend of mine (rip)had.......Bobby had a 3hp 1725rpm pedestal grinder with a 15'' wire brush he liked to polish stuff on. One day he got the bright idea to clean some rusty 5/16'' chain......The brush snached the chain (spinning at 30 revs per second) from his hand, wrapped around the arbor and before he could back away, the tag end of the chain whipped his RT eye to a bloody pulp. He lost it. Another sanario could have been, if he had the chain rapped around his hands the chain would have pulled him into the machine and killed him outright. Bobby never worked without a can of bud within easy reach......
Not long after that he lost his LT eye in a bar room bar room brawl, he didn't last long after that.
The only way I will polish chain that way is to wrap it around say a 1x6'' board, secure each end and proceed with caution. This is the accepted way from jewelers on up....bm

Larry L;8279 wrote: Yikes, That sounds like a bad day at the shop for sure, I have no doubt the wire wheel is one of the most dangerous things in the shop... The one I like to use is a 7.5HP Baldor that I have 14" wire wheels on... the thing is great for buffing parts but very, very unforgiving...

Unforgiving? that brute could wind you up like a rag and scatter body parts till there was nothing left to forgive........no pain though:angel:

The trouble is that walking over to the wire wheel to polish chain, and other oddly shaped things, seems for many just a casual maneuver, Jewelers lose their fingers, we can lose our heads.
I always love when clients check out the shop and draw back in fear when I operate a power hammer, I laugh and say, this isn't the one I sweat so much, its those over there that really scare me........b

It's just the area of the bottom die that is dangerous, it's not like it's gonna jump out and get ya and the danger is so obvious. It's those things where the danger is not so obvious that get ya.

Lewis;8292 wrote: I always chuckle at comments like "You could lose a hand in that thing." I'm putting 2,000 degree steel in there, my hands are nowhere near the power hammer dies.

There are ways to lose bits to them, but putting your hand in it is not one of them.

Another laughable misconception people have is that a 250# hammer will smash your hand allot worse than a 90#:rolleyes:

Bruce Macmillan;8297 wrote: Another laughable misconception people have is that a 250# hammer will smash your hand allot worse than a 90#:rolleyes:

The only thing is the 250lber WILL beat you up worse if your steel is not quite flat on the die or will throw a much bigger piece of steel harder at you

No argument there JN,
Just so happens I've got a good one about the ''throw'' factor.
My boss was forging 1'' x 6'' rd silicon bronze pieces, he didn't like tongs so he welded the bz to a steel handle. I don't know if they still make si bz stick rod, but the stuff is trash.
He welds the two together with this shit, gets it hot, then pops it into the 100# LG.....
The weld breaks and shoots the bz like a watermelon seed squeezed between two fingers. He was alone and had no idea how long he was out, hit him right between the eyes. Doc said he was very lucky it didn't hit him a little higher where the skull is thinner......
:skull:
Bob was never without his can of Coors nearby while working.....

JNewman;8301 wrote: That is why in a bigger shop everone should have there own lock. When I started my apprenticeship at a big foundry, first thing I was given was a lockout lock. I had to stamp my name and employee # on a tag attached. Cutting a lock by ANYONE was grounds for immediate dismisal. Everone had to sign a page about the Lockout procedures if you forgot a machine locked out and went home you had to come in to unlock it. There was a procedure if a lock had to be cut but it was a LAST resort and included getting the plant manager out of bed and in if it was night shift.

Everyone in the malthouse I worked at was issued their own 6 locks. Only their key could open those 6 locks. Some of the processes had multiple lockout points, necessitating the multiple locks. Each lock was to be accompanied with a tag identifying the lock owner.

That reminds me of a great uncle of mine. He was lying on top of the drive shaft of a tandem axle truck, working on the suspension. The truck rolled slightly, caught his coveralls in the universal joint, and pulled his coveralls so tight that it constricted him to death.

Good God, this is some horrible stuff!!!

I got burned in school when a big glob of steel rolled off of a piece of fishing equipment I was welding on and landed on the side of my jeans at the knee while I was squatting down. It set my jeans on fire before it settled into the side of my kneww, forming a nice little crater about the size of a quarter.

Smithing, I was forging a loop on the end of a big grilling fork. I was bending the loop around a drift that was standing in my hardy hole, and was bent over the work to reach it better. I was still bent over when I went to remove it. There was a burr on the end of the drift that caused me to pull a little harder. I was still bent over when it came loose and touched my face. I spent much of last summer with an interesting burn around my right nostril and on my cheek. That day, I learned how comforting rusty slack tub water can be in a pinch.