Always secure your stock to the table

Ouch

 

first day with the new drill press?

 

If you had it clamped, why did you have your hand anywhere near it?

I always hold stock with a vise grip.

We have a 1/2" 120v Milwaukee hand drill at work and everybody takes the handle off it. Milwaukee has a long trigger so you can't just take your finger off it when you hold it with one hand.

We also have an old 3/4" Skil drill that won't stop until the bit or your arms break.

 

Yeah. . . Finger No Good.

 

Dang....and I was just headed to Whataburger for a taquito.

 

I'm pretty good at letting go and I still have lots of healed spiral fractures in my fore arms. I actually broke a finger once with a hammer drill. Power tools that you hold in your hand, a necessity, but dangerous as hell.

 

Always easy to kick a guy when he's down. and while Lipton surely feels dumb as hell right now he's done all of us a great favor reminding us how quick things can happen when we take shortcuts. In what now feels like a former life I watched a journey man machinist , working next to me , place a 50+ pound mill vise on a table. Then continued setting up to spade drill a 2 inch hole in a piece of aluminum without clamping the vise down. I suggested he clamp the vise down and got the "I'm only drilling one hole line". Expecting the worst I walked away and waited expecting the worst. Everything went OK till the drill started breaking thru. Then the worst happened. Drill snapped as the vise started moving and got thrown good 30 feet between his and my machine and down the aisle. Luckily the only damage was to his pride, the vise, drill and what was a now useless chunk of metal. To this day wonder if I hadn't walked away if I would have got hit by the flying vise or some of the shrapnel that flew from the shattered drill.

As Lipton showed us, take shortcuts and sooner or later it will bite you or someone around you.

A little known fact is that a drill works the hardest as it starts to break thru. At that moment it looses center and now wants to walk away and all the motor torque is now focused in a very small area. Its a that moment that all hell can be set free on you. Be careful I've seen too many gotchas happen around me and they were all preventable.

 

That's only a little trim. Gonna hurt for a while. You'll have to get your left nostril stretched. Middle fingers are fat.

Good luck with it and thanks for the reminder.

4 Finger Pete

 

Zapato,
I don't think that any of us are kicking him, maybe poking him with a stick a little.

It is all about trying to get a smile from him or at the very least make him know that the end of the world was not in the E-Room, it doesn't happen until December.

Everyone deals with disaster or apparent disaster differently. Some of us do better making light of it.

I got hit with a piece of a parting tool once, nailed me in the forehead and I was about 40 feet away. I walked over to one of the other journeymen and he reached up, pulled it out and said hold your finger over the hole, I'll go get you a band-aid. He brought the foreman back and they both looked at it and made jokes while they tried to decide it I needed a stitch. Ultimately the decision was made that I would be OK because it was just my head.

I don't think anyone is kicking him.

 

I'm sure most of us have hand-held something to drill in a drill press or mill once in a while and never got hurt seriously. Always clamp the piece or dog it so it can't spin or lift. The most dangerous point is when it breaks through the part.

I had worked with one guy who was extremely dangerous. He had this horrific habit of holding small parts in another vise and holding that in the milling vise. He'd take a cut and ziiinngggg... out came the part and smaller vise into low orbit. If he was near me, I'd put a welding screen between us, which did see some action.

This was the guy who put a bore mill through his hand at another shop and it was semi-functional at best.

Bob

 

haha thinking the same thing, no booger chasing. There's got to be a good few jokes you can do with half a finger though. I can think of a few but all abit crude

Guy i knew had a glass eye and his party trick was to drop it in your beer when you weren't looking. Freaked more than a few folks out.

Speedy recovery, thats going to hurt for a while yet.

 

Hell Kevin, with the price of gold where its at I started silvering things to the table quite awhile ago.

 

It's the circle of life. . . someone makes fun of me when I do something stupid, then I go and make fun of the next guy, and so on.

I doubt anyone here wants to see, or is happy that Lipton got hurt. Just taking a friendly jab cause most of us have been there and know that a little "comic relief" is good when you're in pain.

 

Dang, sorry for the injury but it looks like your finger got a foreskin.

 

It becomes machine shop humor, even with more serious injuries. That's how machinists deal with it. Guys get the usual nicknames for a while, lefty, stubby, thumbkins... glad it wasn't the "hole" finger. Nothin' malicious (in most cases). Most guys heal up and move on.

When the guy got hurt in my shop recently, we have EMTs in the company that respond to heart attacks, diabetic comas and the rare shop injury. 2 out of the 3 that responded were missing a finger each.. it was weird, none in machine shop incidents.

Bob

 

No sweat...that'll buff out...

I'll bet you said a bunch of words that you haven't used in a l-o-n-g time!

 

Gone for a ride on my 1/2 drill more than once. Know how the rodeo guys feel. Just wish my reaction time was a little better,that would make the trips shorter.

 

Owowowowow! I learned that lesson from my brother-in-law. Long before I met my wife (20 years now, thankyouverymuch) he was out in the shop working on something. Went to drill a hole in some thin steel strap on th drill press. "I'll just hang on to it, it's just a little hole" Long story short, drill bit hangs, strap steel whips around, index finger and half of the middle finger laying on the floor in the dirt. Yepper ... clamps are our friends!

 

^^^ What he said! (well, minus the "golding" maybe holding) No More after seeing your finger!!^^^

 

I worked with machinist that only had 1.5 fingers and a thumb on one hand. He lost them in a farm related accident when he was a kid. He had never been seriously injured in the machine shop.

I worked with welder that everyone called 3 Finger Willy, he only had 3 fingers combined on both hands, lost them in a brush with a rose bud. When you met him he introduced himself as 3 Finger Willy. In that shop if you were going to use the rose bud for the first time no matter how long you had been welding you went and saw Willy first.

Lots of ways to get hurt, always good when someone is stable enough to admit they made a mistake and remind us.

 

Hope all heals well! Finger tip injuries do suck, 'cause in couple of weeks you'll forget just how bad it hurts and start trying to use it again.... I did mine about twenty years ago the same way, only after I shreaded my left hand, I lost my temper, wound up with my right hand and punched the emergency shut off on the drill press. Broke three of the knuckles in my right hand!!! Good thing several of my good friends were there to witness this act of stupidity!

 

"finger now gone"
"finger now gnarled"
"finger nub gnarled"

Take your pick

 

Tried to take off a finger with a miter saw a few years ago. Got in a rush and whango! I thought that I old enough to know better. Made a great learning opportunity for my son though.

 

I agree, no one is serious in their condemnation of Lipton for his remarkable foolishness (Nice one Lefty!). I do feel your pain though, the small finger and it's mate next to it on my left hand are somewhat shorter than they used to be.

Smashed the end off one in Recruit Training in the Army, made the last month of training interesting then had the other torn off setting up a Field Hospital a few years latter (Yeah think MASH!!) yeah, my own Emergency Dept(RAP) do you have any idea how cruel and mean your own soldiers can be when receiving first aid in your own department?
No I didn't cry.


Doc.

PS; The memory just drove me to the Bourbon!

 

May 26 last year I had my hand pulled into the bridgeportspindle that i was running because i broke one of the top 3 machinist rules. Don't wear work gloves. I got lucky and only broke my thumb in 2 places. I have seen to many injuries from co workers and I keep the glove hangin above my cnc lathe to remind me.

 

Oh, trust me I was aware the jokes were coming, I wouldn't be so naive to believe nobody here wouldn't give me a little shit about it. Ive even googled a few jokes already.

Typing with one hand and letting the wife do things for me is nice, she just made me a cup of coffee Got her trained right. But seriously, I made a stupid mistake. I just hope that showing these pictures remind someone this weekend to be safe. "Happy Mothers Day" sounds much nicer than "Mom...hospital....now...."

 

Dang Dude I am a nurse and that hurts me!! I worked with a guy years ago that reached under a board he was ripping with a circular saw to see if the blade was making a complete cut and it threw two of his fingers across the room...What the heck was he thinking...

 

We all tend to become complacent when building stuff.
Need to take a second and think about how something could go wrong, and safegaurd against the possibility of that.
I am guilty as well.
The thing is, when something goes wrong,it happens really fast.

 

It's funny now, one of my fingers was crushed pretty bad, half of the distal phalanges is gone but there was a fair amount of finger they saved. I now have a finger that the end will bend 90* on and is all 'floppy'.
Hey, Bourbon don't taste all that bad in Pepsi!!