Thread: safety

Tweet

The owner at my favorite fabrication shop lost an argument recently between his body and his bench grinder. The story he told me was that he leaned a bit to close and his t-shirt caught on the grind wheel and pulled him (he is not a small man if you catch my drift) into it......Left a nice little gouge in his chest that required 20+ stitches to close up...If it was not for his wife coming in to bring him dinner and yank the power cord out of the wall, it could have been a lot worse................

I used to be the dumbest guy going when it came to shop safety, but 3 or 4 trips to the emergency room to get steel slivers out of your eye tend to wake you up. I thought nothing of grinding or cutting something with no safety glasses on, but the time the emergency room Doctor told me if I hadn't come in when I did that I would have gone blind in 24 hours, it made me rethink my dumbness.

My Son had to go in once where they actually had to grind on his eyeball to get the piece out, and another time a chopsaw cut his leg really badly, requiring lots of stitches. I can't count how many times he has set himself on fire cutting or welding something. (Isn't that spark down in ear a pleasant little thing? )

The fact is, we car builders/fixers work with tools that can hurt or kill you in a heartbeat. Everytime we fire up one of them we have to be aware of the dangers and do everything we can to protect ourselves. Here in Florida we tend to work in just shorts, because of the heat in the shop, so there is a lot of exposed skin to get damaged.

I think this is an excellent thread, because it is so important. I now have safety goggles and faceshields stategically placed in our shop so one is always at hand when you need them. I have also started buying cotton work gloves by the box, because those pesky little steel slivers you get in your fingers are a pain in the butt, too.

Excellent thread, Hotroddaddy.


Don

I try to wear leather gloves in the shop as I seem to get more burns than I care to mention. The thing that realy hurts is the sparks from welding or burning going into the top of a gym shoe . I went out last night and bought a new pair of work boots so no more burnt feet. ( I hope)