o/t Hand grinder horror stories, who's got one?

I ripped half my fuckin clothes off using a little wire brush on the end of a drill!Then my shirt was bashing me in the head for the next 5 minutes.I didnt think to let go of the trigger.I got relegated to "strictly pinstriping duties" in Slags shop which worked out good because he rebuilt my whole fuckin car!He told me it was a miracle I didnt blind myself with a MACK 00

 

all i have right now is from some grinding i was doing last week. it was a rather large bolt i was cutting down. clamped it in a vice and the blade grabbed on the pneumatic die grinder blade, twisting the guard away from me. hot metal up the nose and down the shirt, i couldn't tell if the singed flesh and burnt hair i smelled was in the nose or from my chest...i'm kinda furry btw, those hot sparks up the nose WILL bring a tear or two to your eyes.

 

I ran the grinder into my knee one time. I superglued the skin together and put bandages over it and kept working. After the glue set up I figgured out that was a mistake cuz I couldn't bend my leg. I walked around like I do when I get a big hard on until I got the superglue off. Grinders can be dangerous but so can alot of tools. Hell walking in the midwest can be dangerous with all the ice but what do you do? Do it anyway.

 

OT, but I shot myself in the lower leg with a .22 target pistol about a week ago.....took four stiches to close it........luckily the slug hit bone and stopped....it was a target load too, that helped.......hurt like a motherfucker though.

 

i'm not sure i'd be admitting that one rugblaster...

 

Had an ambulance run to a body shop. Co-workers said the man on the ground next to the vehicle was electricuted. He was laying face down next to the body grinder and the circuit had been tripped. Upon further inspection, the man had leaned over to grind a lower body panel. His LONG hair got caught in the grinder, and pulled his head into it, knocking him out cold, tripping the breaker and taking a chunk of hair out of his scalp. He did survive though.

 

Thank God my story is a mild one compared to some of you guys. I was using a grinder with a broken switch so you had to unplug it to turn it off. Well...I was setting it down to unplug it and my right thumb did an excellent job of slowing the wheel down. Result, a nice v-channel down my thumb. Makes for an interesting thumb print now.

 

I've been pretty lucky with grinders, but one time while using a wire wheel one of the wires shot through my pants and into my left nutsack. It didn't hurt too badly.

 

I think I've been pretty good with wearing safety glasses, but I am hell on my hands. It seems I'm cutting them on rusty metal (yes, my shots are up to date ) or doing the cutoff wheel/grinder trick. And let's not talk about nail guns and 16 penny nails....

 

In 2002 I was the new guy at a large industrial construction metal company.....bla bla - I sat & welded aluminum all day.... one younger long time employee is a dick.....I see him cutting aluminum with R/A hand grinder & cut off wheel.....I says......Dude .... I've seen them explode before cause of the heat build up when used on aluminum....young dude says "never happen - I've been doing this for yearsssssss"........after lunch I see Stacy running toward formans office - trail of blood........I have to ask......what happened??

Reply from helper was cut off wheel let go.....hit him in face, head & hand - opening up all three spots........

What did I know.......

Paco

 

Several years ago I guy in the shop I was at had a 7" grinding wheel slip and cut across his wrist, cut through all the nerves and artery, blood spraying evrywhere. If my brother and I wouldnt have been there (it was on a Sunday afternooon)he would have bleed to death. The way it was we got a compress on it and luckily got him the couple miles to the hospital, just as he went into shock. He went thru a lot of terribly painful surgeries and rehab, and ended up losing a lot of the strength in his arm. But like I said he was lucky to be alive.

 

I run two grinding discs, back to back on my hand grinder. 40 grit of finger grinding pain when it's not respected.

 

Is the slug still in there or did they take it out?

 

havent had any incidents with a handheld grinder yet but a wire wheel on a bench grinder will take your skin off in a hurry now i use pliers to hold the bolts im cleaning

 

one of my buddies was using my 4 1/2" grinder, and it snaged his shirt not once, but twice my friends, 2 times in about 3 or 4 minutes after that i took it away from him..he was lucky he had 2 shirts on and that drastically slowed the thing down before it got to his skin.....i now have both his shirts hanging it the shop to remind everyone what cant happen

 

I seem to have bad luck with die grinders. Had a cartridge roll blow apart when I was polishing exhaust ports on a head one time. A tiny chunk of steel somehow made it past my safety goggles and into my right eye. Went to the eye doctor, the next day and he pulled it out. After he got the piece of metal out there was a ring of rust left behind. He said he would need to remove that too, but I'd have to wait until it heals from the metal chunk. He sends me home with an eye-patch and says come back in a week. So, the next week I go back and what does he do to remove it? Why, he pulls out what looks to me like a fancy stainless stell Dremel tool with a tiny burr on the end of it and proceeds grind the surface of my eyeball with it!!!! OMF'NG that was freaky...the sound and the flashes of colors were a trip.

Second die grinder incedent-I was porting an aluminum BSA motorcycle head, and was holding it between my knees. The cutter I was using apparently shed off a tooth, and unknown to me it stuck in my leg. Several months pass by, and I have this little brownish-red spot (looked like a mole) on my leg (high up)that bleeds and hurts when I touch it. I go to the doc thinking it's a mole, and he looks at it and says, "You've got some kind of foreign body stuck in your leg. We'll have to excise it." He sends in this cute little med student to cut it out. She is a little freaked out when I tell her I don't need one of the goofy gowns she wants me to put on 'cuz I don't have to take off my drawers to show her where the spot is. Then she stabs me (extra hard...don't think she liked me much) with the novocaine and cuts it out. The doc comes back and shows me the piece of metal, and it's THEN that I figure out that I got it several months before.

I also am apt to stick my fingers into the wire wheel on my bench grinder at least one time out of every three times I use it.

 

Not a grinder persay but I have had to go to the eye doctor more than once to have something removed. When they use the drill in your eye to remove slag; it is not a good feeling.

 

Was working at a large stainless shop a few years back and was cutting a 4x4 stainless leg off of something at a weird angle. the 4 1/2 cutoff got twisted and jumped out of my hands ran up my arm and across my chest. the grinder was off and on the floor before i even knew what happened. It looked preety narly but everything ended up beign ok. Alot of blood but no stiches...real lucky. I knew i was bleeding on my arm but quickly realized it wasn't terrible, so i did an overall body check to make sure everything else was still there.
Still freaks me out thinking about it...

 

i know how you feel onlt i was using a 9 in cut off wheel 7 inches long 2 inches deep inner thigh .. huge ass scare too

 

had a cuting disk fly apart smack me in the leg didnt break skin tho thanks to thick jeans i think

 

I got a big pink scar area on my right leg about 2" from my sack where a wire brush in an angle grinder caught an edge and kicked and caught my jeans. It took a big chunk of meat out and finally bound up in the jeans. I had to hold it still with one hand while I janked the cord out of the socket with the other. That was from 3 months ago.

Shitty thing was about 5 guys were watching when I did it. I was being careful and standing opposite of where it would jump to if it caught and everything but got lazy and bam!

Be careful out there with those things, they will bite.

 

Thanks guys im sared to work on my cars now haha. Man Im going to be extra safe now and to think that one of my grinders safty plate broke off but I still used it. Not a good idea im getting!

 

Keep an eye on your grinder especially right after you shut it off and set it down. One friend and I were building a trailer. He set down the grinder and turned away. It tipped over and before his hand was out of the way, it spun around and caught his finger between the guard and wheel.
It tore the shit out of it.

Another friend was cleaning a part on a big bench mounted wire wheel. He was half-cocked, and the wheel grabbed the part and took in his thumb. It stripped all the skin/nail, etc off of the end digit.
They had to sew his hand to his chest, with the thumb end stuck in the hole, so skin would grow on it.
He was doing the pledge of allegiance for a month or so.
When it was all done, his thumb, since it now had chest skin on it, grew hair out of the end....

 

Never damaged myself with a grinder, I have other ways to inflict damage on myself. So far its been effective.
One of my mates left school and became a welder for Tyman building truck trailers. He was inside a tanker grinding out a weld to re do. The tanks are mounted on a big rotisserie so you can always work at a comfortable level. Someone pushed the button to roll the tank with my mate in it, he fell forward onto the grinder (It was slippery he said from the die they use to inspect the welds) the disk exploded and took his right knee cap clean out of his knee.

 

Got a nice gouge in my left thumb from an hand grinder a couple months ago. Worst pain was sitting in the Dr office with a beautiful Sunday afternoon pissing away.........

I guess thats why they call it a hand grinder

 

Couple years earlier, my wife and I were doing the camshaft break in deal on the 74 Nova. A razor blade I had left on the fan shroud fell off and hit the fan. Went in my right arm longways and ruined the new upper radiator hose.

First thing I did was thank God for being lucky - that coulda hit my eyes!

 

I was working on grinding down the welds on my 34 ford frame for the truck, when the disc explodes and puts a deep cut about a 1/2 cm long in my ring finger. I was alone and thats a bad thing, it don't heart that bad so i quickly wrap it tight, I have felt some pain in my life but the feeling of water hitting an open cut by nerves is something else. I almost fainted. I luckily did not have any noticeable damage. I can still feel at times that it happened, but nothing too bad.

None of this would have happened if I would have been where gloves. So always where gloves. From now on if it involves a spinning wheel (que music) I where gloves. Its amazing how quick bad things can happen.

 

One of the guys at work was grinding rivets to remove a spring hanger off a school bus chassis. He was using an air grinder, good for about 12,500 rpms, with a disc rated for 3000 rpms. The disc exploded, went through his uniform shirt and t-shirt, stuck in his gut.
Ya gotta be careful of rpm capabilities of the abrasive you work with.

 

I've posted this before but it really fits here. I was at the garage early cutting a piece off my 65 Corvair. I wanted to make sure the part was in the dumpster before my friend I share the garage with got there. I was not watching what I was doing and managed to run the cutoff wheel across my wrist.....shit did that thing bleed. So there I was, alone, applying pressure to stop the bleeding. I decided to drive to the hospital....wrong...5 speed Miata..had to call the wife to take me to the hospital. Just as we were leaving my friend shows up and the mess scares hit to death. I leave and he goes in to work on the 51. After a shitload of stitches ( and a bunch of " are you depressed...were you trying to commit suicide"questions) I go back to the garage to clean up my mess. I walk in to find that my friend had been welding on the inside of the firewall, on the outside he covered the motor with a moving blanket ( you can see this coming ...right? ) and set the blanket on fire and melted a brand new Accel billet distributor. I couldn't resist this picture for the build album.....and it hurt like a bitch!

 

I had a piece of my backing disc on my 5" grinder decide to let go at the speed of light! here's the result... OUCH!