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

Not something I did but I was there both times.

Back in the 80's I was working at a lumber yard building prefab cottages. The walls and trusses are built on a large jig table that demands you crawl across them on your knees to nail the center. We were using large bulky air nailers.

The owner of the yard was a nice guy but a total disaster in the shop and a hazard to himself and anyone close by. There were more than a few stories of him smashing his hand roofing and falling off stacks of lumber. During a rush cottage job he managed to nail his hand to the frame table / wall. Of course it was in the center and hard to get to him. We cut the wall section out and sent him to the hospital. 3 days later he was trying to help by nailing the edges and he once again nailed the same hand to the frame work, right through the cast. Once again we cut him out and toddled him off to the hospital. A month after I left I heard he was using a radial arm saw without the gaurd and shot a piece of moulding through his bicep.


Some of the stupid things my Brother and I have done

Back in the early 80's we built stuff in our Dad's drive way. The nieghbors got used to hearing open headers during the summer.

My Brother had a Cortina that needed a new engine and at the same time he swapped out the entire wiring harness. He did this working on his back in an uninsulated garage in the middle of a Winnipeg winter. He used a propane BBQ to heat the garage as best he could. The fumes were terrifying. I have no idea how he survived but I'm pretty sure he still has brain damage.

Then there was the time we took our project out for a shakedown with an old time coke box for a seat and a wooden stick hooked up to the carb. No throttle spring of course. I'm pretty sure that stunt was due to chewing on all that great tasting lead based paint as a child.

I was swapping shocks on my Sister's 72 Monte Carlo and used wooden stumps as jack stands under the frame rails on the driveway. I was sitting under the car with my legs extended under the diff. Both rear wheels were off. With me cranking away on the socket wrench and the slope of the driveway, the car fell off the stumps sideways. The only thing that kept me from losing both legs was the edge of the home made trailer hitch dug into the side of the fallen wooden stump and kept the car from rolling completely off.

Then there was the time I was siphoning gas the old fashioned way and gagged down more than a large mouthfull of premium. A glass of milk got rid of most of it but I was tasting gas for 2 days and running to the toilet for 3. (All exits, no waiting...)

Let's not forget the huge brake stand I did in the early 80's with my V8 Vega one night outside the roller rink. Oh... did I mention the roller rink shared the parking with a donut shop?? As the smoke cloud cleared there were 4 cops standing there waiting. The car was impounded and they made a big show of driving me home to talk to my Dad. Nothing like a cop car sitting in your driveway with the lights rolling to get the nieghborhood talking and embarass your parents.

 

I was in my late teens working in my Dads shop. I was fabricating upper shock mounts for my 40 chevy pickup. Well I had finished all the welding and was now in the grinding stage. My dad wasn't there. Well I put the mount in a vise and began to grind on it. I didn't realize that the sparks from the grinder were going at least 6 feet away from me...directly into the garbage can which had oily rags at the top, of course. So here I am grinding away when I smelled something burning. I had set the garbage can on fire. Luckily for me I was near a doorway and just carried the garbage can outside and put the fire out. Man did I catch shit for that one from my Dad....lol. Oh well....

 

Let count the ways.

1. Ran a 9 inch 90* grinder across my brand new Levi's, never mind the missing flesh of my leg.
2. Got my little finger cought in the Milwakee 1/2 drill motor, yes that is 4 pins holding the finger together.
3. Moved a ground clamp while someone was welding with it, I was grounded of course.
4. Hot spark in ear
5. Molten metal in boot
6. Hell, I may as well write a book on stupid thing done in a shop

 

Just bought my first second set of jack stands and a creeper. Cool. Ran home, jacked the back of the car as high as the jackstands would go, went around front and did the same. Jumped on the new creeper and pulled myself fully under. With my feet under the motor and my head under the pumpkin looked up to see those shiny new jackstands at about a 40 degree angle. Escaped with my life, washed the cold sweat off, and learned a lesson never to be forgotten.

 

Stick welding a cracked shock bracket while lying under my buddies 4-4-2. Rod got stuck, I yanked the stinger and the rod broke loose, flipped as it fell and got me right in the shoulder. Hurt so bad I switched to the other hand to finish the welding job and damned if I didn't do it again but to the other shoulder! Said a multitude of bad words.

 

Taking apart the front suspension on a -56 Buick, without any counter weight. If the lower a-arm would have hit my knee instead of my thigh I would be walking with a permanent limp right now.

 

I want to watch a few of you guys work!

 

I'll bring popcorn.

And bandages.

 

I set my buddy's car on fire while welding up some trim holes... In the past, it had been parked under a tree for years and the doors were full of pine needles (found that out the hard way)....

A week before this incident,, I thought it was a good idea to spray my friends with the only fire extinguisher in the garage.... I come up with some pretty great ideas while intoxicated... This was one of them....

Anyway, I smelled 'foreign smoke' while working on the trim holes and lifted the welding helmet.... Fire was coming out of the door top (and there were cut fuel lines inside the body from removing the floor pans with a saw-zall)...... I was lucky that my friend had a swimming pool in his yard near the garage.... That pool was pretty rough, and the dead squirrel floating around in it had been there for at least a year, but when a car is on fire, things like that don't matter... I made about 10 trips filling the empty Boh can in the left hand and the random fast food cup in the right.... Anyway, I saved the car....

Another time, I did some welding in a t-shirt... I was welding pretty hot, but it was only a total of about 12" of weld.... I guess I forgot that I was of Irish descent and have never had a 'tan' in my life.... Inner-arm sunburn in January (it took months to fade back to where I couldn't spot it right away).... I did it again a week later, thinking "I'm burnt, but this is only 1/4 the amount of welding".... Yeah, new burns... Itched like hell... One of the owners of the shop told me a story about welding inside a stainless trailer and being burnt everywhere from the reflection, and I didn't feel so bad (although he has the sort of skin that can actually tan, not just go from pale to burnt... Must have been a LOT of welding)....

I've MIG welded in shorts and had those little red dingleberries roll down to my satchel.... Not fun.....

I've done hours of production welding before realising that I had a lighter in my pocket, or even worse, a couple rounds of live ammunition... Yeah, sometimes we would take breaks from work to shoot things with the .22, or bring in weird firearm stuff for 'show and tell'... I never had an incident with the ammo in my pocket (even as my clothing burnt around me), but now I know to keep my Mauser and Carcano rounds somewhere else....

As far as bodily harm, I've been pretty lucky, as I tend to be overly-cautious with power tools.... Still, sometimes shit happens... I've had a lot of close calls...

 

Stupidest thing I ever did was telling my buddy he could keep his car in my shop until he finished it up. Way worse than any of the above!

 

Sometimes,just walking into it. There are days like that...

 

I was cleaning the gasket off of a head that was laying on the floor at my feet. Using a 6" grinder with a cup brush, the gasket material was coming off fine until the cup brush snagged my pant leg. It's a good thing the pants were old, the grinder started walking up my leg then the material let loose at the crotch, thank God because that is where the grinder was headed. That pant leg came off completely in a fraction of a second, there I stand in the shop with one leg blue jeans. It was an embarrassing walk to my car to drive home and change clothes.

 

used to work in a body shop years ago and saw that happen to a coworker only when the disk shattered it cut into his left bicep almost to the bone. almost made me puke. never seen so much blood!!

 

I opened an "open to the public" retail department. We thought it would be fun!?!? It is now closed!!!! Phone calls and emails only now and considering charging for quotes. I hate being a nob, but................

 

on a construction note ,I saw a job superintendant (company owners son and a total danger to himself and others) fall into the basement through the same stairwell opening TWICE. yes 2 times!!! in one day on the same house job.

 

I spilled 3 quarts of used, toasted diff fluid onto my un-sealed garage floor (under my living room) The house will forever smell like gear lube. ugh

 

I Dragged the Banks loan officer out to the parking lot of my new shop 10 years ago and threatened to kick his ass for being a Dick... I found out its like breaking a mirror or having a black cat walk in front of your car... Now years later he's gone and I am still here!!!

 

Changing the positive battery end Saturday. Talking to my wife and daughter not paying attention to what I was doing. Shorted my wedding ring between the wrench on the battery and the gas tank. Melted it into my finger about a 1/4 inch about half way around my finger. Ran to the kitchen sick and ran water on it enough where I could get the ring off. Felt like a real dumass.

 

What ever the boss tells me.

 

That's the reason I tattooed my ring on. I'd rather deal with the pain of laser removal if something bad happened in the relationship.

 

after building race cars for 45 years, i, have many of the same stories. welding in shorts, car falling off jack stands [should have died] welding on gas tanks full of gas [should have died, didn't even have a fire], pop riveting radiator shrouds into new radiators, pop riveting qt panels into new fuel cells etc.. i have a couple of odd ones. in the '70's, we were just completing a dirt late model. when one of my nieghbors walked in looking for a tray for his herb to ro0ll some lefthander's. i said just dump it on the roof of the race car and have at it. a few minutes later there's a knock on the garage door. very unusual because everybody just walked in. without looking up i said the door was open come on in. well, in walked 2 wastenaw county cops looking for another nieghbor on a bench warrent. silence over came the shop. one cop strolled around the back of the car the other around the front. both admiring our work. after about 5 minutes of talking race cars they leave not once comenting about the ounce of weed and the 10 freashly rolled joints on top of the car. we went from shock, to dissbelief, to a good laugh about that one steve pastorino

 

I dont have a shop but if my garage counts, I have to push my model A's into the garage because if I drive them in there is not enough room to get out of the cars. so one day I am pushing the 31 coupe into the garage and I hear this noise and I am thinking what is that noise. I wasn't paying attention, the noise was the model A coupe I was pushing was draging fender to fender on the Model A roadster. damage wasn't to bad and I was able to do the repairs. It was one of those moments where you think how could I have been so stupid.

 

In the mid-70's, I was helping a buddy with his '65 Mustang drag car, and another bud was "helping", too. So this guy loved his green bud, and partook of a bit before starting work, and went into chatterbox mode, was driving us nutz, blahblahyadayada.... So we're putting together the third member, so he says he'll start dropping the engine in, yeah OK, go away.. So we hear the chain fall come down a little, then a little more, little more, all the time chattering about the cosmos- then silence. We look at each other, knowing something's up, then hear the chain fall- going real fast. We walk over to see his face very red as he pulled the engine back up out of the car- looking at the bellhousing

Same guy worked at a local gas station that was a hangout, on a corner of the biggest intersection of the old "cruising" street. So Saturday afternoon he pulls up to the red light at the intersection in his bright-yellow 340 Duster, and a half-dozen yayhoos in the station lot start yelling "Light 'em up!!!". So the light goes green, and he rips 'em pretty good across the intersection, and pulls into the lot, never noticing the cop car that was sitting behind him at the light the whole time So the cop pulls in, all the yayhoos are trying not to laugh, he's , cop's got the hardass look on- then just busts up laughing, couldn't hold it anymore, and says "You dumbshit, don't you ever look in the mirror?" Everybody is in tears laughing at him, including the cop, so he got off with "don't ever let me catch you pulling a dumbass stunt like that again"

 

I worked on a Honda one time.

 

Classic, love it!!

 

In my garage, I needed to bleed the brakes on my 39 sedan, after it sat all winter the pedal went to floor when pressed the first time then had pressure. The car sits pretty low in front so I need to drive it up on some pieces of wood then jack up the front. I placed the wood and started the car, put it gear and pressed the gas it went up on the wood pieces and I hit the brake! it went to the floor! the car went over the wood and smacked right in to my tool box!!! lucky no damage! they made those bumpers pretty well in the 30's Mel

 

For me it would be a toss up between the time I first fired my 392 powered 32 Ford with zoom headers. Without noticing the headers had filled with pumped through fuel. Set my self on fire pretty good that day. But the day I had brought the Chrysler block home and was unloading it from my truck. In the closed garage while home alone. Turned the wrong way and the stress broke my knee. I fell off the bed and broke my ankle. And there I was. all alone with the doors closed. I have heard that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's not true. Made me limp.

 

I was working on my Kubota by my shed and decided to pull up to the garage in order to be closer to the tools. As I pulled up to the garage I decided to pull up to the center bay at the last minute since my wife was out and it was empty and I would be able to bring the tractor inside on the flat floor instead of working in the driveway. As I pulled up and took my foot off the accelerator pedal the tractor continued to go forward in my panic I grabbed the trottle control and pulled it down forgetting that this foreign throttle is backwards to what you would think it should be..By the time I shut it down I was through the door and at the back wall. dazed and confused. The only thing that kept me from going nuts was what if I pulled up in front of one of the other bays.One had my era shelby cobra sitting on the floor and the other had the 32 roadster up on the lift. So a $1000 door later I had to laugh and thank God. Note! a small pc of wood I was useing slid under the pedal not allowing the pedal to return. If I went into the bay with the cobra I would have gone right over it. The bay with the 32 being up on the lift would have come down on me. Anyway never put anything on the floor that could end up under your gas or brake pedal

 

We started our nitro funny car in the shop to make sure all was well. It was a snow / rain mix outside and we were due to race in Florida the following week, so we needed to fire the car. I know,,,,,,,,we could have just fired it on alcohol, but the nitro idea sounded cool. It was pretty fun, but once we were done and thought about it, we discussed what might have happened had the car caught fire, it was on jack stands and we would have never gotten it out in time, the shop probably would have burnt down. It was still pretty fun.

 

cranked my mini bike when the throttle was stuck and it was facing the back wall...........you do the math.