Let's hear about your shop accidents

I've done a few dumb things here and there.

I was using a nail gun to build a room in my basement. I was tired and just had to nail a 2 x 4 up to finish framing where there was an outside window. I was holding the nail gun up and slipped. The nail gun hit the 2 x 4 and fired a nail.... directly into the joint of my thumb. It didn't hurt but since it was in the joint, my wife and I decided a trip to the ER was the best thing to do rather then just yank it out.

We got there... it was close to midnight by now... and went through the usual stuff... and then we were told to sit over by the hall and they would come get me to take a couple xrays.

We sat... and waited.... and sat.... and waited.... It was over an hour by then. Lots of people were walking by, but we must have been forgotten about. We were getting tired and a little silly by then and I put my hand on top of my wife's head. It looked like I had nailed my thumb to her head!

That seemed to get some attention.... Next thing I knew I was getting the x-ray.

 

When I was 17 I got a job in a big shop that did tires, brakes, and exhaust. I was a grunt in the tire shop but wanted to work on the exhaust side, so the shop manager gave me a chance. About my 3rd day I was torching the old pipes off a car when the BIG boss, the owner, walks in, and stands and watches me with the car up on the hoist. I was a little nervous and distracted and forgot the clamp I was torching off was the last one, and as it let go the muffler crashed down on my head, the pipe broke off at the other end as I staggered back in pain, smacking my head again on the hoist. This caused the muffler to swing down and crack me in the teeth, making me drop the torch, as the muffler broke off and guillotined my toes, cutting right through my adidas runner. As I yelped and fell to my hands and knees, I put my left hand down 1/2 inch from the still burning cutting torch, instantly putting a long 3rd degree burn on my wrist and setting my coveralls on fire. I screamed like a little girl and rolled around in pain, almost forgetting my bloody lip and nose, now loose teeth, 2 gushing head wounds and nearly severed toes. I shut off the torch, staggered to my feet, and saw the big boss standing looking at me with a mildly amused expression. He took a long pull on his cigar and said "So, did ya learn anything?"

 

^^^classic

 

Got a buddy that loves (hates) to work on Teutonic shitboxes for a living. He was underneath a car drilling holes to pop-rivet on a bracket for something or other, but he was in a crummy position to do it. Since he ALWAYS has dull drill bits, he was straining to add pressure to the 1/8" bit, when it broke, & the running drill veered off. The angle of attack by the drill left him with a 1/8" hole in his pecker. He jumped out from under that Bimmer, cursing, & dancing about.

All I could think about was the song "Crockodile Rock" where "he was hoppin' & boppin' & holding his cock"...

 

i was building a 95' span for a railroad bridge when i got my hand caught between a 6''x6''x5/8'' piece of angle iron about 7'long. jumped back when it started slipping and most of it landed on my trigger finger i didn't even know that id managed to break it till about 30mins later when id noticed that my work glove was soaked in blood. broke the very tip into 3 pieces and needed 11 stitches to close the wound.

 

OK you win!!

 

Hell the best I can come up with is jacking myself in the jaw w/a crowbar, breaking 2 teeth & knocking myself out. I don't know what hurt worse hitting myself w/a crowbar or the 2 broken teeth....joe

 

Got two dumb ones

1.) I'm at school in High Performance Drivelines class. Dave Morgan (the famous drag suspension guy-also wrote the doorslammers book) is my teach. Hes into ol hot rods, so am I. I'm narrowing the 9 in for my model a. The 3.25" tubes are .250 thick. He says use a sawzall. Not a problem. The last blade we had was a little more than halfway through its life. I was holding the metal part of the saw near the blade. no gloves. I was so close to the last part of the last cut and my hand sends that "its too freakin hot let go!" signal to my brain, which I override because I want to get the job done. needless to say, almost the entire palm of my hand was a 2nd degree burn, instand blister. and minutes later I picked up the third member and ripped it open, body fluid everywhere. Good thing I had a girlfriend...

2.)I'm at work, and I need to drill a hole in a small 18g steel 1" wide by 2" long bracket. it was a 1x1 angle. Dumbass me, who always clamps stuff down when I drill, was once again just trying to get the job done. As I'm drilling and holdiing the part against a wood table with the palm of my hand I can just imagin the drill bit catching the bracket, which it does. I put a very nice, large slice very deep into the same palm of that hand. Should've got stitches cuz it took forever to heal. Didn't have a girlfriend that time

 

this ones not mine but its funny. Friend of mine was the down in the dumps type. Always bitchin and complaining about something. He was a minitrucker and was pulling something apart on his truck fuel line related. We were all hanging out about 200 yards away. after about 30 minutes we start wondering why we haven't heard him in a while. A few minutes later he comes stumbling back pissed off as all hell with blood running all over his face and a strong smell of gasoline on him. Turns out he was too close to the ratchet when the fitting broke loose and cracked himself in the forehead and knocked himself out, while gasoline poored onto his face. I was laughing but felt real bad. Took him to the hospital. He had a minor concussion and needed some stitches. The fuel just caused more pain than damage. I finished the work on his truck for him.

 

Just a couple years ago I went over to a buddies house to help him install a 360 in his dart, but when I got there he had just finished crushing his hand between the oilpan and rad support and was waiting for me so I could drive him to the hospital. A few hours later he's out of the emergency room with 3 broken fingers and some badly crushed knuckles all bandaged and splinted, with an envelope full of demerol tablets, and instructions to return the next day for a cast. His hand is throbbing pretty good and its getting dark, so I say lets go for some wings and beer, and we stop at my place so I can lend him a clean shirt. I throw him a fresh T shirt as he's standing in the kitchen and he very carefully pulls the sleeve over his hand while telling me how much it hurts, then lifts his arms over his head to pull the shirt on.....and sticks his injured hand right into the blades of the rapidly spinning wood ceiling fan. Then he swore a lot.

 

Probably my most memorable shop accident happened when I was under a Model A, snipping the safety wire off the u-joint housing. I shoulda known better, but I rolled over and poked one of the greasy wires into my shoulder about an inch. My wife at the time said I had better get a tetanus shot. So I did.
When I told my dad about this experience all he had to say was "Well, did they put the needle in the same hole?" Funny, Dad.

 

Got a dingle-berry down my ear once while welding. Listened to it sizzle on its way down to burning through my eardrum. Kind of a spiral sound, then the splash, or in this case, the burn. Had to have it dug out, at emergency. Now, regardless of what I do in the shop, the earplugs are in all the time...

 

Well lets see. I have or had what they call a polar cyst on my nose. Its the size of a pea and stuck out like a piece of bone. Any how, one day i was under one of my customers cars doing some grinding and the damn grinder caught a piece of metal wrong at it bounced of the car frame and hit me in the nose and grinded off perfectly that polar cyst. The funny thing is i had went to a Dr a few years back to have it removed and it grew back. Well since my self plastic surgery it hasn't frown back and i had it all my life. It looks like it wasn't even there.

 

HAHAHAHA thats some funny shit!! HAHA you dumb ass he probably said. lol

 

I'm under an old dodge I had when I'm about 16 trying to put the 4 speed back in. I'm laying under with the tranny on my chest lifting and trying to stab it. It seemed like hours went by with no luck, all the sudden clunk it goes in and I am so happy and relieved I let go and relax, next thing I know that thing falls out and lands on my face and chest. I can tell that something is wrong cause blood is everywhere, I crawl out and run to the garage door and tell my sis to bring me a washcloth, of course she say's what for? And I scream I'm bleedin, she comes running to the door looks at me and say's OMG you cut your lip off! Well I almost faint, then I run to the car and look in the side mirror and sure enough it appears my upper lip is gone, holy crap I am scared to death she and I look under the car for my lip but it's not there. I get a ride to the emergency room and find out that it just split my lip completely in to from my nose down, they pull it back together and sew it up. I now keep a mustache to hide the scar.

 

Mine is simple, in comparision, as I took on two friends as business partners, in my shop, and a 10 year business went down the shitter. In only 2 years!

 

I was welding a patch into the floor of my daily driver when the horrific event began to unfold.....hahah. It wasn't too bad considering, but it could have been alot worse.

I had the carpet and rear seat all removed and was using a fire-proof blanket to cover up some of the front interior. But there was a not so fire-proof blanket draped over the side of the front seat. I was wearing an auto-darkening shield and when I finished welding the visor kept getting kind of dim and then bright again...like it was flickering....and I couldn't figure out why. Then I heard my dad yelling "FIRE" from a few feet away. By the time I looked the whole blanket was engulfed in flames. The headliner in the car was starting to melt and singe and my shirt was on fire. Dad grabbed the blanket and threw it outside, but it burned through to the seat material and set the seat on fire near the bottom. I had nothing to try to put it out, so after frantically patting my shirt out I just started patting the fire on the seat with my bare hand.....
OUCH!

Molten hot liquified seat goop stuck to my hand like napalm, still on fire, but at least the seat was extinguished. Then I proceeded to put out my hand by rubbing it on my jeans and screaming...lol. I managed to get away without any scarring or permanent damage to my hand. But I'm sure anybody who's been burned knows how shitty and painful it is!!

Fire can move super scary fast and if you don't have somebody spotting for you while welding or cutting with the torch, you can be in serious f'n trouble in a hurry.

Be careful with fire!

 

Just to keep with the fire theme....A few years ago a good friend of my dad set his harley on fire, destroying pretty much everything exept the frame, motor, rear tire and shocks. They had to scrape the melted windshield off of the motor and frame and completely rebuild the bike. It was enough to make a grown man cry, and I'm pretty sure more than a few guys were choked up when they heard.

The guy lost his sense of smell somewhere along the way and must have had a gas leak on the bike without realizing. He was working on his bike alone one night, redoing some electrical and something got hot or sparked or something and the little bit of fuel that was on the frame lit up and carried up to the tank. Before he could get it under control, most of the bike was gone.

Alot of his friends came together to rebuild the bike though, and now it's better than ever.

 

Dude I laughed so hard when I read that... that's the type of shit i'm known for...

 

The best part of that incident was that it was someone besides me for a change. I often tell my wife to come out to the shop and bring her cellphone. When she asks why I just say "I'm welding, so press the 9 and the 1 and be ready"

 

i work in a hydraulic repair shop and one day i was testing a cylinder. i had run it up to 2500 psi and was looking over it to see if it was leaking when all of the sudden a blanking plate on it blew off and hit me just below my right eye. no safty glasses on at the time either. i had hydraulic oil up my nose in my mouth and all over the front of me. that was the last time i tested anything without safty glasses. scared me pretty good because if it had hit my eye i could have lost it.

 

Shop Accident,
I was working on my VW Baja Bug one 4th of July afternoon. I was attempting to install a 12v size race clutch and pressure plate in a 6v car. I needed to grind a small portion of the trans out to fit the new clutch. I was sitting on the ground with the trans in between my legs with the trans still attatched to the car. As I was grinding I caught a steel bolt with the grinder and ignited the metal shaveings. All I saw was a white flash in my face! Instinctfully I dropped the grinder thinking it was an electrical flash. When I dropped the grinder it landed in my crotch and cut through my double layer Carharts barely missing my goodies and cutting my inner thigh! When I did this the grinder was still spinning and through lit metal shavings all over my exposed arm. I ended up getting 2nd degree burns on my arm, a small cut on my inner thigh, and I destroyed my favorite pants! That was enough fireworks for me that 4th!
Lesson learned!

 

Reading some of these posts reminded me of 2 non shop, yet automotive accidents. First..... way back when I was a dumb kid with a temper. I'm putting my 4 speed back in my car with help of a friend. We have to remember to picture the car is jacked up in front by 2 bumper jacks. I was under the tranny and my friend was steering the tail, it was fighting us..... I had to take a break, my arms were almost numb.We layed the snout of the input on the lip of the bellhousing, the tail on the ground. I told my friend to not even move. Well... he did something because the tranny fell out, cracked me right in the forehead, crushed and broke my glasses...... I flipped out......I threw the tranny out from under the car, broke an ear off, screaming at my friend, he got in his car and left, I'm trying to get the jacks down.....they are fighting me, again I lose my temper and kick the jack.....well, now the jack handle flew out of the jack and went right through my lower lip. I went into the house to check out the damage, my mom almost had a heart attack, blood everywhere, glasses a mess.

I went out that night with the guys and had to explain all the bandages..... to say the guys had a great time at my expense would be quite an understatement.

_______________________________________________________________

Another time, up in the carport, I jacked my car up and had it sitting on 2 cement blocks under each rear wheel. I felt the rear moving around and was looking, I found the locating pins on both sides were sheered off so the rear would move. I'm laying under the centersection, it is just about chest height and I hear noises and realize the blocks are starting to crumble...... Damn....no time to act, pop, one block on each side crumbled, pinning me with the center section directly on my chest, pinning me there....I couldn't move anywhere....I had no choice but wait till someone was around. I fell asleep, about 2 hrs later my mom and dad come home and see my feet sticking out from the rear of the car and no movement. They got out in a hurry thinking I was crushed, they woke me up....I told them I was alright and what to do. I got out, good thing I was not the panicking kind. My next investment was a set of jack stands........

 

now i know why you talk out of both sides of your mouth!!!!!haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

Ok, my first post so I'll make it good one.
Last year I was scrambling to finish my 66 Bronco build for an upcoming trip and was getting close. One sunday I was at the shop with some friends who were using my shop for there projects. I was working out some kinks with a Lokar cable shifter for my 700r4 behind a TBI 5.7(this is an important detail) and needed a couple bolts at the hardware store. I hauled a$$ to the local hardware store , but when I got there the had just locked up, so I was SOL on the allen bolts I wanted. Oh well, I had plenty to do so I headed back to the shop. I moved on to another small project which was looming and securing the wiring harness for the body. Well, I decided if I had the wheels turned, I would have little more room behind the left front wheel for access, so I reached in and fired the engine(this thing has 37" tires , so it turns a little dry) and this was one of those moments you read about. As I mentioned earlier, this is EFI, so it hardly turned over and it was running, and this is the precise moment I remembered while working on the shiflt linkage, I had shifted the trans in gear, so as soon as it was running, it was moving. I quickly reached back in to kill the engine, but it was too late,as the left rear tire caught my left foot, threw me on the ground and proceded to drive up on my chest. The truck stopped when it ran into a customers Cadillac, and sat there idling with me pinned under the left rear tire unable to move. Lucky for me, the guys in the shop reaccted with cat like reflexes and ran across the shop, killed the engine and pushed the truck off me.
My pride severly wounded, I tried to pick myself up off the ground and realized I was in trouble. My leftfoot had swollen to about twice its size, and I had severe pain in my right leg. My son got the phone, and I called my wife to take me to the hospital. When all was said and done,after 3 days in the hospital, I had broken my right leg and seperated several of the bones in my left foot, amazingly no upper body injuries(wide tires save lives). My left foot required 3 surgeries for pins and screws, but is pretty much back to normal . Luckily I had insurance , as my hospital bills came to almost $ 80k.
So, my public service announcement is make sure your neutral safety switch works, as things happen faster then you can imagine.

As a side note, my 2 friends and 10 year old son are being awarded on Thurs. 11/19/09 by the Pine Tree Chapter of the American Red Cross as " Real Heroes" .

Brett Alexander
Ellsworth ,Maine

 

LOL... damn.

 

cj spit on his monitor...twice!!

 

Hey hotrod-Linkin I know for a fact you got some funny as he!! stories to tell. Like the time you were loadin the rambler on the tow dolly.............

 

shhhhhhh...nobody is supposed to know.

 

I've posted my dumb@$$ shop stories in another thread so I'll relate a personal experience while I was in the military.

We were getting ready to get underway from Pearl Harbor on our way to Nihihau (sp? top of the Hawaiian island chain, basically a chunk of rock) for OPPE. The Officer of the Deck gave the command to spin the ship out away from the pier before our line handlers had given the signal that our lines were free and caused the No.1 line (bow line) to pull taught. Before we could even slack off we caught a wave from a passing frigate that cause the bow to surge out even more and caused the line to part. Our line (rope for you landlubbers) is about 3" thick braided nylon. You can tell they're getting ready to break because the internal threads will part with a pop. It's kind of the reverse of microwave popcorn. Slow pops at first then rapid fire. As soon as you hear the pops you run. You don't look, you don't ask someone, you head as far away as fast as you can. The line parted and swung from right to left. We have stanchions on our deck that are 1 1/2" to 2" diameter pipes and 3 steel lines strung across it. It cleared those off the deck before we could blink. We also had a exhaust stack on the forecastle (foc'sle) for our turbine engine. It's about 4' around and 3/4" thick aluminum. Snapped it in half like it was balsa wood. No injuries luckily.

The other incident was during the Gulf War. I was on rotation to be the cargo guy for helicopter operations. Our ship wasn't designed for helicopters to land on it so they have to hover, lower a line down with the bag/cargo what have you. Before you can grab anything you have to take this big fiberglass coated metal hook that's attached to the deck to ground the steel cable because the rotors of the helicopter generate a huge amount of static electricity. I'd been up for 24 hours at this point and was pretty fuzzy when I went to hook the cable I hooked the nylon webbing instead. Thinking I'd grounded it, I grabbed the cable with my bare hands. KA-ZAP! 50,000 volts right through me. Tossed my back about 4 or so feet, knocked me unconscious and I was tingly for about 3 days.