Crazy/Insane Shop Accidents

About 12 years ago, I was still employed as a modification tech at a forklift manufacturer. One day, I was under a truck rerouting a line when suddenly there was nothing to breathe but gas fumes. After getting up above the fumes, coughing the shit out and looking for the cause, I see the guy in the stalls next to mine draining the fuel tank in a truck he's converting to LPG. He did not check the fuel level first to see if he needed to pump it out first. There he was, sitting with his legs out triing to put the plug back in with his hand in an overflowing pan of gas fumbling for the plug..... with a lit cigarette in his mouth!!! There was no escaping this shit so I run over to him, pull the cig out of his face, crush it out in the palm of my hand, poured his steaming hot coffee through my fingers to make sure it was out and then grabbed a plug off the bench a solved the problem. You all know there were no good words about him or his mom's decision feed and care for his stupid ass. When all was done, he said he had it under control but was concerned the cigarette might be... an issue.
Not really an accident, but too close to a stupid death for my taste.

 

There was a guy that worked at the same shop as myself.. he took it upon himself to mig weld in the paint booth.. ended up setting the booth floor filters on fire.. it ignited the over spray in the pit and up the stack..

A good example of a IDOT..

 

I was grinding away one day on some welding I had done on a frame. All hunched over with the sparks flying right at my t-shirt. About 5 minutes later the painter walked into the room and his eyes got real bid when he looked at me. It was about that time I realized it was getting mighty hot and my face shield seemed to be filling with smoke... Not much left of the front of that t-shirt.

 

A friend of mine stops working anytime anyone comes into his shop now... reason? One time he was working on a car and a friend came in and was watching. An air hose blew right at the end chuck and whipped the still attached chuck around so hard it hit and broke his friends leg! The "friend" sued him and won a big settlement, so now he stops/won't talk much and turns everything off.

 

worst ive heard of is guys sawing their fingers off

 

-Lets see:I had a cheap hammer chip while striking a dolly,the metal is still lodged in my chest.
-My partner went to pull in a customers 50 Merc and proceded to have the nose taken off by a passing car.
-My partner changed the front brake pads on a car then had his uncle pull it out, He put it in gear and then stepped on the brake pedal once and then went for a ride through the shop,hitting a pole,the mig welder,bondo cart then the rear of a 1935 Nash roadster that we were repainting pushing it into the shop fridge,then turned left and caved in the drivers side quarter panel of a Chevy Astro van that was in to have the roof repainted,That was a fun day!!!
-Fixed my step daughters Hyundai,took it for a test ride,the hood opened on the parkway,a nice dent in the roof broken windshield and a new hood.
-Brought my 1961 Impala 2 door bubble top rust free show car to the shop to change the oil.About two hours later A Schneiders Trucking 18 wheeler makes the turn and catches the quarter panel with the trailer tire and then draggs it about 200 feet where the right front wheel catches the curb and the car makes a right turn through a chain link fence.I had to sawzall two fence posts from under the car so it could be moved.Oh the fond memories of having my own business.
I am sure there are more but the years of paint fumes are messing with my memory.Tom

 

Oh yea another one We were doing a little work on the door jambs of a 1950 Ford for a customer,my worker proceded to light the interior on fire then use a chemical extinguisher to put it out.The car was suede primer which we had to respray and the dash needed to be repainted and some other stuff........I feel like I am in therapy like a load is taken off my chest.........Na it still pisses me off.

 

I think we may have all caught ourselves on fire a time or three...

My best one was when I was 17...was trying to break a very stubborn bolt off somethin....small ratchet didnt work....so, natural progression, got the bigger one
That didnt work so I got the breaker bar....there's a reason they are named that...

Bolt broke loose, and the breaker bar promptly hit me square between the eyes....knocked me out cold....Next thing I remember is my pops over me laughing with one of those ammonia inhalents (vile things)...

First words outa his mouth....welp, you broke the bolt loose....now I gotta take ya to the clinic to make sure your noggin aint broke....

He always told me "Boy, if your gonna be stupid, you better be tough"

He's right...I'm pretty tough...

 

As I drove up to the Firestone repair shop, a pickup backed out of a stall and across the lot at an angle and hit the sign out front with no one in it!
The mechanic had used a remote starter button to start it after a tuneup and it was a stickshift...that had been left in gear.

I have seen several batteries that exploded. I dont know how they do that.

I've smashed my thumb with a hammer so many times that the Xray the other day revealed no bone, just spinters

The same Xray shows a chunk of metal in my hand between the thumb and first finger.
I don't know when or how it got there

 

gotta few...Started a new job at a bodyshop a couple months ago...first day the boss releases the frame machine to let the truck down...that just happened to be in neutral, went right thru the garage door, brand new ford. Next one..when i had my shop i used to do plugs for a large highend RV company and was buffing the plugs one day somehow managed to catch my cord...it coiled and cracked my in the balls at 1800 rpm, i was done buffing that day. Third one is scary and semi funny. Me and some buddies were getting fairly intoxicated one nite at the shop and one found a box of 22 rounds and decided it would be awesome to set em off in the vice...great idea. Long story short, one grazed his head and cut fairly deep when it went off. He decided it wasnt a great idea. Went home to have his nurse wife doctor him up.

 

When I was 16 I was working on a 74 chevy I sliped and slit my wrist. It didn't hurt but when my mom took a look and my wrist did the squirt blood thing I was on my way to the doc.
Three teachers called my home to talk about my wrist...

Watched a girl get her arm sucked into a belt sander… That was nasty.

 

There was this loud "bang" followed by a sickly kinda crunching noise like plastic being crushed..........

 

all of these happened in the same dealership...

brake and front end guy LOVED to tear it up at night with the receptionist...
always looked like he hadn't slept. at that time we had an in-ground alignment pit. wasn't paying too much attention and ran a camaro off the end of the rack. you guessed it. into the pit.

same guy...
lowered a new IROC down (center post hoist) with the door open. door caught a screw jack and pushed the car off the hoist and on to its side in short order.

he musta had embarrassing pics of the service manager. he kept his job.

the BIGGIE that ended the dealership part and parcel....

Some retard had installed a big speaker box and sound system in the 'trunk' of another camaro with 10 foot long sheet metal screws. the screws punctured the gas tank. overnight, a spark from the battery charger on the car ignited the fumes and burned the shop once and for all.

 

I put my bosses new f-350 on an old ass two post lift to change the tires. Halfway through the lift made this terrible noise the front of the truck starts to lean to the right. I grab it to try to balance it out the right post finishes letting go and luckily there was a half wall on that right so I was only kind of pinned between the lift arm and the wall.

 

Not a shop accident but I was caught in a conveyor belt on a mine site.

 

I like to save these stories for our job site tailgate meetings. They seem to make a better impression on the crew as they can better relate...

I've had so much safety training drummed into me I don't even lean the house broom against the wall...it might fall over and start a chain reaction.

I've learned a lot about safety being the tank lining business for 35 years but there was a time when I WAS young. My brother likes to say "To soon young to late smart"

Worked in a structural steel fab shop after high school and we had "beam bars" that we used to flip the I-Beams over on the saw horses. The one I was using had been used to the point that it wouldn't grab the flanges and kept slipping off. I figured I knew how to fix it and took it into the tool room and chucked it in the vise and started grinding (9" Milwaukee grinder) on the slot that fits over the flange on the beam.... Slot's about 4 inches deep and about 3/4 of an inch wide... Gotta stick the grinding wheel way into the slot to clean it up... BAMB... Grinder kicks out of the slot and hits me square in the chest... By the time I know what's going on my shirts (long sleeve and t-shirt) are wrapped up in the grinding disk till it's stopped spinning and I've got a cut that runs from my belly button to my left tit and I can't turn loose of the trigger cuz my right hand is wrapped up in the shirt with the grinder... I can't turn loose of the grinder with my left for fear of it eating me alive. So I just start walking out of the tool room until it unplugs itself. They had to cut the rest of my shirts off me to get me untangled from the grinder... Still pack the scar 40 years later.

The accident that changed my ways was 30 years ago... My brother and I had just started our own company repairing most of the fiberglass tomato tubs in California. I had a new guy sandblasting some areas in a tub that needed repair work and he was all thumbs...had no clue what he was doing...I'll show him...I get in the tub with nothing more than a tee shirt and canvas hood on and start blasting the area...see dumb ass like this...he nods like he gets it and I step back... trip over the center cross brace in the tub and reach across to grab the side of the tub with my left hand because I've got a death grip on the blast hose and the "dead man" with my right hand...as my left hand passes in front of the blast nozzle I become a human balloon... Yep.. Human Balloon... 185 CFM compressor and I've injected myself with sand and air.... My left arm looked just like Popeye's... My left tit was a DD... Doc's at the ER had never seen anything like it... When they squeezed my arm it farted through the 1 inch hole in my wrist.

I now eat, sleep, drink, talk, walk and ooze safety.

Al

 

You are lucky you didn't die. Air injection kills. Just ask the dumb prick who thought it was funny to aim an air duster at a work mates arse when bent over. Dead within minutes.

 

Don't try and lift a 3 ton car($$$$$$$$ ) with two ton lift.

 

i was changing out an alternator in my brother in laws focus. to do this you have to loosen the passenger side motor mounts and lower the motor to get the alternator out.
i fumblefukked around with the damn thing before i figured this out. so, we put a spare tire style scissor jack under the pan and loosen the bolts.
brother in law goes to lunch, i start messin with alternator, jack slides out from under pan, motor falls and wedges both of my hands against inner fender.

it took him 2 hours to get lunch, i didnt get much done while he was gone!

 

Bought a 34 Chev sedan out of an old bloke's yard in 1964. There's a pic of it in the Aussie rod history thread, but when I bought it it was a 100% complete car. Old bloke had a bad limp, and told me he'd been working on the car when it fell on him and crushed his legs. When I went to get the car out of his yard, it was leaning badly to the right. I had a look underneath and the right rear spring was on the ground, off the back axle completely.

He told me he thought he had a problem with the diff, so he'd shoved a few bricks under the right running board, and climbed under the car with a shifter to pull the diff out. he'd undone the shackle bolts and the whole right side of the car dropped on him, crushing his legs. The running board of course had just crumpled up over the bricks.

I jacked the car up with its original jack, climbed underneath and found all the shackle bolts still in place, the nuts and washers on the ground, and even the shifter still in the dirt under the car. I bolted everything up, got rid of the bricks, and she was right to go. there was nothing wrong with the diff either.

And the shifter's still in my tool box!

Cheers, Glen.

 

I worked in this machine shop, actually an excellent shop that did all sorts of insane precision work. We had a Bridgeport set up with this big home brewed flycutter. It used a 5/8" tool blank with a piece of carbide silver soldered onto it. It was used to primarily square up big blocks of aluminum for a job we were working on.

The flycutter was in a quick-change holder. One guy who was less than swift (he may have had Alzheimers going on at the time) wanted to use the machine but had no idea how to release the quick-change. He wound up turning the mill ON while holding the body of the flycutter. I was walking up to help him at the time too, he was very fortunate to have switched it on in reverse so it threw his hand back and out of the way.

I had to go outside and sit down for a while.

Bob

 

I heard a story from my grandfather who worked at Remke truck bodies in Roseville (Detroit) MI... a guy was working gas welding the an aluminum truck body and he somehow he didn't have the oxygen bottle secure, and it fell over knocking the brass valve off the top... each bay was separated by a cinder block wall, and it went through three before it stopped... I can't rememeber if the guy was killed or just hurt bad enough he never could come back to work.

 

All right here goes...
Blackhawk used to make a frame rack that was mounted in the floor. My college had one. Korec, I think its called. Big heavy angle iron. Pour cement into it so its flush with the floor.
It has a base that hooks into openings in gap between angle iron and you pound a wedge into a slot (sideways) in the base to lock the base down. The base has a cup the end of the ram has a ball. Anchor the car, hook up the chain, drape it over the top of the ram, hook the chain to the floor on the other side, hook hose to the putt putt and let 'er rip. At about 22 tons of pressure (run putt putt until it stops) The wedge came out... for another student, not me... flew at a magnificent speed across the shop and through (not into) through a concrete block wall about 30 - 40 feet away. Gratefull there were no human or vehicle causualties.

 

Hows this March 1993 when the snow "accidently" knocked down my shop!

 

I worked at an Autoparts store in the late 80s which was in between a body shop and an Auto Repair shop. The body shop just finished painting a conversion van that was in a front end wreck which needed some new front end parts. The body shop was too cheap to pay for a wrecker to haul the car over decided to use a floor jack under the front of the van and push it with thier lot truck. The parking lot at the Autoparts store had a few deep pot holes in it and the jack found it jamming the jack into the oilpan and the lot truck into the rear doors.

 

Reminds me of when a bit flew out of a rotating fly cutter (no guard) and hit the wall on the other side of the shop. Good thing no one was in its path.

 

When I was a parts guy at a Chevy/Poncho dealership in the mid 80's we had an old guy mechanic who just hired on that week and he was working on a car up on an electric lift. He was working under it and had just gone to his toolbox for something and I watched as the front legs of the lift kicked out and sent the ass end of the car through the ceiling. The nose of the car came down right where he was standing. He packed up his toolbox and left that day. They didn't fire him, he quit.

 

Holy shit-where to begin??
-Watching my big brother attempt to tune a carb with his face right over the venturis and whacking the throttle. You know what happened then...Face full 'o flames. He didn't have to shave for awhile.
-Karma. Watching my so-called friend talk shit on me while he's busting a well worn(steel chords showing)tire off the wheel on a newer tire machine. As he's running his mouth, the steel chords rubbed across his jeans right by his pecker. Poked a hole in his sac IIRC. That'll teach him.
-Of course the 4 1/2 inch grinder while wearing a loose fitting shirt-you know, the old windup.
-Squeeging the floor after a w.pump install. Exhaust bender right behind me with a piece of tubing in it(and the razor sharp edge from chop sawing it). Drawing back to give the floor a squeege and sliced my hand down to the muscle. The guy was constantly leaving those pipes in the bender even after being told not to.....time after time. At least I don't have hair growing on my palm after that skin graft.

Too many to list......I'll remember some more.
Jay

 

While working at a cabinet shop in my younger days, there were many dangerous tools. The shop was in an urban area with lots of sawdust and food scraps from messy workers. There were alot of mice, therefore the boss felt the need to keep a dozen or so cats which were always brought in as kittens.
One morning I was using a table saw to cut a bunch of pieces for an order. A kitten jumps from the machine next to mine right onto the saw blade. What a mess.
The boss takes the cat to the vet and must have spent a couple thousand bucks to keep the cat alive. That would have been about 8 weeks pay for me back then.

 

Two quick stories;
1. my Dad was the victim of the air hose up the butt practical joke. It didn't kill him but was damn near close. He never talked much about it other than saying the practical joker got fired (GM)
2. a friend of mine's Dad was an engineer at Ford in Dearborn. One of his jobs was to test engines of competitors on a dyno. They had an early 70's Olds motor on the dyno when something malfunctioned and the Olds just kept winding up. They cleared the building and eventually the Olds let go. Afterward they found pistons and connecting rods embedded in the concrete walls. I can't remember what the last recorded RPM was but my friend's Dad declared Olds as the strongest motors available at the time.