Crazy/Insane Shop Accidents

When I was younger I worked @ a body shop in alaska. One day the oldtimer bodyman chipped his tooth while eating lunch. No big deal, huh. The fun started when he told me that dentists used bondo to fix teeth. He then mixed up a nice hot batch of bondo and with the assitance of a small screwdriver he jamed it into the hole in his tooth. The exposed nerve must have loved the hot chemicals, because in a matter of moments he was screaming and crying for me to take him to the nearest e.r.

 

Working in the dirt in the front yard changing the oil and putting a water pump on a god damned FJ62 Landcruiser. Using my truck tool box, it's got everything I need. So I'm on my back underneath the bitch and I reach fer my 14mm wrench. I just sat it there, right by the wheel. Feel around. Nuthin. Look around. Nuthin. Shit. Crawl out from under and look arond on my knees. Nuthin. Rifle through box. Nuthin. Start pitching a minor fit. Look at oil filled drain pan under truck. Hmmm. Maybe. Can't find magnet. Oh well. Go fishing with bare hand in hot oil. Nuthin. Dammit. Well, I got another in the big tool box back in the shed. Yep. The shed that is stuffed full of shit. In the big box that is behind all that shit. Great. Don't bother with locating handy drop light that is strung up in shed, just go for it. Trip on shit. Reach out to break fall and grab shelf. Shelf flops and old paint cans go flying. Upon impact paint goes flying. Oil and paint covered I go searching for hanging drop light. Find it. Flick switch. Bulbs goes boooonk. Nuthin. Can't get to big box. Too much shit. Attempt to extricate myself. Twist ankle. Fall again and catch shed door knob in the eyesocket and knock myself out cold. Wake up sometime later to stinky dog licking my face. Stand up. Shake it off and get my bearings. Rub my back side and guess what. 14mm wrench in my back pocket.

 

Having made sausage for 5 years I wish I had a dollar for every time the meat delivery guy toldme that one....

 

I have only one thing to say. Never stand at the end of a piece of pipe while you're cutting it with a torch! Good thing I had a bud there to put out my chest!

Make that two things.... Never hold a piece of wood in one hand and try to chisel it using the other hand. For awhile there, I thought my guitar playing days were over!

pigpen

 

both..

 

When i am running a lathe, after i switch it off (to take measurements, or what ever) i just grab the chuck to slow it down. well some genius thought that was really neat, so he thought he try it too, so he grabs hold of the spinning chuck, with out turning the lathe off first. sorry but i don't remember how many bones he broke, but it was a lot and they weren't easy to fix.

 

nice warm summer day 00 MACK is at my shop with his beat up nasty half rotted merc lower splash pan. i give him a drill with a epoxy wire wheel on it and tell him to clean it up so i can see howmuch i have to cut out and replace. He starts going to town on it as i walk away to do some thing else. 5 minutes later i hapen to look up as he catches his tank top in the wire brush. rips it right off him and continues to spin on the end of the drill slapping him in the face. i was laughing for 10 minutes after i took the drill out of his hand and turned it off.

 

I got some interesting stories from Korea and Germany. I was an Ammo troop in the Air Force. I transported munitions (missles, bombs, rockets, flare/chaff, bullets, allthat good stuff) to and from the flight line and storage area/buildings. Well this kid came to the shop...straight out of tech. school. He was out by himself delivering flare mods to the different hangars for the aircraft. Each mod has 30 sticks of flare and can be ignited by static electricity. The holders for these mods on the trailers have two little bolts on each door that you have to close...otherwise, you guessed it, the door stays open. Well, he left the door open and took off in the truck, with the trailer and door hanging open. He proceeded to drop something like 11 or 12 mods out in the middle of the flight line. Had to have the Wing commander come out...EOD (our bomb removal guys)...the fire department...everybody.

Another time in Korea...this guy was transporting LIVE AIM-9 missles on a trailer and instead of backing the trailer up into it's parking spot...he decided to cut across the grass and pull straight in. Well it had rained the night before...he got this trailer STUCK, full of live missles in the mud tipped over at a 45 degree angle. We had to hook two other two trucks to his truck to pull him out. All before 7 am when the day shift arrived.

In Germany, a guy was transporting about 15 or 20 500lb inert bombs...just target practice bombs on a flat trailer. Well, they weren't tied down correctly and when he went around the turn...just past the main entrance to the base...all the bombs went rolling off the trailer into the street. Talk about people scattering. I didn't witness this one...but I was involved in the clean up.

We got away with alot on the graveyard shift!

 

I was making a column drop for my coupe. I made it out of 1/2" stainless rod. So, my idea was to bend it around a 1/2" nasty looking lag bolt. Well to get stainless to bend that tight you have to heat it up real hot red ass cherry red. Well during the process the shitty 3 legged pipe vise I was using fell apart man that lag bolt landed right on the inside of my forearm and branded my bumb ass. All for a 17 cent bolt.

 

Massive quantities of beer for lunch...gotta drink fast, we only have an hour........then happily back to the bodyshop.....get a work order to fix a new car....work order says "replace quarter panel"....out comes the air chisel.....five minutes later the quarter panel is on the shop floor. I take the work order to the parts counter to get the new panel and the parts guy hands it back and says.."This order says to REPAIR, NOT REPLACE the panel dumbass...hmmmm.....this could be a problem. So in my beer fog, I start welding the panel back on the car and lucky me.....I look in the car and the headliner is on fire. Not a very good day.....decided that liquid lunches weren't a very good idea.

 

We blew up our garage once-no shit. We had and unheated garage and used propane heaters in the winter. One was a mushroom heater and the other was a torpedo heater. The shroom heated the garage and occasionaly we'd use the torpedo to warm the tank because the constant use would start to freeze it up. One day we ran the torpedo and it got kicked around before we went inside. Well it got re-aimed at the hose. It melted the hose enough to cause a leak. It was warm enough in the garage that the torpedo shut off. The garage began to fill with propane. We started back ot to the garage. Right about that time the mushroom kicked on and ignited. It blew my 300lb. uncle back about 6ft. through the door. A huge ball of fire followed him in. It blew the overhead door onto my moms car which she had just pulled into the driveway with. The only thing that kept the walls from collapsing outward were the heavy duty 2x4 shelves we had our tools on. No one was hurt. Nothing got burnt! We got a new door and with a coat of paint, no one ever would know. In our new garage, we don't use propane any more. Wonder why?

 

Don't I remember a story about you forgetting to tie a bomb down and it fell on the ground.

 

Ignition on a '50s Buick is like a golf cart: turn the dash switch to "run" then step on the gas. I was doing electric work on the car and had it on "run" but didn't start the car. The coil charges in the "run" position. It was charging for probably 20 minutes before I grabbed it and burned the palm of my hand so bad I couldn't drive home from the shop. 3am I had to call my wife to drive 25 minutes each way to pick me up.

A friend owns a body shop, and sold a just-finished Shelby GT500. Car was PERFECT. Except for the fuel sending unit. He wanted to be a good guy for the new owner and change it out before the guy took delivery. On the lift, he spilled some gas out of the tank. Like he'd done a million times, he walked over to the electric power washer to wash the gas out the back bay door of the shop. As soon as he flipped the switch, the gas fumes ignited from the electric motor switching on, and it flashed the shop. The flame ran up into the Mustang's gas tank and ignited. The top of the gas tank is the trunk floor: The explosion blew the deck lid off, and shot a rocket of fire forward through the interior, blew out the windshield and caught the car on fire from bumper to bumper, as well as the ceiling of his shop. Car was totaled, as were several others in the shop.

Buffing parts is dangerous:
Another friend polishes stainless steel for a living. He's been nailed twice by the buffing wheels ripping parts out of his hands. First time it flung the part into his forehead, cracking the face shield. The piece bounced off his head and back into the spinning wheel, flew out and hit him in the chest knocking the wind out of him. Went BACK into the wheel, came out and whacked him in the knee. All in the blink of an eye.
The second time he got hit was in the head, through a really heavy supplied-air hood/face shield. He now wears a hard hat.
A guy at work had a headlight trim ring get ripped out of his hand this weekend, and split his forehead.
He was terribly lucky, as he was grasping the ring with his fingers wrapped around the trim ring, rather than holding just the sides. The sharp metal edge of the trim ring coule have peeled his fingers off to the bone or off all together as the buffing wheel ripped the ring out of his hand.

I was using a wire wheel on a bench grinder when I felt a piece of wire hit my leg. I kept getting pricked, and thought the wire was stuck in my jeans. Felt it and thought maybe it went through the jeans and was stuck between my skin and the denim. Dropped em, and saw the very small piece of wire on my leg. Went to flick it off my leg, and it didn't move but sure felt odd. Grabbed it, and pulled a two-inch piece of wire out of my leg.

Oh, that Buick ignition system? If the ignition is in the "Run" position, you can start the car by grabbing the throttle linkage and moving it forward. And when you do that with the car in gear, you'll park a Buick on your foot!

-Brad

 

in no particular order.

i'm trying to get the front clip welded on a guys asphalt race car & it's the end of a looong day. i'm crouched down & welding & welding & my buddy taps me on the shoulder & says y'ole lady's on the phone. shit. well i set the gun down, flung both my gloves to the ground & started to stand up grabbing a tube i just welded. my fukkin hand smoked!!

when i was about 19 or 20 i was building a tube frame off road buggy & was GOING to learn to stick weld upside down. a big drop af slag fell on the front of my tennis shoe & burned SOOO fukkin deep into the top of my foot i hadda get it out with some needlenoses. fuck stickweldin upside down.


now i been around racecars & racers all my life. you'd think they're pretty smart. listen to this.

i also worked in an engine buildin shop. a lot of record holders in div 4 had stuff done there. 1 guy(who will remain nameless) came in one day & while shootin the shit showed us a smashed thumbnail. said it was poundin & about to blow up. he'd heard about usin a real small drill bit to get through the nail & pop the bloodblister under there. he asked if he could use one.
sure & pointed to the gas porting drill press( it hadda little bitty bit in there)
so about 2 minutes later he's screamin FUCK. AWWW SHIT AWWW FUCK TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFFF!!!!!!
this dumbass decided that rather that take the bit out & twirl it by hand.... you guessed it. well all went fine as the press was turnin REAL slow & he was just barely drilling on the nail. as soon as it got to meat it hooked & ran his thumb UP THE BIT. now THAT hadda hurt.

a guy i know was just standin there shakin a paint can. boooooshhhhsssss. he got a BUNCH of $$$ for that. it was a brand new can.


about 20 yrs ago 4 of us were thrashin to get a race car ready.
i was standin in the engine bay workin on wiring & pumbin.
there were 2 guys underneath. i heard 1 guy say "hold this while i kick it"
about 4 seconds later i heard thud.... lotsa screamin & 2 broken fingers.

i could tell a hunnert more, mostly about my dumbass but i won't.

 

Here are a couple that we can all learn from.
My dad tells me a story that he witnessed in high school shop class.Instructor tightening battery terminals with a wrench.Said wrench makes contact with wedding ring whilst touching both the positive and negative terminal.Aforementioned shop teacher loses finger from nuckle up.

I have ran a drill bit through my thumb.Hurt like a bitch and still have marred finger print.

Wise man says to forget about using the Ringers or Mechanix Wear gloves when welding or handling hot material.Turns out these gloves are made of NYLON but sure pass for leather.I have a nice scar as a result of using those.

Using a standard air grinder with a 6" disc once,the disc caught an edge and exploded,hitting me square in the neck.Hurt alot,but scared me even more.No permanant damage.

Lat story I'll tell involves grinding...while wearing goggles AND a face mask.Yup,you guessed it,hot metal imbedded in my eye.I have no idea how that happened,but after 2 ER trips with metal in my eye,the sound of an 8 rpm drill going into your eyeball is not something I'd like to experience again.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Though he was bein' cool... found out he was a dumbass!

 

Crow, that was the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Great job describing the whole event! That's like something you'd see in a Chevy Chase movie.

YESTERDAY: I was starting to make one of my sister's Christmas presents. I cut a boomerang shape out of scrap wood I got from work. The boomerang is for the base of a metal sculpture I am making for her.

Once I cut the shape out, I needed to sand the rough edges. I got out my DA sander so I can clean it up. Throttled it up so I can uniformly sand the outside edges. I wasn't comfortable the way is was I was holding sander in one hand and the wood in the other. As let off of the trigger to retool...

The 40 grit disc flew off and sliced me RIGHT IN THE FACE!!! It hit my chin and I grabbed my soul patch "porn strip," KOOL, no blood. Touch the left side of my chin and my hand fills with blood.

I kut DEEP! I went to the E.R. In triage the nurse asked my, "Was the sandpaper blue?" Yep. I say. "Well we'll send you on back, it needs to be irrigated."

The doc spent 30 minutes DIGGING Norton sandpaper out of my wound. I guess at high RPMs like that, that stuff embeds itself. The numbing juice worked until he had to go searching for the last bits.

I got about 14 stitches, 6 or 7 inside and 7 outside.

I told the doc I was thinkin about the "sooper glue" remedy. He told me they don't make glue that would have fixed this.

As I left the hospital, one of the E.R. techs reminded me, "Let's keep the sandpaper where it belongs."

I count my blessings, it could have sliced my Jug or kut my nose off. I'll settle with my battle wound and just thankful I'm alive.

YES, I was wearing safety glasses (always do), ear muffs (always do), and metaltarsal guarded steel toe boots (always do). Just goes to show you, anything can happen at ANYTIME!!!

Be safe, think about it.

Take care,
Reverend Jake

 

my dad has been married to my mom for 37 years. he won't wear his wedding ring. enough bad ring stories have scarred him. he gets all old man cranky if i wear jewelry because he knows what i do and he knows its dangerous.

a little common sense goes a long way. wear the right clothes and dont wear jewelry. take your time and work safe. my dad has worked in exxon mobil saftey for 25 years and we have tons of saftey reminders at our house and i still forget. the stories he tells are just as horrible as the shit i posted last time.

Just last week i had 2nd degree burns from tacking shit together. sunburn on your eyelids is no fun. when it hurts to close your eyes sleep is hard.

 

I've told this before, but it fits here..

Walking through the shop with my trusty new Snap on test light, the one with the cool neon orange springy coiled cord.

the cord is in hand, the test light part is dangling. I feel tension on cord, turn around and it lets loose, hitting me square in the eye.

It comes right out on its own, instinctively I put my arm to my eye. Take it away, and all the jelly looking stuff is on my sleeve. And all I can see out of that eye is a weird red/orange hue.
I ask my buddy if theres a hole in my eye, and yes there was.

Of course my boss had no workers comp insurance.

I was able to go to a optometry training school and they fixed it for free. It was free because of the severity of the injury, and the experience it gave them.
The usual eye pokes they got were ladies that shoved mascara brushes through the eye when they have an accident driving. Those werent fixable.
They fixed it and it works fine.
my left eye looks like a cat eye though as the pupil is oval instead of round.

A guy was prying on a snap ring with a screwdriver and put it through his hand..

Another went after a piece of rubber that was falling into the tire while setting the bead. The bead was faster than him, he had 2 fingers stuck in there for about 10 minutes. they ended up getting amputated.

Then theres the guy that tried to stuff one last piece of cardboard into the cardboard box compressor-baler... while it was compacting. It caught his shirt, and pulled both arms into it, and tore them off. We found him quivering on the floor....he didnt make it.

 

I can't remember how many stupid things I have done to hurt myself over the years. I still don't wear safety goggles, Guess I am still a dumbass.

Anyway, we just finished putting a head gasket on a 735i BMW that we picked upfrom the wholesale pool. I was giving it a once over after a test drive and noticed the top radiator hose was bubbling a bit at the radiator connection. So, I barely touch it and BAM, the pressure broke off the tube and blew up in my face, neck and all over my arm. I wear glasses or I would have had burns in my eyes. I also had mechanics gloves on, so my hands were okay. However, my arm started bubbling right away. It didn't hurt for about 30 seconds but then it was the most aweful pain I have ever felt in my life. Not joking, I thought I was going to die it hurt so bad. I couldn't talk, couldn't move, it hurt so damn bad. I almost passed out numerous times. Any of you that have been burned badly know what I am talking about. I would have rather taken the pain of cutting my arm off over this. I was COMPLETELY out of commission for at least a week, couldn't take ice off my arm or it hurt so bad I would cry. Took a couple months for it to fully heal. Thank god when it happened I was only a few blocks away from a friend that sells medical equipment. He hooked me up with a top of the line cold pump thingy to put over my wound. He had one with him also..cost me nothing but a few beers and he wrote off the couple hunderd bucks as a demo model. I bought stock in the company that sells it it helped me so well.
It was bad enough that I should have gone to the burn unit, but dumb ass me, I didn't want to pay the bill. The hair burnt right off my arm and everything, but I can't believe that I barely have a scar. However, it took months to heal. Luckily, my beard saved my face from major burn, just felt like sunburn on my face for a week or two.
I never thought antifreeze was that big a deal before....do now!

 

Someone told me antifreeze soaks into your skin and continues to cook you as it penetrates.
I had this girl in my apartment building years ago come to me saying her car was overheating.
We go downstairs to the car, and before I can say anything, she pulls off the radiator cap. nothing in there she says as she is looking in the hole.
Seconds later the boiling froth douses her face, arms and upper torso. She's screaming her brains out. we haul her into an apartment and put her in the shower. Skin was peeling off and falling off. The ambulance came and took her away.
It took a few months to heal, but she didnt have too many scars.

 

I grew up in a redneck little town and loved it. We had a big dangerous motorcycle "club", a tiny little food market in the center of the town's one main street where everyone hung out at night. On one side of the market was a paint shop and on the other side was a body shop. No love lost between em either. People just kind of hung out till early hours in the morning tellin lies and trying stupid things.

Ever wonder how fast your truck needs to go to pull a pay phone out the ground?

Anyway, the paint shop was awesome and they were all crazy (still are). They custom painted a motorcycle for a guy and he didn't come pick it up till nearly 9 at night with his El Camino. Everybody got to bullshitting while putting the ramp on the back of the Elky to load the bike. It quickly turned into a conversation about how much speed it would take to use that ramp to jump the rest of the El Camino right there on Main St. Fortunately, the owner was just dumb enought to try it. He did at least have a helmet (to preserve that Nobel Prize winning brain). He lined up on the bike, gave it the gas and aimed for the ramp. The front tire grabbed the ramp and pulled it right off the tailgate and the bike hit the tailgate at around 40MPH I'd guess. The owner went through the back window of the Elky (not very cleanly either) and merged with the dash until the Fire Department came.

This is the same shop where they learned if you fire a pistol directly at a shop fridge, the bullet can and will come back and take off a testicle.

I also learned at that shop that when a Ford Galaxy coil spring comes off of the spring compressor it can actually go through the ceiling even if it's 15 feet away. I can see how people get killed that way.

My current gig can be nasty too. Master Switch on or running Airplane prop accidents usually don't make for funny stories though.

 

when I was in high school shop.......boy was chucking a bit in the drill press.....with the chuck key still in the chuck and his hand, a girl comes by and turns it on.....

had to have it sewn back on...

I was using the table saw at work one day, making a dangerous cut for a student. I didn't want him to make the cut. Anyway, I found out what kick-back REALLY was and why there were holes in my shop door from the shop teachers of the past. The board hit me right above my manlyhood. I dropped to my knees in pain and the kids just stood there staring at me. I was blue and yellow for about three months. The corner of the board caught me but didn't break skin.....this was my first year there........a few weeks later we had the Biesmeyer Splitter and the Brett Guard systems... When I tell the boys that I about lost my manhood and I was glad I already had kids, they stop and really think!

When going over the band saw, I tell them to take a peak through the window at Kroger the next time they're in the meat dept. Our saw is basically the same one they use to cut through large diameter frozen meat and bone. Then I quickly "slip" a pc of wood into the blade. When I pull it out, it has usually cut about an 1" into the wood with no effort.....makes 'em think!

 

unclescooby - Great Story......

 

i was using the old hot wrench on the rear frame rails of my pick up to cut some of the unnessesary bulk left from the frame splice. i went to pry on a section i just cut and the bar slipped and i fell in the frame where i was cutting. left a nice burn mark across the crotch of my dickies ... left me pretty warm too.

another time i was using a grinder with a flap wheel and one off the pieces of fiber glass from the backing of the wheel lodged itself under the nail on my left index finger... ripped the nail completely off and i didnt even feel it. i had no idea until i noticed there was blood all over the place.

 

ha? Can you explain what happened?

 

the exact thing happened about two weeks ago in our shop. we have a student management program there ans the teacher asked one of the managers to run a cutting board through the table saw. the saw was set up for datos so he changed the blade but didnt re install the splitter. well about half way through the blade catches and ripped the cutting board out of the kids hands and shot it back 20ft into the readial arm saw and put a nice dent in the 1/4" steel that the table it was on was made out of. you could tell by the markings on the wood that it was going as fast as the saw when it left... luckly nobody was hurt. scared the shit out of that kid though

 

i was talking to the local chassis guy here and he told me about this guy that dropped off his street bike to have something welded. when he picked it up he helped the guy load it in the truck he hears the guy say "oh shit" looks in the bed of the truck and 3 of the guys fingers were laying there the disk brake had cut them off. the guy calmly asks for a rag and asks if he could pick the bike up later. he drove himself to the er and had the re attached and picked the bike up a couple days later.


another one was the chassis guy was moving an engine block and dropped it on his hand and it cut off two of his fingers and they rolled away. he picked one of them up and just as he went for the other one his dog ate it.

 

Nothing too crazy or insane here, but heres a few of mine, while at auto shop another student comes up and says "I've cut my finger can you get a sticking plaster for me" takes away the rag he had been holding on the cut and here is his finger half cut off - told him i think you need more than a sticking plaster! ended up with 10 stiches in the base of his finger.

Working under a car on a hoist, hung a 22mm open end spanner on a suspension nut then proceded to hit it with a hammer using both hands to try and loosen it, the spanner came back at me an hit me right on the bone above my eye, eneded up with a black eye for 2 weeks!-first black eye in my life at 32yrs.

Working in the engine bay of a car put my hand down in a tight gap to undo an alternator bolt, got my hand stuck and had no tools within reach to free myself had to wait about ten minutes for someone to come along and get me some tools to remove some parts from the engine to get my hand out -of course only after taking a photo and informing 1/2 dozen others of my embarrasing situation.

As a kid watched my dad put his metal watch strap across the solinoid, he lept around the garage trying to free the clip of the hot watch strap that had proceeded to weld its links togeter and burn his wrist! I am a mechanic now and never wear any watches rings etc, ever!

Being a mechanic I have poked heaps of screwdrivers etc into my hands, scraped bashed and cut my fingers numerous times but the most stupid one was jumping out of my T Bucket catching my hand on my toolbox latch and putting a cut less than 1/2 inch long in my hand, it went pretty deep so I thought I'd better go to the doc and get it checked out, he put ONE stitch in it bandaged my arm from finegtips to almost my elbow and said "Don't move it for a week or your middle finger will end up with a permanent droop" -a week off work for a 1/2inch cut with one stitch!!!!!!

Oh and the most painful-ever caught your nipple between the handles of a set of pliers you were squeezing very hard?-F#*Kn painful!

 

I feel nauseous.