Share your tool accidents or near misses

[skeeter]

Reading post people made when I told about my thumb accident, and now JimM having one makes me curious about how many people have had an accident or close call and how it happened.

I talked to Chris (Kalai) yesterday and he told me he was cutting some Koi wood up for pen blanks when the wood kicked back and into his upper lip. He has a hole in the upper lip which required 8 stitches and had some of the Koi embedded in his upper gum. OUCH!!!

The intent of this thread is to give us all a safety jolt.

[Jeff Mills]

We do this at the lumber runs (show off shop scars) I cut off the tip of my thumb on my table saw several years back. It completely grew back, my doctor said it was a miracle - do you believe in healing miracles? I do

mir·a·cle

1. An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/miracle

Thanks

[Travis Porter]

I used to be severely accident prone. I seem to have "reduced" my incidents with age, but I am knocking on wood.

My worst accident was with a gasoline bow saw. I worked on it for someone and was testing it out cutting the knobs off of telephone cross arms when it hit a nail and bucked out. It left a 6" gash across my thigh approximately 3/4" deep. When I did it, I figured I just slashed my jeans. No pain whatsoever. When I went in the house and looked at it, ugh. I was lucky. The ER doctor said I missed hitting a muscle by a 1/16".

In the shop, my worst accident I would consider minor, but it hurt. I was cutting little wedges on the tablesaw. The throat plate that came with the saw was not perfectly flush so using my push sticks it got stuck. I stood there and looked at it for a second thinking about what to do and that was enough for the saw to grab it and kick the wedge into my hand. It hit me so hard I got nauseated and wanted to pass out. My hand was numb for about an hour and bruised, but otherwise OK.

I have MUCH respect for a tablesaw and a chainsaw.

Dave Tomasch a member here says it well. Keep the blood on the inside.

[Jeff Mills]

Originally Posted by Travis Porter

I used to be severely accident prone. I seem to have "reduced" my incidents with age, but I am knocking on wood.

My worst accident was with a gasoline bow saw. I worked on it for someone and was testing it out cutting the knobs off of telephone cross arms when it hit a nail and bucked out. It left a 6" gash across my thigh approximately 3/4" deep. When I did it, I figured I just slashed my jeans. No pain whatsoever. When I went in the house and looked at it, ugh. I was lucky. The ER doctor said I missed hitting a muscle by a 1/16".

In the shop, my worst accident I would consider minor, but it hurt. I was cutting little wedges on the tablesaw. The throat plate that came with the saw was not perfectly flush so using my push sticks it got stuck. I stood there and looked at it for a second thinking about what to do and that was enough for the saw to grab it and kick the wedge into my hand. It hit me so hard I got nauseated and wanted to pass out. My hand was numb for about an hour and bruised, but otherwise OK.

I have MUCH respect for a tablesaw and a chainsaw.

Dave Tomasch a member here says it well. Keep the blood on the inside.

Good quote by Dave Tomasch I was told this about running a chainsaw "Don't cut off you arm, they don't sell arms at walmart."

[Glennbear]

I am a firm believer in guards and push sticks but have been bruised a few times by sheet goods kickbacks. The worst was a few months ago when a piece of melamine coated hardboard was launched into my thigh with enough force to raise a very nasty welt.

[Dragon]

Got bit by a table saw way back in the early 70's when I was in high school. I was working part time at a cabinet shop and fortunately it wasn't very serious. Fixed it with a bandaid and all was well soon after. I do recall an incident with another of the guys there though. Made me laugh even though I felt bad for him. This guy was always horsing around and acted like he was Billy Bad @#$ you know. Well, one day he got a little careless and sliced his pinky really good on the same tablesaw that got me. It required three stitches to close the wound and he healed fine.

What gave me the giggles was the fact that Mr. Bad hit the floor like a rock when he saw his own blood. Poor thing had to sit in the bosses office for days while he was healing up. I know, it's bad to laugh at someone else's mistake, but he had it coming. That old saying of what goes around comes around sure got him. I never forgot about him shooting nails through the bottom of my coffee mug.

Anyways, safety is, or should be, our top priority, even though we all do things we know better than to do at the time.

[TracyP]

I lost one fingertip down to the first knuckle, and about half of joint on the next finger on a hydraulic wood splitter in 1993. We were trying to get through a pile of firewood just before dark and I reached in to reposition a log and the operator pulled the lever. The moral to my story is that there should NEVER be more than one person operating a machine, and NEVER rush to get the task completed.

[MrAudio815]

I had a small kick back a few months back, no injury. Did hurt my right thumb pretty bad. Was changing a bit on my router while it was plugged in. Hit the switch on the table while adjusting the height and it hit my thumb, wooo weee it gave me a bruise and clean cut the fingernail and a little tiny bit of skin. The force from the bit just hitting my thumb hurt for a week. And little cuts here and there

Other than that nothing too bad. Knock on wood!

[scsmith42]

Hmm, this could be an interesting thread…. “fertile ground” comes to mind.

INCIDENT NUMBER 1

I shot about 3-1/4" of a 3-1/2" ring shank nail into my hand several years ago. I was working with a nail gun framing up a wall (while mad at my wife for something long since forgotten, but still a bad combination). Building a wall on the ground before standing it up, holding a stud in my left hand while using the nail gun to try to force a warped plate up against the bottom of the stud. I missed the fact that the nail gun was half on - half off of the bottom plate and shot the nail right over the side of the plate an into my hand.

My wife heard me cussing 500' away...

Did you know that Vise-grip makes surgical instruments? It's true - the surgeon who pulled the nail out of my hand had the coolest pair of stainless steel vise grips. I tried to get him to give them to me since I had "paid" for them, but unfortunately they autoclave them and reuse them.

Even with the morphine, I felt every ring on that ring shank nail as it was pulled out.

INCIDENT NUMBER 2

Probably my worst incident was three years ago, when I needed to move a Bobcat loader that a fencing crew had left on my farm. It was blocking a gate and I only needed to move it 10', and the crew told me to go ahead and do it.

I've run a variety of equipment in my time, including skid steers, so no big deal, right? Wrong. Turns out that the fencing crew had bypassed almost all of the safeties on the loader, including removing the lap belt. Basically the controls were worn out too. When I went to move it, it got into a "bouncing" situation where it bucked from front end in the air to rear end in the air. After 3 or 4 bucks - each time getting worse, I was thrown upward out of seat the top of my head hit the top of the cab. I didn't pass out - but why is still a question...

Nope, I didn't go to a Doc - figured that the body would heal itself. Wrong.

As time progressed, my neck started hurting. In a year it got so bad that I only had about 30 degrees of pain free motion. I researched chiropractors, and went to one in Apex who had trained on a process called "Atlas orthogonal alignment", or something like that. He took x-rays and conducted a thorough exam. His treatment program took three months, but by the end I had regained full motion and the pain was gone. That was over a year ago.

The only thing remaining today of the incident is the fact that I lost over 2 inches of my height from the impact. I used to be slightly over 6' tall, and have been for 30 years. Now I'm 5' 10-1/2". I regained about 3/4" from the chiropractic therapy.

INCIDENT NUMBER 3 (AND I SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST!)

Oh – wait a minute… I just remembered the absolute WORST situation that I found myself in. Didn’t get hurt though… do near misses count???

Back in 1990 I was in-between jobs, having just finished up closing down an unprofitable Radio Tower service company that a couple of real estate developers owned, and had a few weeks of time to kill before starting my next job.

I took on a project for a TV station out of Wilmington, NC. They had a 2000’ broadcast TV tower located in White Lake, NC, and most of the lighting system had been destroyed during a recent ice storm. My task was to rebuild the lighting system, replacing conduit and wiring as needed. Fortunately most of the damage was in the lower portion of the tower, caused by ice melting and falling off of the upper portions of the tower. It took me about a week to replace the damaged conduit and lights on the bottom 1400 ft of tower, working by myself. After I finished the job, the station engineer asked me to replace the bulbs in the tower at their downtown Wilmington studio.

You’ve seen the old RKO motion pictures with the radio tower logo at the beginning, right? Well that’s what this tower looked like. It was ancient, having been built in the 1930’s, and all that the station was using it for was to beam their broadcast signal from their studio over to the big tower in White lake. As I recall it was around 300’ tall.

The bottom portion of the tower was a great big self supporter that necked down to a 30” face for the top 60’. On my way up the tower (wearing a backpack with the large, expensive bulbs in it), at around the 250’ level I noticed that one of the tubular legs on the tower was totally rusted through! The only thing supporting it was the diagonal members that were attached from it to the adjoining legs. It still looked fairly solid, so I continued my ascent. Another 20’ up the tower and I saw that a DIFFERENT LEG was also totally rusted through! Oh boy, talk about controlling my adrenalin. When I reached the top of the tower, there was a steel plate attached across the top that overhung the face of the tower by around 14” all the way around. On top of this plate was the upper tower beacon light, a fixture about 16” in diameter and 40” tall, or thereabouts. The only way to access it was to reach up and over the plate, and pull myself on top. Because of the overhang and amount of flexibility needed, there was no way that I could have a safety line attached to the tower while undergoing this maneuver. Once up and over the plate, I had to sit on top of this trianglular plate (it was around 48" across), with my legs spread wide and the beacon in-between them, with nothing to strap off to. Where I was sitting, one of the tower tubular legs protruded an inch or two through the plate, and the other tower legs protruded by my calves.

After gingerly opening up the beacon assembly and replacing the lamps, I radioed down to the station engineer to turn the lights on so that I could test them. As soon as he threw the switch a loud hum stated emanating from the ballast in the beacon, and only one of the two bulbs lit up. At the same time as the beacon started humming, I heard another, different type of hum coming from between my legs… a stream of hornets started flying up and out of the tubular leg!

Flashing through my head I could see myself taking a fatal flight to the ground if I panicked. I froze just about every part of my body and called the station engineer on the radio telling him to turn the lights off IMMEDIATELY! I recall speaking through gritted teeth, as the hornets were swarming around my head and the top of the tower.

Apparently the humming coming from the ballast on that beacon light really woke up the hornets. I sat on top of that tower trying not to move a muscle for around 10 minutes, until the last hornet disappeared back down that hole. I then very gingerly closed up the beacon and re-latched it, and very slowly shifted my body around and over that plate and back onto the face of the tower.

When I got back on the ground the station engineer took one look at me as said that I was as white as a sheet and asked what the heck had happened.

Would you believe that I did not get one sting, but man was my heart pumping for quite a while after that incident. Sitting at my desk today reliving it still sends shivers down my spine.

[Travis Porter]

I believe the hornet story. I got caught on the roof of my house in a similary scenario replacing trim on the roof. No where to go but freeze, and I didn't get stung either.

You made me remember another. I shot myself with a brad gun. It was an older gun, no safeties. I was fiddling around trying to get the molding I was fastening in place and hit the trigger. Went into the meaty part of my palm, no bone. Again, I was lucky. It is a teeth gritting experience pulling a nail out of your flesh.

Wife made me trash the gun and buy one with a safety after that.

[Trent Mason]

I was bandsawing a turning blank one night and accidently grazed the edge of my thumb on the blade. Luckily, the blade was so dull that it didn't even break the skin. Although, if I had been pushing harder I'm sure it would've been much worse. I never had an incident before that and it definitely made me stand back and think about what I was doing. Generally, I'm one of the least accident prone people I know. I think it was all those years working in a kitchen and valeting cars. Also, surfing makes you VERY good at being in constant awareness of your surroundings and what you're doing.

1. Have a clear head.
2. Anticipate what you're doing all the way through and what could go wrong prior to doing it.
3. Be safe.

[skeeter]

Jeff MillsRe: Share your tool accidents or near misses
We do this at the lumber runs (show off shop scars) I cut off the tip of my thumb on my table saw several years back. It completely grew back, my doctor said it was a miracle - do you believe in healing miracles? I do


Yes Jeff, I definitely believe in miracles. Sounds like quite a few have happened to us over the years.

[Bas]

It's not very exciting, but I have done more damage to myself with a utility knife than any other tool in the shop. Maybe because they're so common I don't spend enough time being careful. Last time I ended up with three stitches. In fact, hand tools are my main source of injury - chisels, rasps, hammers.

[Sawdust Denny]

The worst accident I had happen was the result of horse play in a high school welding class I was teaching. One of my student was distracted by another student and turned a gas heating torch into the arm of a third student, the innocent bystander. Thankfully, his injury did not turn out to be as bad as it could have been.

I bring this up as a reminder that that we often have others in our workshops. We need to keep the shop safety knowledge and skill level of others in mind and not tolerate horse play of any kind.

[WDHTRIM]

MY WORST INJURY AND HOPEFULLY MY LAST(KNOCK ON WOOD) WAS ABOUT 2 YRS AGO I WAS ASSEMBLING A VERY COMPLEX JOINT IN A CUSTOM HANDRAIL AND COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET A CLAMP TO HOLD THE THING SO I JUST DECIDED ID HOLD IT IN MY HAND AND USE THE NAIL GUN TO APPLY PRESSURE BEFORE SHOOTING IT. IN MY ATTEMPT TO CLOSE THE JOINT FULLY I LOST TRACK OF THE ANGLE OF THE FASTNER AND WHEN I PULLED THE TRIGGER THE NAIL TURNED AND CAME OUT THE SIDE OF THE PIECE I WAS HOLDING AND RIGHT THROUGH THE BONE OF MY INDEX FINGER. FELT LIKE I HAD BEEN HIT BY A BULLET. THE NAIL WAS TOTALLY STUCK IN THE BONE AND I HAD TO WAIT TILL MY DAD CAME IN TO GO GET A SAW TO CUT THE END OFF OF THE 14FT PIECE OF OAK RAILING I WAS NOW ATTACHED TO. AFTER 5 HRS IN SURGERY AND 2 YRS OF RECOVERY THE ONLY EVEDENCE OF THIS INJURY IS THE THROBBING PAIN I FEEL AT THE THOUGHT OF USING A NAIL GUN A LITLE BIT OF ARTHRITIS IN THAT FINGER AND A SMALL SCAR. REMEMBER THOSE TINY FINISH NAILS CAN DO ALOT OF DAMAGE!

MY DAD SAYS IF I WAS AS TOUGH AS HIM THE NAIL WOULDVE HAVE BENT WHEN I HIT HIS CALAUSED HANDS LOL. HES PROBABLY RIGHT.