Letting other people use your equipment

I only let People who know what they are doing use my lathe. A hot chip burnt my arm one time the next time I dodged it. "If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge anything!"
 
In college 50 years or so ago, I wanted to make some kind of part for a vacuum chamber, and figured out it would take a lathe. So the library had a copy of "How to Run a Lathe". Got that, read it in an hour or so, and went to see the engineering shop foreman, asking if I could use a lathe, and yes, I was familiar with a South Bend. So he said OK, took me to the lathe. Yep, it looked just like the book, so I set it up just like I thought it should be, and turned it on. Wow, the chuck key flew out about 20 feet and smashed into the concrete block wall about 8' up, near where the foreman was standing. I will always admire and appreciate the way he handled this situation. He picked up the chuck key, handed it back to me, and said "I bet you'll never do that again". And at least through 8:39AM this morning, he's been right.
 
Back in high school the shop teacher always did a demo at the begining of each semester.
The class room part of the shop had a full row of reinforced safety glass windows, the kind with the wire mesh moled into the glass. So all the students were in the class room watching this demo out in the shop.
He turned off power to a machine at the circuit breaker (breakers were in the class room) put in a chuck key, turned the machine on, and then went into the class room closed the door and flipped on the circuit breaker.
We all got to see what a chuck key does when left in the chuck. In this demo the key came THRU one of the classroom windows.
As least now I know why there are chuck keys stuck in the ceiling, and embedded in the block walls just around that one machine......

As for my shop, I have only ever let one person work in it just one time. He was taking a machining course at the local collage and after an illness he fell behind on his project for class, so I kept a close eye but let him get caught up on his class project. Yes I could have just as easily made the parts for him but that is cheating since he was being graded on the work. As it was he was accused of cheating because some of the cuts were better than the schools equipment could do. I have made a lot of parts for a lot of people over the years.

By trade I am an engineer, At a place I worked at they required a white shirt, black pants and a tie. I always refused to wear a tie. Untill one day the engineering manager got to close to a lathe and the lathe lead screw at the tail stock end got hold of his tie. Fortunately it was slow enough that he had just enough time to plant both hands solid on the machine AND he was a huge body builder so he had the strength to hold his face out of the machine till the tie ripped. He could not reach the E-Stop from where he was. That was the end of tie requirement at work. I am fairly strong but I don't think I could have pulled that off.
 
Last edited:
Thinking back, over the last 50 years there have only been two non-employees/well trained family members have ever used my equipment. Both are skilled machinists. It just never really came up, but it doesn't seem like a good idea. I do occasionally loan small hand power tools to trusted people, but not often.
 
I'm waiting for one of my boys to ask to use the mill or the lathe. I would love to watch carefully and teach.
When my boys were about 8 and 11, I took them out to show them the power of a shotgun.
I placed a pumpkin on a post and blew it up.
A time before that, I placed a 45ACP hole in the center of a melon. The back half was gone.
That made an impression on them.
I hope it stuck. They are 32 and 35 now.
 
This thread really blew up in 12 hours.

I don't often see people talking about safety on H-M.

Not many injuries either.

Sometimes, bringing up a safety issue has evoked "safety Nazi" accusations.

It's good to see so many of you aware and promoting shop safety.

In the inimitable words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus:

 
My grandfather taught me to use his lathe when I was 12. After a fairly short training period, I was left unattended on his 16” Pratt and Whitney. I think things were different in the 70’s!

Unfortunately all of my tools are used by everyone on the crew. If they can show competence, the lathe and mill are free game also. I carry commercial insurance and get a COI from whatever company we are working for at the time. Most accidents have happened with small tools, so far...
 
i have machine tools at home and at work
i'm surrounded by machinery most of my waking hours it seems.
i encourage the use of my machine tools only when under very strict supervision
enlightenment often is sparked by actually doing something you watched others do
i like the look on a persons face when they take their first .015" lathe cut in 303,
or when a hole needs to be drilled and you call their number to do the work usually reserved for someone more skilled- people seem to get a charge outta that.
the best, for me anyway, is putting a facing head on the BP and have a (supervised) newb take down some reclaimed 6061 to rough dimension
first i show them, then they do it.
afterwards i generally have words of encouragement, along with a warning
the warning is- if i ever catch you touching my lathes or my mills, or my surface grinders without consent on my part,
you'll never use them again.
i treat rotating things like rattlesnakes, i try to implore the same belief in others
 
While I'm only on Page 2, my general answer is "no". Them getting hurt is oddly further down the list, and perhaps shouldn't be. First is that I'm not going to let them use it when I'm not around, so it means it's now impacting my time if I wanted to be doing something else. Second is that there's always the chance that they'll break something or crash it, then what? I know two people who had their good friendship end when one crashed the other's lathe and never said anything.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top