Thread: Share a story you spanner wielders, but not too gory

Sometimes I wonder how I made it to adulthood.

Les

Originally Posted by 42rangie

Sometimes I wonder how I made it to adulthood.

Les

Thanks for sharing everyone. Over here in Ireland I seem to be the only one in workshops who wears ear,eye protection etc. I had a tough nurse where I did my apprenticeship so I can look back and be grateful she chewed us up if we were lay with safety. I have only been using 1 mm cutting discs the last 5 years and can vouch they make a great job on skin and of course great for repairing defender door frames

Years ago when young and dumb I was edge grinding a piece of 1/8 th plate with a 7inch grinder, it grabbed and spun around across my stomach, twisted my arm up and ended up on my shoulder still running next to my right ear suffice to say it scared the crap out of me, once I untangled my self and removed my shirt to inspect the damage I found what could be best described as a thin gravel rash across my stomach........... rest of the afternoon was spent shaking and drinking..... these days I am thankful for all the PPE we are requird to wear, I have far too many "quirks" in my body from not being smart.

I'm not a spanner wielder, more like a spark herder

When herding sparks it is almost a given that a spark will stray from the herd and give you a kick

Being serious now I have had one close call with electricity when i was just out of my time. My boss got me to replace a main C/B with a new one within a shopping complex of a bout 4 shops. In the complex was a internet service provider. They where not happy for us to turn the power off so we could change the C/B for the other shop. the boss told me to chane the breaker while it was on. The switchboard was off a type where there is a3 phase busbar that feeds the breakers. I got the old breaker with no trouble and was putting in the new breaker when one of the busbars would not quite slide into place. I decided to just try and leaver the busbar over the terminal when the insulation on the busbar fell apart and shorted between phases.

I was very very very lucky. The complex was feed by a 200A HRC fuse and tranny was a fair distance away so there was not a great deal of fault current.

It blew a large chunk of busbar off and mad a very loud bang and was very bright flash.

All that happend to me was a sunburnt face and hand very minor.
The internet service provider came running out and started to have a go at me for turning his power off
That instance scared the **** out of me and was a massive wakeup call for me to pull my head in. Then next day i handed in my notice and got another job. My boss was the most doggy bloke getting around. and i was not going to die for him.

my brother was working in a maintenance role at a SA hospital which included sharpening surgical items. He was sharpening a pair of small pointed forcep type thingys and the typical gap in the wheel trick caught him by surprise and spun the point of the forceps back through his thumb by a considerable amount. Aside from his obvious pain photographs were taken and photographs were used by the National Safety Council in their promotional letters and wall postersl for quite some time.
If I can find a photo, I'll put it up.

Little off topic but when I was an apprentice butcher I saw a horrific accident, a tradesman was on the bandsaw and turned quickly cause he thought someone called for him putting his hand into the blade where the fingers meet the hand starting at the pinky end cutting all the knuckles exactly in half all the way threw the only thing holding his fingers to the hand was the little bit of skin in the palm of his hand, needless to say he took one look and dropped like a sack of potatoes!!!

One of the best safety movies I have seen is "Shake hands with danger" produced in the 70's. I first saw it when doing my apprenticeship in early eighties and show it to my apprentices nowdays, and it still gets good attention from them.
Check it out.

I was drilling a hole in a metal fence. Had safety glasses on etc. The bit snapped and I heard an 'ow' behind me.

My three year old who I'd instructed to stay in the garage about 10m away had come over for a look. I'd checked he was in the garage when I started drilling, he must've run over real quick. A piece of the snapped bit had hit him in the chest. Hate to think if it'd hit him in the eye.