What's the stupidest thing you're ever done in your shop?

Oh MAN!! These are great, and I KNOW this is gonna be a looooong thread. I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. Laughing 'cuz I've done more than a few of the same things already mentioned.
As for me (at least recently anyway), it was painting the bodywork on my wife's truck in the garage with just the overhead flourescent lights. "It'll be fine, I don't need to go to the trouble of riggin' up all my other work lights", I thought. Later, I got it out into the "real" light outside and saw just how wrong I was. A run here, a dry spot there...Didn't have to do it over, though, we traded it in on a new truck. The dealer never noticed, but I don't know how...

 

When we first bought our house last year, the roll-up door for the back garage was open a foot or so. The garage also has a small attached shop with a door that has a lock and a hasp on the outside.
So the first thing I decide to do, naturally, is go outside and investigate whats wrong with the garage door.Of course, this is July, and its about 100 deg. out, and the back garage is about 150' from the house. So, instead of unlocking the shop door, I yank the roll-up door open, an go inside to see if I can figure out why they left the garage door open. I go to pull it down behind me, and it sticks about a foot and a half from closing all the way. So I open it all the way, grab the rope, and really give it a GOOD yank, and the door closes all the way. Now THATS more like it....
I grab the bottom of the door, try to yank it up, wont budge an inch. Oh SHIT! I go over and try the shop door, yup, its locked from the outside. Pound on the garage door, yell, wife is in the house 150' away with the door closed, cant hear me. Try to stick a piece of 1x6 under it, doesnt move.
By now, I have been stuck in a closed garage for about 15 minutes in 100 deg heat & I am really starting to sweat. So I start looking at the garage door, trying to figure why its stuck. Aha, the door is wedged tight against the track on the left side about 'six feet up! We just moved in, theres no tools in the shop. So I start looking around for something, ANYTHING I can use to pry the door off the track. Nothing, not a screw-driver, pry-bar or anything else. Finally, I see the throw-out fork rod from my Chevy II. So I wedge it in between the door and the track, pry the door over, reach down, and after two or three tries, the door opens! SWEET FREEDOM!
So I head into the house, and my wife says "Where the hell have you been for the last half hour! Ya think you could find it in your heart to wait until we unpack before you start screwing around out in your precious workshop??"

 

Reached across a spinning, unguarded wire wheel on the bench grinder. that was a nice little raspberry. Still have the mark.

 

Checking my 70 Vette with a headlight door that refused to close.The first thing I tried was to give it a little push to see if it would go down. It immediately slammed close (Spring Loaded) trapping my finger between the headlight door and the body. I couldn't pull the thing open to save my ass and had to just stand there in an unheated 20 degree garage for 2 hours until someone came home to start the car to get enough vacuum to open the damn door. Should have gotten stitches but I was so pissed I just washed it out and taped it up ..... left a nice scar. I still hear about that one to this day.

 

I still do this so I must be a slow learner. Everytime I burn something with oxyacetylene I kneel down after to examine my handiwork and put my knee in the slag.

 

A friend was schooling me on a plazma cutter. Had it hooked up, but said as long as you don't have it grounded, it wouldn't work. Pressed it to his thumb and blew the neatest clean hole straight through it including the nail. Guess he was grounded after all............

 

1/2 drill caught in my t-shirt..amazing how fast it climbed up my chest,with the bit aimed directly under my chin..
Standard finger in the bench grinder stuff..
Used my left thumb to push over my sawzall just a little bit as it got off the line.Unfortunately,that same thumb ended up crushed by the hammer on the saw.Never would have believed how much a crushed thumb can hurt.8 years later,my thumb still has no feeling at the tip..I was by myself,so I taped it up,and finished the cuts.9 hours later,I thought maybe I should go to the ER,it just wasn't gonna stop bleeding,no matter how tightly I wrapped the duct tape around it.The ER doc got my attention when he talked about blood poisoning,and amputation,followed by how stupid I was.
All the rest of my stories involve fire..

 

I welded aluminum in shorts a few times and def had a pretty intense sunburn on the insides of my legs for a few weeks. not to mention the slag spatter singeing off plenty of leg hair haha

I now know NOT to do that ever! yikes!!


This happened while I was at work, I was inside a 4'x8' aluminum water tank I was building, I am laid out in the thing welding away. All is quiet in the shop, I guess my boss thought it would be hilarious to throw a few Black Cat firecrackers in the tank while I was welding. SCARED the living shit out of me. I thought something on the welder tank blew up or something. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I was so pissed!! haha but ended up laughing it off luckily cause we prank around a lot.

 

Welding up a cracked frame on my O/T plow truck, welds looked good, thought I`d do some grinding. Got my angle grinder with no shield to try out, while I was doing this thinking, this looks good, should get some gloves and re-install the shield...you know what happened next.. I go in the house looking to stop the bleeding... then go out and keep grinding, my wife is like WTF. If I stop working for 1st aid it must be bad.

 

I stood up real quick to snap someone with a rag...didn't look above me first,sliced my forehead on a stainless steel mirror, severed an artery in my head and got quite a few stitches. Huge scar on my forehead.

 

I REALLY like this one! ROFL!

 

Cleaning off rust from the 53's starter cover, using a wire wheel and holding it bare handed. well the wire catches the edge of the band, swings it open and it swings back wedging the edge of itself right under my thumbnail. Looked down in silence for a second before flipping.

 

I was at a guys house watching him do the worst possible mig welding on quarter plate. I was outisde with just shoes and shorts on, and thats it. After drinking beer for 2 hours and watching this guy do his worst, I just took the torch and welded for maybe 5 minutes. I was pink from head to toe the next day

 

My tow vehicle ('86 Suburban,with about 250,000 miles on it ) needed a new rad.It has a 350 sbc in it.So I get a rad for a 454 bbc.Cut the rad shroud with my sawzall. Great! It fits! Fill with coolant and test.Crap!Forgot the tranny lines! Red fluid all over the place.Looks like a messy murder scene from CSI.That stuff doesn't flush away with water very well.Tranny fluid ,I mean.

 

Stupidest?
Deciding that HotRods were a great way to spend my time.............

My hip pocket has never forgiven me.

Doc.

 

Geez, Where do I start???

Fell off the back of my project truck, which was 2 ft up on a drive up hoist at the time. The Lord was obviously watching over my fat butt as I wasn't seriously hurt.

Went to reposition a customer's pro-street firebird. Hopped in and left a leg dangling and the door open. Peeled the door back to the front fender when I clipped the hoist.

I'm pretty sure I have the record for setting myself on fire, welding, cutting... whatever.

Melted a pair of nylon pants to my crotch with grinding spray.

Dropped a Dana 60 on my foot, the one day I wasn't wearing my steel toed boots

Gave myself welder's flash because I thought I could do more than just a tack job without a shield

Built a motorized barstool with a Torqu-a-verter and a 5 horse Honda with a boost bottle and a handheld nitrous shot. It's been clocked bu the RCMP doing 45 kph. (30+ mph) The indoor parkade attached to the shop was empty so we started doing laps with the barstool. The little monster actually did some narly dirt tracking on the dusty concrete slipping and sliding through the corners and steering with the throttle. I decided to try out the nitrous and when I hit the button it got traction and pealed the barstool out from under me. I slid into a concrete piller (Bruised and embarrassed but laughing the entire time) The barstool took out a garbage bin and a wash bay pretty good.

 

oh, i forgot. When i was younger i didnt know that welding arcs give off UV light. I was tack welding for 2 hours with no face shield.

Face swelled so bad my eyes were closed.

Thats sucked. Never had a problem with acne though!

 

G'day, Slid under the 56 Chevy to adjust the shift linkage. Only was going to be a second so a bumper jack and no jackstands should be fine. Car fell, bruised my ribs and broke my nose. Luckily my brother was there to get me out.

ms

 

well, I can't top many of those. Probably the stupidest thing I did without being injured was going on a parts run while leaving the automatic oil pump pumping engine oil in a semi's engine that I was changing oil on at the time. It took a lot of kitty litter and scrubbing to clean up that mess when I got back along with draining about 20 quart of oil out of the engine to get the level where it belonged.

I always told my students not to wear a watch or jewelry or watches when working on cars because of the potential of getting shocked. You guessed it, I reached across a distributor of a running engine to set the timing with my watch on one day with ten kids around me and the prettiest blue spark jumped up from the cap and nailed my watch band.

 

Shortened two fingers in a radial arm saw(permanetly). One finger was in three pieces. Doc said he could not sew on two pieces,one piece would not bend,was better off just leaving it extra short. The tip of the index finger was lost. My two brother inlaws looked for an hour,with no luck.

 

Long pant legs and wet floors don't mix when welding. It was winter time and i brought a job into to thaw, later that day i was doing some welding on it and was wearing a pair of jeans that touched the floor at my heals. Boy did i get a jolt...

Then there was this time when i was cleaning the drill shavings out of my press with out gloves, went to compact them in a bucket, pulled my hand out minus a really decent chunk of my thumb...

accidentally started a drill press with the chuck key still in. We have a chain on out key so we dont lose it. The sucker was spinning around like a mace.

 

Cat got it

 

Not an accident and not by me, but a buddy of mine decided to move his whole family from So Cal to Guam where he got a new job. He had about 5-6 crappy old jags and Fiats that he had not sold yet and wouldn't total a grand for the entire lot. They were leaving for good the next day. His entire family and about a dozen friends were frantically packing up the entire house but he was not inside. I found him out in the garage working on one of the Fiats. Amazing! He still hadn't found a home for these bombs and he was leaving the country in 12 hours, yet he had to go back out to the garage and start working on them again. A true car junky.

 

cut up a vw bug with a torch and gas tank. lets not kid ourself, it started on fire. but wait there's more..tried to put it out with water. after the lake of fire burned out had my first beer with dear old dad. only fitting since he had the torch and told me to get the water. oh the memories.

 

Dubbing Mechanix gloves for welding gloves.Man it sure feels good when sparks melt right through while you're welding.

 

Not too long ago me and a guy in my shop were cutting some aluminum sheet with the plasma. Some card board that was on it to keep it from scratching caught fire. That's only the first dumb part. I hustle to the bench and grab a spray bottle he claimed was water....It turned out to be WD-40. It was a shocker when i sprayed the shit out of it and it flared up high. After hitting it with the extinguisher I went ahead and grabbed a Sharpie and labeled the bottle.

 

Walked down to the shop through the snow and climbed up on the trail Jeep I was building to weld on the roll cage. I did not have the Jeep up on the lift but this sucker was pretty darn tall at 3 feet to bottom of the body pan. Anyway wet boots must have slipped as I was leaning over to weld because next thing I know I am back at the house falling into the foyer bleeding all over the place. Got an ambulance ride and 28 staples across the top on my head. I must have laid there for a while whereas my brother cleaned a rather large pool of blood from the floor when he went to the shop investigate what happened.

 

I was fitting some headers to my car, had the drivers side header in my hand and wanted to look under the car. Gotta set this header somewhere so's I can get on the floor and look up under the fender. Shelving unit against the wall next to the car was handy but the only spot available had a stack of shipping envelopes on it. Oh well, it'll only be there for a minute so I set it on top of the envelopes, got prone on the floor and turned my head to look under the car. Header slid off those envelopes and came off the shelf 5 feet up, hit me in the left temple and drove my head into the concrete floor. I was only out about 30 seconds...... I think. Head wounds sure bleed a lot.

 

Those last 2 stories were close calls. Sustain any major brain damage?

 

Working on a friends snowthrower, the needle and seat had failed and filled the cylandar with fuel. Took the plug out, snapped it back into the plug boot to check spark. Pulled the engine over, fuel went everywhere, then I heard the "tick tick tick" of the plug firing and WOOSH, everything was on fire. My workbench got some patina, I lost some arm hair, and my fire extinguisher got a workout!