I am not sure if I posted this but the pic reminds me if when I did this last year while I was working on my bike. Note to self, never use fence pliers to pull a wire tie.
I got a pretty good gash in my left index finger from a chip while operating a Bridgeport once. All the way to the bone and from the last knuckle to the end. We sealed it up with superglue,the shop had an injury and release program going on. I got a piece of a parting tool stuck in my forehead once. We had a kid fresh out of school in the shop. I looked around and he was parting a part off on the lathe. He had his head right over the tool. So I stopped him and explained that a parting tool was dangerous and that he should hold his face off to one side. it was not 5 minutes after that he shattered a tool. I was standing about 15 feet away and a shard of it stuck in my forehead. Hurt like hell and I bled like a stuck pig when we removed it. The head machinist puked and one of my friends stopped the bleeding bandaged me up.
all those are gems...LOL Same here, repetitive drilling into some rubber parts, except the drill was 3/32 IIRC. Clearing swarf away with my left hand while my right hand was moving the quill lever up/down rapidly. Got out of time just a tad, drilling a neat little hole into my left index finger. Didn't need ER, but it bled quite freely. This was a good 30 yrs ago and the nail still develops a ridge from the cuticle on out. Have had 2 cars fall on me (not at the same time) One was a 58 Merc that I was investigating to see if the transmission could be floor shifted. Was out in a detached garage and using a typical car jack to get the car off the floor enough to slide under. In retrospect, I don't think it was the factory jack. Had my head between the frame and xmission.....unintentionally really, just happened to be. Don't know why, but the jack decided it had had enough and flipped out from beneath the bumper. This part I don't really remember, but when the car fell, I must've let out a big yell, because my dad & brother came running out of the house. Must've been the frame squeezing my chest. Dad got all nervous and couldn't really do anything. My brother managed to get the jack back in and lifted it up and pulled me out. I was OK; no real damage done. Another time was when I was working as a mechanic. Was under a car on a creeper with a Gray bumper jack holding it up. Needed the car a bit higher and told the newby to hit the valve. Well, he hit it alright....full on. Jack goes on up and maxes out with a big bang. Bounces the car off one side of the lift and then the jack lets go completely, popping out from under the bumper. Fortunately, I was opposite the side that went down first, and got myself out from under the car before the 2nd side came down. Quick, eh? Boss kicked his ass; literally. Out in the shop I was using a 7" "suicide grinder" on some cast-iron hubs, no guard of course. Had a loose fitting shirt on and grinding away. All of a sudden, the grinder slips off the hub and comes down; grabs one side of the shirt front, starts wrapping it around the spindle and proceeds to climb right up my chest; buttons a mere annoyance to its path. At the same time the shirt somehow enveloped the handle & my right hand like a tourniquet, keeping the switch in the ON position. The grinding disc was right at my clavicle when it stalled out; humming a tune I'd never heard before. Took everything I had to open my eyes.... Had to reach over everything on the bench to unplug it with my left hand. This was about 50 yrs ago....still have the scar. Had a battery explode once in a car we were working on.... don't know what caused it....might've shorted the posts (?) While attending a community college, we were moving some equipment around in the machine-tool area. Had 6 or 7 people pushing on this 17" lathe and urging it along with a prybar. There was a storage rack on the end of the bed with the 3- and 4-jaw chucks on shelves. No one noticed the 4-jaw gradually slipping out, but it came out off the shelf and landed on one of the guy's foot. ER for sure. Was shingling our house. Bright beautiful Sunday morning. Had every intention of completing the rear half that day. Climbed up and sat astride one the peaks to finish the ridge shingles. Very first swing of the hammer, I hit my thumb square-on. I couldn't open my eyes for a few minutes just waiting for the pain to subside. 'Bout peed my pants. That was it for the whole day....just kinda put me off the job. Out in the shop with the O/A torch.........shorts and tennies of course. Loose paper towel got ignited somehow and in my haste to stomp it out, it flared up around my leg and singed all the hair off and caused alot of blistering. Had to wear some pants just to hide the damage from the wife. Cousin was in a straight-truck grain box. He climbed over the wood side to jump down to the ground. His wedding ring caught on a nail; it and his ring finger were ripped right off. He said later that he didn't like her that much anyway.
Was driving some 2x2 stakes to support some saplings and make sure they didn't inadvertently get hit when I was mowing the acreage. Now, I've used an axe more than just a few times in my life. It was my job as a youngster to keep the cookstove supplied with chopped wood.... even in the summer. (This was a long time ago...) The axe I was using was a medium size one. Swinging it with just my right arm, I drove quite a few stakes using the butt end. One wild swing and I missed the stake completely. The axe comes down along my right leg, barely missing the kneecap, with the trailing (sharp) edge making a neat gash into the front of the leg. Gawddamn ! Looked down.......no blood yet, it was a clean cut. Thought I'd better do something before passing out. Looked in the truck and found some paper towels. What the heck to keep them on ? Aha, just happened to have a roll of plastic shrink wrap. Got it all wrapped up and decided to go to ER as I knew this was more than a bandaid could handle. The hosp was about 10 miles away and more than once on the way I thought I was going to go into shock Nurse comes in and I said "how do you like the way I wrapped it up" She muttered something. Doc comes in and I asked him the same thing. He says "yeah, nice job" Was in there for less than a half hour. 6 stitches. $850
I'm relatively fortunate too considering working in press & sheet metal shops as a kid. Real easy to get hurt fixing cars for a living, even in machine shops. I've seen some gruesome shit over the years. I know this one guy who owns a machine shop, a good friend of mine. He had an old compressor, gave him trouble now and then and it was so old it had a WPA tag on it from WWII. I walk into his shop one day, he's in the far corner looking at the compressor which is running and he has the noise cover off it. Lucky he's 6'4" and 280 lbs... the tail of his sport shirt gets sucked into the belt. In a split second... no shirt and he didn't even budge. If he had a Dickies shirt on... the outcome would have been very different.
LOL its like a train wreck. Let me say this, I have been wrenching, and fabricating for a very long time. I have not been hurt way more then I have been hurt in all those years.
almost cut off my nipple with a big cheap ass harbor freight grinder. the big ones, not the 4". grinding away at some now forgotten part when my ripped loose fitting T shirt got caught up in the works, which pulled the grinder to my chest. gave me a good gash about 3" long, and 1/2" above my right nipple. it's not so much that I need nipples, but they are a matching set. I'm glad it did not happen at home with my Milwaukee grinder. the T-shirt stopped the motor on the HF grinder and also wrapped my hand so I never even let off the trigger. a real grinder would have ripped me up.
Not really an injury, but it don't get any closer than this. Back in the late 70s while working for Southern Pacific RR as a locomotive mechanic, the electrician on duty came out of the break room to let me know it was lunchtime (swing shift 7pm). Now, we were supposed to climb down the locomotive steps FACING the locomotive. We all had kinda gotten into the habit of grabbing the guard rail and swinging out from the walkway, kinda like Burt Conners on the parallel bar, and dropping down to the concrete below about a 3 or 4 ft drop.. When I grabbed the rail and kicked my feet out the Philips screwdriver I had in my hand squirted out and fell to the concrete below and I just happened to plant my right foot smack dab on top of it which was pointing straight up at the time and hadn't had a chance to fall over yet. The screwdriver went into the bottom of my boot and came right out the top...the electrician turned white and was about to hurl, and I stood there for a minute thinking, man this is going to be bad, but NO pain. I wiggled my toes a bit and pulled my boot off with screwdriver still piercing it only to find the screwdriver shaft passed exactly between my 3rd and 4th toes right where they attach to the foot....not a scratch, but it cured me from swinging off locomotive decks.
LOL. Oh my God. I love you guys. You make my day, honestly, the funniest stuff anywhere keeps popping up every day, right here. Thank you!
The Jalopy Journal
