Don't Wear Sleeves vs. Burns From Hot Chips

[RaisedByWolves]

Wait, what?

None of the shirts or T Shirts I wear have plastics in; all are cotton. Where in God's name are you buying your clothes from?

I guess I thought we were talking about safety sleeves.

And there's yer dogma right there.

I tend to wear medical exam nitrile gloves. They're completely skin tight and thin and fragile enough such that they'll rip and tear well before dragging my hand anywhere near anything nasty.

I do also have the thicker type of nitrile gloves used by motor mechanics for when I'm performing tasks not on any machine tool (benchwork type tasks or cleaning rust off used tooling, that sort of thing). I have welding gloves too.

I'd never wear anything thicker or more durable than the very thin medical exam gloves when operating any machine tool.

The no gloves thing is like the no sleeves thing. The underlying principles is really "No item of clothing should be worn that may get caught or snagged such that the clothing might cause part of the wearer to be dragged into harms way".

I do not agree, and I don't mean to come off preachy, but...

Ill concede that nitrile gloves are a grey area for me, but knowing myself (Where the hell are my glasses? Whoops, their on my head) and having seen how fast things that seem innocuous can go wrong, you wont catch me wearing gloves or sleeves in the shop.

You are assuring yourself that X is OK, and while it may be, It will lead you to complacency. Complacency is the component you're overlooking and its one of the worst aspects of human nature you need to fight in the shop.

I damn near got scalped during my apprenticeship when I bent over to look at the center drill and spot mark when beginning a hole. My hair was longish and got pulled to the drill chuck by the oil on it (The chuck, not my beautiful long gone hair) and wrapped half way around. If my hair was just a little longer it would have been a really bad day.

I knew my hair was long, but didn't think it was long enough for this to happen, as it wasn't long enough to tie up, and it had never happened before so.....Yeah, that complacency thing.

I also have the glove a coworker was wearing when I pulled him out of the Bridgeport that was winding him in.

He was "Only" drilling out a clogged bushing, and since it would only take a second, and we were in a rush, he made the conscious decision to tell himself it would be OK to keep his gloves on "Just this once".

He came to this conclusion due to the new gloves we just got being very thin and tight and they would just "Break away" if they got caught.

These pics do not do justice to just how gossamer these gloves are, their really like wearing nothing, close to cotton inspection gloves, and I've torn them putting them on. But in this admittedly "rare" instance, they acted like a Chinese handcuff in and bound up tight on his hand and he couldn't free himself.


This little nick on the pinky finger of the glove is what started it, and remember, I was standing there watching this unfold and told him to take the b**** mittens off. The chip was very slender and seemed innocuous enough, but it was strong enough to pull the fabric of the glove and start winding it up.







Me pointing at the tiny lil spot that got the ball rolling. The chip he was making caught this spot on his off hand that was holding the part. His hand was about 6" or so away from the drill bit. IIRC the drill bit was under 1/8".







Back.









Palm.







Now this happened 15yrs or more ago and I still have the glove. I know one guy out there that will probably say IM making this up and I always have a story and yada yada yada......That I'm selling "Fear".......And I'm just fine and dandy with that. T
Its kinda funny actually, the reason being is that I have showed this glove to every apprentice that has come through the shop and explained this same argument to them, and it has usually had the intended impact.


In essence, having a clean warm hand with fingers missing has never appealed to anyone I've met.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

I have always rolled my overall sleeves back a couple of turns leaving the lower half of my forearms exposed. The roll tends to tighten around my forarms leaving nothing flapping about.
I'm assuming everyone's feeding their cutters from the right hand side of the part. The vast majority of the chips then fly away from you. To reduce this further bring the part towards you, almost to the front edge of the face mill. This directs the chips further to the left, releasing them earlier from the cutter.
The problem I see is that "machinists" on social media post videos of themselves using gloves - sleeves -rings watches etc. These practices can be seen as ok and copied. There is a responsibility to post safe methods only. If I see any gloves in a machining video, I immediately move on.

Cant be emphasized enough.

 

[mmcmdl]

Its kinda funny actually, the reason being is that I have showed this glove to every apprentice that has come through the shop and explained this same argument to them, and it has usually had the intended impact.

Looks like a Kevlar cut resistant glove . They're my favorites for working out in the yard . My ex-company strictly encouraged all mechanics to take home what they wanted/needed as they needed us in at work . They didn't want us losing digits at home and missing work . I still have a " couple " pairs in the 3 containers .

 

[pontiac428]

As for the melty fabrics in the shop, yeah, that is a real concern. So much synthetic fiber in our clothing these days. The jersey-knit fleece sweatshirts are particularly scary, so I follow one rule- If I ever spill oil, stoddard solvent, cutting oils, or even start getting any accumulation of combustible fuel from general work, that garment comes off. I do make sparks, and I did observe a cautionary tale about setting yourself on fire once when smoking a cigarette outside the motorpool- A fellow soldier changed a fuel filter and spilled on his coveralls, I told him he was an idiot and should change, but he insisted JP8 fuel is not flammable, and lit himself on fire with his Bic lighter to prove it. While he was doing his stop, drop, and roll, I made sure to kick and stomp the flames a few times to make sure they were all extinguished.

I know one guy out there that will probably say IM making this up and I always have a story and yada yada yada......That I'm selling "Fear".......And I'm just fine and dandy with that.

Fear and good sense equals respect for your hazards. While I don't think we need to ban sleeves, we do need to monitor our behavior. No leaning across the mill table to brush away chips during a cut. If your calipers fall in the chip tray while on the lathe, don't reach in and grab them out while it feeds its pass, wait and stop the machine first. I don't make sudden moves or do "I just" stuff- I just need to move this, I just need to grab that long chip, I just need to heat this piece with the torch by my cluttered workbench. Doing something inherently dangerous "real quick" is a good way to find out how quick bad decisions are made.

Rings are spooky. I don't wear them. It's not a little reach that will get you, it's anything. Moving stuff and dropping armfuls will do it, giving something a push, anytime something is exiting your grasp. Finger degloves give me the chills.

 

[mmcmdl]

My boss ( not a mechanic/machinist ) fell from a stool while working in his garage one year . Ring caught a peg on the pegboard . They had to cut his wedding ring off or he would have lost the finger . 2 days later when he came into work , the finger was the size of a ripe cucumber . As he was a great guy , we didn't tell him where he could stick it .

 

[pontiac428]

My boss ( not a mechanic/machinist ) fell from a stool while working in his garage one year . Ring caught a peg on the pegboard . They had to cut his wedding ring off or he would have lost the finger . 2 days later when he came into work , the finger was the size of a ripe cucumber . As he was a great guy , we didn't tell him where he could stick it .

He could have gone for the pickle slicer!

 

[SouthernChap]

I guess I thought we were talking about safety sleeves.





I do not agree, and I don't mean to come off preachy, but...

Ill concede that nitrile gloves are a grey area for me, but knowing myself (Where the hell are my glasses? Whoops, their on my head) and having seen how fast things that seem innocuous can go wrong, you wont catch me wearing gloves or sleeves in the shop.

You are assuring yourself that X is OK, and while it may be, It will lead you to complacency. Complacency is the component you're overlooking and its one of the worst aspects of human nature you need to fight in the shop.

I damn near got scalped during my apprenticeship when I bent over to look at the center drill and spot mark when beginning a hole. My hair was longish and got pulled to the drill chuck by the oil on it (The chuck, not my beautiful long gone hair) and wrapped half way around. If my hair was just a little longer it would have been a really bad day.

I knew my hair was long, but didn't think it was long enough for this to happen, as it wasn't long enough to tie up, and it had never happened before so.....Yeah, that complacency thing.

I also have the glove a coworker was wearing when I pulled him out of the Bridgeport that was winding him in.

He was "Only" drilling out a clogged bushing, and since it would only take a second, and we were in a rush, he made the conscious decision to tell himself it would be OK to keep his gloves on "Just this once".

He came to this conclusion due to the new gloves we just got being very thin and tight and they would just "Break away" if they got caught.

These pics do not do justice to just how gossamer these gloves are, their really like wearing nothing, close to cotton inspection gloves, and I've torn them putting them on. But in this admittedly "rare" instance, they acted like a Chinese handcuff in and bound up tight on his hand and he couldn't free himself.


This little nick on the pinky finger of the glove is what started it, and remember, I was standing there watching this unfold and told him to take the b**** mittens off. The chip was very slender and seemed innocuous enough, but it was strong enough to pull the fabric of the glove and start winding it up.



View attachment 509849



Me pointing at the tiny lil spot that got the ball rolling. The chip he was making caught this spot on his off hand that was holding the part. His hand was about 6" or so away from the drill bit. IIRC the drill bit was under 1/8".



View attachment 509848



Back.



View attachment 509850





Palm.



View attachment 509851



Now this happened 15yrs or more ago and I still have the glove. I know one guy out there that will probably say IM making this up and I always have a story and yada yada yada......That I'm selling "Fear".......And I'm just fine and dandy with that. T
Its kinda funny actually, the reason being is that I have showed this glove to every apprentice that has come through the shop and explained this same argument to them, and it has usually had the intended impact.


In essence, having a clean warm hand with fingers missing has never appealed to anyone I've met.

Nitrile medical exam gloves are a far cry from those gloves your pictures show, mate.

The brand I use, are made from material 0.00275" thick (0.07mm) and despite the pictures they laughingly show of people yanking on them, a pinch and tug will make them tear like a paper towel very fast.

Obviously, I didn't assume anything (that's not in my nature) so I tested their lack of durability (for once, a lack of durability that is desirable!) in a couple of ways. I held a glove like you'd hold a strip of emery cloth on a lathe and got it to snag very briefly on a drill in my drill press but it tore and separated into two pieces. Even holding it loosely and getting it to snag by flipping it near the rotating drill point led to it tearing. In both cases there was hardly any tug on my hands.

Neither test was particularly realistic mind you since, like @pontiac428 , I never, ever put my hands near live work (since reading his post I have started to practice the "giving idle hands work" technique too just to be even more sure and I rather like it).

These aren't the kinds of gloves you see auto mechanics wearing (I have those too, but wouldn't dream of wearing those anywhere near any machine tool; I use those for when I'm Evaporusting or wire brushing or disassembling things). The gloves I have are intended for medical examinations or surgical use.

The size I wear when using machine tools are just very marginally on the small size for my hands and they're tight against my skin, there's no bagginess at all. Pretty much like a second skin, there's little to no chance of the material being able to bunch up. That just under 3 thou of thin latex like material is all the durability that these gloves are going to have.

They're not for keeping my hands warm; they'd be pointless for that.

Their only use is for keeping oils, cutting fluid and MEK off my skin (I also use Rozalex DryGuard barrier cream). If I'm working on brass, I generally don't bother wearing them.

Now, if I worked in a high school or college shop as an instructor, or I ran a workshop where there were likely to be young untrained people working, I'd be dogmatic and not allow any gloves but I'm in my own workshop on my own and I'm a reasonably intelligent person, with a fairly long career in the analysis of problems, specifically looking out for potential trouble down the track. I can keep to the essential spirit of the safety advice but not the letter of it.

This isn't a dig at you mate, I think you know the respect I hold for your skills and experience. Nobody, least of all me, would say you're ignorant of the underlying principles and just mindlessly parroting safety advice (leaving aside the fact that you're the kind of person who wants to know the whys and wherefores and understand things properly, you've seen these principles demonstrated, as per your pictures above and no doubt elsewhere besides).

However you are doing a very human thing, and it is based on a dogmatic approach, just in a different way. You're seeing what I'm saying only in terms of what you know of as 'gloves'; you're not allowing for the fact that in this case, the characteristics of gloves you're not particularly familiar with mean the risk that normally would be present are so reduced that they're negligible.

And of course, I hope you take my disagreement in the genuinely respectful and goodwill filled spirit it's meant.

 

[Charles scozzari]

We were given sleeves but never wore them . We also wore long sleeve arc flash shirts , even when machining . It's the gloves you have to worry about most of the time . The object is to break the chips and stand clear .

We were also issued flash sleeves when I worked that I now use for splatter protection when welding to protect my arms.

 

[mmcmdl]

I've got every kind of glove ever invented here in my stash , yet have had 3 finger incidents in the past couple months . I pulled a Kennedy roll around with that cheezy pull handle they have and the pull bar pulled my finger into the bar holder . Had a blood blister which I never popped . I now have a lump where it was . Moving the daughter's weight sets I dropped a 10 pound weight on one of my finger tips . Only dropped a foot or so , but GD smashed my finger and have another lump from the blood blister . Latest was splitting wood . Log rose up and caught my finger on the anvil . Turned dark red instantly but has finally disappeared . I don't think gloves would have helped in the last 2 incidences , but I now wear them if I'm doing any type of work , not including machining .

 

[mmcmdl]

We were also issued flash sleeves when I worked that I now use for splatter protection when welding to protect my arms.

We got them for changing out the dies on the extruders . 650 degrees but no one ever used them . We had hot gloves and the older guys used them with no issues . The news guys saw this and figured they didn't need them either . They dropped a lot of dies !