arm and hand removed by lathe

[BarkerJohn]

I second all the warnings here from personal experience. One day thought it a good idea to clean my mucky motorcycle chain and how much quicker this would be if the engine was turning and moving the chain round for me. Wearing gloves plus using a spirit soaked rag. You can guess what happened. Rag caught then glove and hand was dragged into the front drive sproket crushing the tip of my right ring finger until the engine stalled. IfI had more wits about me at the time I would have realised I could have disengaged the clutch with my left hand and gotten my finger out with less damage.

I had almost severed the last cm of the finger but they sorted me out at the hospital and it all looks normal now. Small scale compared to the stories here but it serves as a reminder to me every time I work on the bikes or use the machines.

John

 

[Philco]

Unfortunately some people have to learn safety lessons the hard way. They just can't comprehend the dangers of gloves, loose clothing or jewelry around machinery, especially rotating machinery. I had numerous comments on the YouTube videos I made on hand grinding, that I should have been wearing gloves to "protect" my hands. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and other viewers set them straight. I assigned my wedding ring to a permanent home in the tool box at an early age when I nearly lost my ring finger push starting a car of all things. The ring hooked over a canvas stud sticking out of the cowl just as the engine started. Luckily I was able to dive on the back of the car and unhook it before falling off. Now, it's no rings, long clothing or hair (no problem there) around any type of machinery.

On a humorous note, I was in a vocational welding class in high school and the instructor had repeatedly warned a student about wearing frayed jeans (bell bottoms) in the welding lab. One day the instructor was doing a gas welding demo and "accidentally" caught the kids pants on fire. You would never get away with something like that today, but I'll bet the kid with the frayed bell bottoms never forgot his practical lesson.

Tom

Tom, that reminded me that when I was in high school the cool thing to do was to cut the thread out of the bottom of your Levi blue jean pant legs & let them fray out over your cowboy boots. I got chosen to represent our ag mechanics glass in arc welding at the county contest. My turn came up to weld & about half way through my welding exercise I started feeling this strange heat sensation on my legs. I wanted to keep welding out out of fear that I would screw up my weld but the other side of me kept saying something's not right here. I stopped my weld & looked down & Both of my frayed out pants leg were on fire. Defiantly an embarrassing lesson learned.

 

[Tom Griffin]

Tom, that reminded me that when I was in high school the cool thing to do was to cut the thread out of the bottom of your Levi blue jean pant legs & let them fray out over your cowboy boots. I got chosen to represent our ag mechanics glass in arc welding at the county contest. My turn came up to weld & about half way through my welding exercise I started feeling this strange heat sensation on my legs. I wanted to keep welding out out of fear that I would screw up my weld but the other side of me kept saying something's not right here. I stopped my weld & looked down & Both of my frayed out pants leg were on fire. Defiantly an embarrassing lesson learned.

You didn't have an instructor by the name of Mr. Gray did you? lol

Tom

 

[therbig]

Thank you for the reminder! It is so easy to become lazy and complacent: "I'll do just this one quick cut" (without safety glasses). And that's not only where actual accidents happen; it's also where a sloppy mindset takes root.

It reminds me that safety is not only a set of rules; it is a culture. At a large global mining company that has a serious focus on safety, even the CEO will hold the handrail on stairs. Why - because everyone at the mines is required to do so. You might ask: "what difference does it make to safety at the mine if the CEO holds the handrail at headquarters in London?" It's because you can't have a safety culture if some feel that participation is optional.

Also thanks for talking about gloves. It is entirely obvious, but somehow I missed that in my machine tool safety class!

Tom

 

[blacksmithden]

I work in heavy equipment maintenance here in the Alberta oil patch. There are more and more places that have rules about having to wear gloves and long sleeves when ever you're anywhere on their site. If I'm working around a running engine/belts/fans, I always roll up my sleeves and take the gloves off. I've had a few people warn me about getting caught without them on.....it's this easy....just ask me to leave your site because I'm not losing body parts or my life because some desk jockey 300 miles away decided to make a blanket rule to make themselves look important. So far, common sense has prevailed and nobody has taken me up on my offer to leave.

 

[GK1918]

Ironically, yesterday a a customer walks in the shop for his order, and as usual, I swearing up a storm, being sometime after I turned around 60
for some reason everything falls out of my shirt pockets (never did before) when I bend over, causing busted or scratched glasses. The guy says
oh get one of these ( a leash for glasses around ya neck) no way in hell, cause it was a one time for those things. Adjusting my carb on my dump
truck, glasses fell off my face, fan sucked up glasses ripped leash off my neck. Tottaly wasnt thinking I was a dumb kid in my 50s. So that was the
first and last time to use those yuppie old man stupid things. so dont

 

[Nitrous]

Ironically, yesterday a a customer walks in the shop for his order, and as usual, I swearing up a storm, being sometime after I turned around 60
for some reason everything falls out of my shirt pockets (never did before) when I bend over, causing busted or scratched glasses. The guy says
oh get one of these ( a leash for glasses around ya neck) no way in hell, cause it was a one time for those things. Adjusting my carb on my dump
truck, glasses fell off my face, fan sucked up glasses ripped leash off my neck. Tottaly wasnt thinking I was a dumb kid in my 50s. So that was the
first and last time to use those yuppie old man stupid things. so dont

As an aside, in a psychiatric facility I worked at, we had to wear ID tags on neck lanyards. The type we used had a small pair of neo magnets spliced into the loop. There was no way a patient could use the neck lanyard to control staff by pulling on it. The lanyard simply pulls apart. I suspect that would be quite safe around machines with rotating bits.

It it probably isn't a great idea to have a breast pocket full of stuff around machines you might have to lean into. I've seen pens fall out of shirt pockets fly across the shop floor.

funny, but a lot of common sense comes from people who were lucky enough to learn without paying too high a personal price.

Doug

 

[Don B]

I've never worn gloves when machining, and my wedding ring has sat on my dresser for 34 years, but even when your careful dumb things happen, I was on a big lathe turning a 24 inch piece, the swarf was coming off in long strings that where building up around the chuck, I couldn't clear them with the rake so I just let it go, I knew they where going to catch so I stepped back about 5 feet, when the chuck caught the swarf it shot out like a dam slinky and took a little of the tip of my nose off, I had seen them shoot out a couple of feet before but never that far, when I look in the mirror I have a constant reminder to be safe because it left a depression/trough in my nose, I always wonder if I had been 6 inches closer how bad it would have been.:thinking:

 

[Andre]

Oh, it's just a flesh wound!



Seriously though, your lucky. It could have been worse. May I ask what lathe you were using? Cleaning it up would be nasty....

 

[chips&more]

I still wear my wedding ring, but it’s cut as pictured below. Thank god I have not put it to the test…yet!