Missle Technology

[Bill Blue]

Last night I was cleaning up an old dimmer switch, using an 8" wire wheel on a 3450 RPM bench grinder. The wheel caught the switch, ripped it out of my hands and out of the spark exit. Crash, bang, tinkle. Wife came downstairs, wondered what had hit under the kitchen floor. Could not find the switch, remembered the "tinkle" part of the noise and looked at the basement window. Nice holes through both panes. Found the switch outside.

Can't really figure out the trajectory, as she said it hit the basement ceiling and the holes in the window are above the grinder level. Anyway, it landed about 30 feet from the grinder, stopping only after it hit the porch swing chain. If my math is correct, the switch left the grinder at 82 mph.

Don't stand in back of the exhaust port of a grinder. Especially if I'm using it.

Bill

 

[TulsaAlpine]

Safety First


You did have on those safety glasses, right?
$$ dollars to fix the window. $$ dollars to clean up the mess, having the switch fixed by Bill Priceless!


Donna

 

[Green67Alpine]

Maybe a helmet would be in order
Getting hit with something like that could put the kabosh on going for a drive

Tom j

 

[Alpine Bob]

Definitions For the mechanically declined:WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts, cleans dimmer switchs and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light(~82mph). Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned guitar calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, "YEOWW SHxx...."

 

[PaulK]

Great story, you guys and girls crack me up.

I think we have all been there and done that.

I can remember a table saw episode, finished ripping the board stepped to the side to retrieve the piece I cut and the piece next to the fence stuck in the wall behind me.

Paul

 

[Green67Alpine]

That Paul can KILL you ! Been knocked to the floor by kickback, once!

Tom J

 

[weaselkeeper]

Bolt heads that I'm cleaning are a particular favorite of my wheel. Although Bill,, I've never had to repair a window. Maybe some sheet rock, however. My table saw taught me a long time ago not to stand directly behind the "plane of launch" of any rotating machinery. Ask me how I know.

Now if I can just master the quick get away from the spinning mass on the drill press when it takes hold. I'm still whiney about the cuts on my hand from the brass strip that whacked me at 550 rpm last week. That's about 3 whacks before the brain registers pain, two more for that information to travel back to your hand to retract it from the monster and maybe one to three more to clear the immediate danger. That's about the time I reallize that I coulda built a stop and clamped it down.... but it was only one hole.... I can get away with it....

Keep your head down.

 

[Bill Blue]

Interesting about the references to wood working. Gave that one up more than 10 years ago. After experiencing what I thought was more than my share of near death experiences dodging flying wood and taking a couple of direct hits, I decided to quit the wood shop while I had all my fingers and eyes. Just the metal shop for me. It has it share of dangers, but they pale in comparison to wood.

At least this time the bullet was pointed away from me. But if you have an aversion to bleeding, stay away from shops of any kind, including car.

Bill

 

[V6 JOSE]

Bill,

I thought that busted, bloody knuckles, were part of the fun of working on cars.

Working around any kind of machinery can be deliterious to your health, if you don't respect them. They have no conscience and will go on merrily munching your hand, arm leg, or any other body part that you put in their way. Being a machinist for 17 years, I have done some pretty dumb things too, but was lucky enough to not get injured seriously. The wire wheel was one of my favorites.

Jose

 

[Nickodell]

A friend of mine from college had his college ring caught by some machine or other (it was 50-odd years ago - maybe the chuck of a lathe), and the ring finger and its tendon removed in the blink of an eye. I recall his telling me that the ER surgeon remarked that it was a neat bit of surgical excision, and all he had to do was stitch a flap of skin over the gap and put the poor sod on morphine.

In my last employment I alternated from working with engineers on 800kva turbo-alternators and in the executive suite, and always wore a clip-on tie. The managers used to rib me until I related the case where someone from management in a different company, strolling the machine shop, leaned over to speak to an operator and had his silk tie pull his face into rotating equipment before they could hit the panic button. Silk is immensely strong.

The worst case (short of death) I heard was while some millwrights were installing a large diesel engine in a lumber yard. They had the bedframe bolted to the floor and were lowering the main part of the engine by crane through the roof. One of the men was guiding it into the proper position to mate with the bedframe lugs when the crane operator mistook a hand signal and let it down, sandwiching and removing all the guy's fingers up to the second joint.

One of my favorite poets, Rudyard Kipling, summed it up in this exerpt from The Secret of the Machines. (I've posted this in the old forum, so apologies for those who've seen it before):

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit -
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:

And now, if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die!