Dumbest thing

Worst one I recall was in a machine shop that was segmented into departments. One of the (new hire) denizens of the "Drill" department running a large railway drill (which was dangerous enough by itself) needed a tap with more taper. Not being able to satisfy himself with what the tool room could provide, he sauntered over to the "Turret Lathe" department (fortunately passing up a #5 Gisholt) and popped the tap into the chuck of a Warner and Swasey #3. Spinning the lathe up to speed he proceeded to "file" a more pleasing shape on the end of the tap.

All went as well as could be expected as 60 hard met 60 hard.... until the fateful flapping of his long sleeve cuff became tangled in the machinery. As cloth rent and his nose came closer and closer to the work, our mechanical genius reached over his head for the clutch lever with his free right hand.... only to have that dangly sleeve snatched up in the works, as well.

This nitwit actually stalled a turret lathe using his body and his clothes as tools!

About 8 weeks later, the doctor released him to come back to work and he still looked like he had impugned the sexual orientation of all of the patrons in a large biker bar. The stitches were out, but there were scars. Luckily there were no broken bones, but his neck still held the bruises of where his clothing had pulled him into the works. The weave of the cloth could still be seen on the back of his neck.

Predictably, after all of the pain and suffering endured, he was fired. They couldn't have kept him on.... he was as great a danger to the rest of us as he was to himself....

It's not too hard to figure out if a lady doesn't take them off during the nasty. Look inside the foot section. When the toes curl on the downstroke, you can see where her nails abraded the material. That's one serious method of contraception, though.

"Gene Kearns" wrote: (clip) This nitwit actually stalled a turret lathe using his body and his clothes as tools! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The man is lucky he wasn't killed or dismembered. I have a similar story, with less dramatic results. Someone was turning some round stock by feeding it through a collet, so the other end was sticking out into the aisle. One of the other employees, wearing a shop coat, came by and the end of the revolving barstock snagged his shoulder. It twisted his shop coat into sort of a "rope," and then his whole body started turning and flopping at the speed of the lathe until someone turned it off.

I learned my lesson the same way, about 55 years ago in my Jr. High school metalshop class.

Why the hell the shop instructor let us wear shop coats with long sleeves I'll never know. And maybe he warned us to roll up the sleeves around moving machinery, but it hadn't sunk in.

I was making a little "all metal" cross peen hammer and was smoothing the tapered part of the handle with a file while it was spinning in a lathe, driven by a lathe dog.

Predictably, the square head screw on the dog cought the left sleeve of my shop coat. It must have been weak cloth, or maybe the same guardian angel who kept me from killing myself in a car was on the job, 'cause the whole sleeve ripped off, and all I suffered was shock and embarrassment.

I completed making that little hammer and it is still hanging on my home shop wall. I can't look at it without remembering how lucky I was that day.

I've save a whole bunch of J.R. Williams' "Bull of The Woods" cartoons in digital form. One of them is very OT for this thread. Lookee here:

Have you seen the newest collection of "Bull of The Woods" at Lee Valley?

My gotcha was a fly cutter. I was wearing a nice Darby jacket, I had the forethought to pull back my sleeves but I had the jacket unzipped and as I reached up to kill the power on the Bridgeport, my jacket caught on the fly cutter and if I did not have my hand on the switch, I would have been in real serious trouble.

Let the record show that "Roger Shoaf" wrote back on Tue, 4 Oct 2005 22:05:35 -0700 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Dang.

All these stories of sleeves and clothing getting caught in the machinery leads me to the conclusion: machine naked!

Of course, there are still things which stick out... hmmm, bad idea.

tschus pyotr