Don't Wear Sleeves vs. Burns From Hot Chips

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.



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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".



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Back.



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Palm.



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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.
Those are "Terminator" kevlar gloves. I buy them by the 12 pack. They never rip until they're months old & you've sweated buckets in them, in which case breaks down the kevlar.
Horrible choice to have anywhere near a machine tool (as you already know).

They are great gloves to work in. Like putting a second skin over your hands. I would never operate a machine tool with them on. image.jpg
 
Yep, that is a good point and a downside to wearing the nitrile gloves I do.

That said, their fragile nature often means that you end up with a digit or two easily exposed and frankly, taking them off, feeling the part and then sticking another pair on, if required is no great burden either in time or money (they're not expensive).

All that said, all this talking about chucking multiple pairs of gloves over a two or three hour period in the bin as I do, in this thread is starting to make me feel a bit guilty about my 'plastics footprint'. :oops:

Maybe, when I've used up these last three boxes of gloves (and that won't take that long), I won't order any more.

I've recently been applying a fair bit more Rozalex DryGuard to my hands, and I've noticed it does make getting the grime off a fair bit easier after a workshop session; as long as it's all absorbed, more is definitely more with DryGuard. ;)
I never even thought about the footprint.

I wear my PPE to the point of failure at work. My gloves and sleeves are over a year old and I rotate through two pairs. One pair gets washed and hung to dry while I wear the other until they get dirty.

It just seemed wasteful to be issued a new pair every day only to have them thrown out while still serviceable.

As to your hands being clean.



You can find it cheaper, with the dispenser your around $45 to buy in, but a refill lasts me almost a year and my hands are office worker clean.
 
I've got about 5 litres of my 10 litre container of pumice infused industrial hand cleaner left. It does a good job, it's just that I was being too sparing with the DryGuard. ;)
 
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