[TheForge] power tools

[Jerry Frost]

Power tools like almost anything else can get you if you're not using your 
head. I grew up in a metal spinning shop and saw entirely too much blood, 
fortunately only occasional little dribs my own. I got so I could slap a 
butterfly bandage and compress on a wound with arterial bleeding without 
trouble, bandaged Dad several times and other guys in his crew too often. A 
blank coming out of a spinning lathe tends to walk up your arm like a meat 
slicer blade, blanks usually get loose when being mounted, it's a friction 
fit between the die and tail stock live center. I was working a lathe with 
my back to the punch press about 6' away when Wally removed his right hand 
at the first knuckle joint. That was a really smooth cut, the doc only had 
to stretch the skin a little and suture it up. There's nothing like having 
the plates on a punch press die pinch your hand.

I'm not going to be so silly as to point at my safety record with power 
tools even though it was the TREE that got me. It is a good example though, 
I'd cut litterally thousands of trees before that one got me and I never saw 
it coming.

Your best safety device is between your ears. Use it. Jer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andy Gladish" <anjgladish at gmail.com>
To: <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] power tools


>I know how easy it is to get hurt using power tools and how quick it
> happens, but in a lifetime of using them most of most days my worst 
> injures
> and closest calls (that I was aware of) have been with sharp hand tools.
> I'm thinking of a day of trimming shade trees, when I hung the pole saw on 
> a
> branch above me and moved to a different position in the tree...sure 
> enough
> the hooked saw blade came down across the side of my neck-the E.R.doc
> said"about another quarter inch"and I would have bled out in seconds.
> This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around!
> Andy Gladish
>