Goofs & Blunders You Should Avoid.

Back in high school metal shop..1975...cutting a v-groove in a drill press vise jaw on a horizontal mill. 45 RPM, climb milling. We used old-fashioned oil cans for cutting oil and I was "thumb-pumping" oil ahead of the cut. The class joker, Henry, came up behind me and says "hey, Wilhelmi- why don't you stick the tip of the can in the cutter and see what happens?" Sure enough, that was enough distraction- I ended up getting the spout into the cutter- pulled my hand through and cut the tip off the third finger on my left hand. Scared the crap out of the shop teacher- more than me. Two years later, I had to have CRS chips excavated from 1/8" below the end of the finger. I always wondered how my middle and index fingers went unscathed; all I can think is that I pulled my hand out so fast that I ripped the tip off the third finger as it was running through the cutter.
Did that kid get expelled? I had something similar happened to me. I was routing a piece of wood and the neighbor thought it would be funny to unplug the router while I was using it. I explained to him not very nicely that when someone is using a machine, any machine, to stand back, keep your mouth shut, until the machine is completely shut off. The good thing is no one got hurt. No one should distract a person whom is busy operating any kind of machine.
 
Speaking of things pulled through milling cutters, I lost a nice 6" scale.....chopped up into little pieces because I was raking chips away from the cutter. Bad idea.
 
Speaking of things pulled through milling cutters, I lost a nice 6" scale.....chopped up into little pieces because I was raking chips away from the cutter. Bad idea.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has done that:faint: Forgot all about it until you posted

Also wound an acid brush around a cutter.
 
At a company that I worked for some years back, one of the production workers needed a hole drilled but the machinist was not in. He selected a drill bit with a Morse taper shank and chucked it in the drill press. As he started drilling, the drill started to wobble and came flying out. It hit a concrete wall leaving a fairly respectable divot. Fortunately no one was injured in the escapade and production workers were henceforth barred from using the machine shop.
 
Don't try making a compressed air storage tank from an old water heater tank. I saw one fly around the weld shop, hit the wall, broke a window, hit the ceiling, came back down, hit the guy having it welded, broke his left arm in two places. Welders were hence forth forbidden to work on 'government' work.
 
When its -40* don't lock your keys into your vehicle, always have a spare key in your wallet...in case you do.

Was having problems with my electric windows and door locks on the truck. Repairman came over, fussed with it, and said the door locks were fixed. To demonstrate, he pushed the button to lock the doors and they locked. He then closed the door.....with the keys in the ignition.
 
Back
Top