Safety first

[stickman]

Yesterday I was grinding on a piece of steel. I had my safety glasses on but not my shop apron. Didn’t think I needed it. Well the grinding disk I was using blew up. A first, in many decades. A piece of the disk hit me in the chest, I now have a two inch long gash in my chest. The top inch of the gash is to the bone. Since hindsight is 20 20 I should have had my face shield on and my apron. Please don’t forget your safety. Don’t let familiarity breed contempt.

[Crazy Dave]

Thanks! I never regret it when I'm too careful, only when not careful enough!

Dave

[Ninehostages]

Yesterday I was grinding on a piece of steel. I had my safety glasses on but not my shop apron. Didn’t think I needed it. Well the grinding disk I was using blew up. A first, in many decades. A piece of the disk hit me in the chest, I now have a two inch long gash in my chest. The top inch of the gash is to the bone. Since hindsight is 20 20 I should have had my face shield on and my apron. Please don’t forget your safety. Don’t let familiarity breed contempt.

As my father used to warn me, machines are like wild animals that will get you if you don't keep your eye on them. I supervised machinists, metal workers and assemblers for a few decades and the prospect of accidents like that kept me awake at night.

[Pleater]

Watch out for infection or blood poisoning. I have a song in my collection called 'The Sheffield Grinders' and one verse warns of this

Every single day we are breathing dust and steel
A broken wheel can give a man a wound that will not heal
There's many a poor grinder brought down by such a blow
There's few who bear the hardship that we poor grinders know.

Anne the Pleater

[tripleblessed]

About 1974 or 5, my partners and I (theater lighting and sets) were about 18 hours into a 28 hour day (on the heels of several 20 hour days in a row) frantically completing
store fixtures for Oz Records and Tapes based on the movie's sets. I was building the Munchkin village, one of my partners was losing the war with the crashed house of the
wicked witch. My table saw caught a knot and threw a foot-long, one inch strip of wood 40 feet across the store, hitting the wall about a foot from the head of the unsuspecting
Stanley. We stopped, took five in gratitude. Then he and I swapped tasks. My off kilter brain somehow finished the house. We learned that while it's quite easy to build out
of square while attempting to be square and plumb, deliberately building out of square and off plumb to make it look twisted by the crash will drive you bonkers; attempting to
figure cutting angles off in one axis can be done, doing those angles in all three dimensions simultaneously might get you put away permanently. We were still straightening up
and packing tools while the Mayor of Atlanta was cutting the ribbon on the Yellow Brick Road six hours later.

The safety reminder stayed with us the rest of working lives. Quicker than the blink of an eye.