Bozos And Horror Stories

[intjonmiller]

I'm curious to hear about others' shop horror stories. Not your own errors necessarily, but what you've seen done that left you speechless. Poor business practices as well, but in particular I'm thinking about abuse of machines and tools.

I'll start, in the first comment. I didn't find anything on this subject by searching a dozen different ways, but if I just missed it feel free to merge my comment with an existing thread.

 

[intjonmiller]

I used to work for a local manufacturer. Small operation, maybe 20 people total. I was first hired to build a massive powder coating oven (big enough to drive a truck inside, though that wasn't the plan), then stayed on to help improve their production processes. The business had grown from a couple guys' idea and they just added equipment and products as they went along, but no one was really trained in anything. They just figured it out as they went along.

They had an old Southbend Lathe. I don't recall now the exact size or age, but I would estimate WWII or earlier and maybe ~15" swing, 36"+ bed. Beautiful, heavy-duty machine. They used it to turn a groove in the edge and bore a hole in the center of 5" cast aluminum wheels, and to face and chamfer the sharp corners of 5" steel wheels which were cut off of 5" structural tubing. That's it. They could have done it all with a Harbor Freight special without any modifications to improve the quality. It was rather sad to see it so neglected.

At one point while I was back in that part of the shop to heat a pulley to expand it to mount on a motor for the oven's exhaust I saw one of the welders using the lathe ways as an anvil. Just hammering away like a blacksmith on some part that had warped because he hadn't tacked it properly and overheated one side. I startled him when I freaked out about it. He explained that's what they always did. They never used the back portion of the lathe for anything, so what's the harm? I begged him not to do it again and said I'd find another solution. I talked the owner into getting a cheap anvil-shaped-object for that purpose so they would spare the lathe.

I still cringe when I think about that abuse.

 

[core-oil]

Years back, I worked in an establishment that did general engineering repairs however one day I obtained a magnetic table for the workshop, Later that week I went into the shop to find the guys had put a plug on its cable & plugged it into a single phase socket, I explained "you don,t do that guys" and told them to connect it to its little transformer /rectifier, I cannot remember what went wrong, but they were not able to get it working, So the answer obviously was, You got it folks "Improvise" Yes sir they tacked the work piece on to the table with a little run of weld Unbelievable !

Straightening flat bar on the lathe shears sounds just about right, apparently according to another guy who was a skilled fitter /turner, he came into the workshop just in the nick of time a nano second before another genius was about to wallop a flat section on the marking out table right on the corner which would have been easily broken off.

Another time i perseuded the management into getting me a nice little 3" wide engineers vice for small work I was engaged in, It was a nice little British Record very well made, Not like a lot of the modern crap, I cared for it , didn't abuse it, after use cleaned it, Well it lasted two weeks, till the shop handyman tried to bend a heavy section in it with a 14 pound flogging hammer I weep for engineering.

 

[boostin53]

I don't have anything good to add. But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.

 

[P T Schram]

After 19 years in EH&S, most of my experiences with abused tools resulted in injuries that I had to deal with.

Five guys dead at a plating shop in Northeast Indiana. Had they been able to read and had some general chemistry, they'd still be alive. Caused me to learn all manner of confined space/high-angle, technical, rope rescue along with vehicle extrication/victim extraction techniques along with "first aid for Emergency responders, industrial structural firefighting, and HAZWOPER.

A one-armed man who got his arm burned off working for a power company.

An electrician who had one of his toes blown off using a clamp-on ammeter on an 80KV circuit.

A forklift driver's legs broken because he refused to have the seat belt repaired and the forklift fell on top of him breaking both legs. He argued that by having the latch busted made him faster at his job. This one really hurt because it happened right after I'd finished re-writing their "Powered industrial Truck Management Plan and had trained the entire staff, but was good enough for them to hire as a consultant but not good enough to be hired as an employee and this accident happened less than a month after I finished the contract but wasn't hired to stay on.

Another forklift driver kept his hand on the ROPS in spite of repeated counseling sessions. When he blew his hand up when he got it caught between the ROPS and a bollard, he finally stopped doing that. My boss came barging into the first aid rooms creaming to have the employee drug tested. When I interrupted saying ti would be pointless, I got shouted down-until one of the sheriff's deputies escorted my boss out and informed him that on ym direction, the victim had been given two grains of morphine for the pain, thus negating any value of drug testing him!

And, I didn't witness it, but the T&D maker at my last engineering job told of working for GM Bay City when he found an apprentice trying to press some molding tooling apart with a huge hydraulic press. He was told to disassemble the tool first, then it would simply come apart... The T&D guy left the shop only to hear a loud boom a few seconds later. Three men dead, five disfigured and millions of dollars of machinery destroyed/damaged.

Then there was my dad's and my friend who made his own black powder-dried it in his kitchen oven and milled it in the garage...

 

[P T Schram]

I don't have anything good to add. But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.

I have a few tool truck customers for whom I replace screwdriver blades weekly as they refuse to use the correct tool for the job. One of them even has the correct tool but won't use it!

 

[intjonmiller]

it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.

I like how Snap-On has to write on their screwdrivers, "Not a chisel, punch, or pry bar." Gives you a lot of faith in the automotive repair field, doesn't it?

I have used drill bits as punches, but only brad point woodworking bits into wood because I needed that exact size marked at that exact location and there's no better solution there, and no damage to the bit.

 

[intjonmiller]

Years back, I worked in an establishment that did general engineering repairs however one day I obtained a magnetic table for the workshop, Later that week I went into the shop to find the guys had put a plug on its cable & plugged it into a single phase socket, I explained "you don,t do that guys" and told them to connect it to its little transformer /rectifier, I cannot remember what went wrong, but they were not able to get it working, So the answer obviously was, You got it folks "Improvise" Yes sir they tacked the work piece on to the table with a little run of weld Unbelievable !

Straightening flat bar on the lathe shears sounds just about right, apparently according to another guy who was a skilled fitter /turner, he came into the workshop just in the nick of time a nano second before another genius was about to wallop a flat section on the marking out table right on the corner which would have been easily broken off.

Another time i perseuded the management into getting me a nice little 3" wide engineers vice for small work I was engaged in, It was a nice little British Record very well made, Not like a lot of the modern crap, I cared for it , didn't abuse it, after use cleaned it, Well it lasted two weeks, till the shop handyman tried to bend a heavy section in it with a 14 pound flogging hammer I weep for engineering.

If I didn't know there were so many of these guys in the world I would think we had worked with the same crew.

 

[intjonmiller]

Then there was my dad's and my friend who made his own black powder-dried it in his kitchen oven and milled it in the garage...

Your *late* friend?

What a collection of Darwin winners. It really sucks when they take out others as well. My brother was recently arguing that we shouldn't be so concerned about safety and let survival of the fittest work for our benefit. I pointed out that the safety stuff is largely to protect everyone else from their stupidity.

 

[P T Schram]

I like how Snap-On has to write on their screwdrivers, "Not a chisel, punch, or pry bar." Gives you a lot of faith in the automotive repair field, doesn't it?

I have used drill bits as punches, but only brad point woodworking bits into wood because I needed that exact size marked at that exact location and there's no better solution there, and no damage to the bit.

And, don't forget your safety glasses!

My safety glasses are first thing on in the morning and last thing off in the evening.

I do believe that I own shoes without safety toes, but I don't know where they might be.