Machine saftey

Holy cripes. That's one tough dude.

I don't have any machine tool stories, but you know about the guy who got drunk and took a girl home, woke up and got a look at her, and gnawed his arm off so he could leave without waking her up, right?

No, but my Dad, himself a farmer, knew a farmer who lost an arm in a corn picker (not all that uncommon an occurance). But three or four years later, this guy lost the other arm in the same picker...

Jerry

We had a guy here running a brake lathe on Sunday to catch up on the backlog. Since he was the only one there, he didn't turn on the heat, and kept his leater jacket on - no need to go into all the details, but it was slowly pulling him in, he couldn't reach the off switch, couldn't rip the jacket, he was really in a fix. I think he finally spotted something he could reach with his free hand, like a wrench, and was able to whack the off switch and then cut the jacket loose. Didn't have to lose his arm, but must have been a mass of bruises.

One amazing story that was picked up on the national news some years ago was a kid who was working on his parent's farm, alone, while everybody else was off to church or something. It might have been a corn harvester or something with lots of rollers. it pulled him in and ripped both his arms off. he walked to the house, opened the door with his teeth and then dialed the phone with a pencil in his mouth. I think they got his arms out of the machine and reattached them, and he was slowly regaining the use of them.

Jon

I've heard lots of machine shop "could have"s, like the guy who seized up the punch in an OBI punch press, the keyway on the flywheel sheared, and all the guys in the shop took off running. The flywheel eventually spun itself off the shaft, skidded on the floor for a while and then went through the wall! One wonders if the shop owner (my friend's dad) had planned there to be a blank space where that flywheel would have gone out.

I remember another about a guy who had just put a long shaft in a turning center, and got called away for something. He lost his place in the setup, and didn't realize the control was set for high speed, and started the spindle. Well, he had a 1" bar

3 foot long or something bend at the back of the spindle and start flailing at 3000 RPM! YIKES! It tore the back end of the machine off, but that was just shroud and not terribly expensive to fix.

We had a guy at work tip over a LeBlond Toolroom Precision 13" lathe on his leg, and had to have it amputated. It was all blocked up in a sloping passageway waiting for a broker to pick it up. I actually walked by the thing and thought to myself "Gee, that is in a REALLY tough position, but I guess the broker will bring his own riggers to get it out, so it isn't our problem." Well, the broker arrived with a truck, and our shop guys set up our rickety forklift to move it, and things went bad!

There have been a number of gruesome accidents written about on this list, I remember one, I think a vertical mill that caught the workpiece and embedded it in the machinist's belly!

Cranes and overhead loads are always a potential source for real disaster, and then there's iron foundries! Yikes! We have a couple in the area (fewer now than in the '60s) and there are always the stories of the dropped ladle or the skull that cracks prematurely, and everybody is running from a rapidly swelling lake of molten iron/steel. It makes your skin crawl just to read about it in the paper!

Jon

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:56:19 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

She's what's called "Coyote Ugly", Ed.

But beat my nightmare last night.

Last night I had a nightmare. A really bad one. It was a terrible nightmare, the most horrible one you could imagine. In the nightmare I found myself nude in bed, and I was looking at a mirror on the ceiling, and I discovered that I am a Negro, and I'm circumcised!

Quickly I jumped up, found my pants and looked in the pockets to find my driver license photo - and it was that same color. Black. No, no, God no, it can't be!! I felt myself being very depressed, downcast, sitting in a chair. But it's a wheelchair!! That means, of course, besides being black and Jewish, I'm also disabled!!!

I said to myself, aloud "This is impossible. It's impossible that I should be black and Jewish and disabled." "It's the pure and holy truth", whispers someone from behind me. I turn around, and it's m y boyfriend. Just what I needed!!! I am a homosexual w**re and on top of that with a Mexican boyfriend.

Oh, my God..... Black, Jewish, disabled, gay, with a Mexican boyfriend, drug addict, and HIV-positive!!! Desperate, I begin to shout, cry, pull my hair, and OH, noooooo... I'm Bald!!!

The telephone rings. It's my brother. He is saying, "Since mom and dad died the only thing you do is hang out, take drugs, and laze around all day doing nothing. Get a job you worthless piece of crap.. Any job."

Mom?... Dad?... Nooooooooo... Now I'm also an unemployed orphan! I try to explain to my brother how hard it is to find a job when you are black, Jewish, disabled, gay with a Mexican boyfriend, are a drug addict, HIV-positive, bald, and an orphan. But he doesn't get it. Frustrated, I hang up.

It's then I realize I only have one hand!!! With tears in my eyes I go to the win dow to look out. I see I live in a shanty-town full of cardboard and tin houses! There is trash everywhere. Suddenly I feel a sharp pain near my pacemaker....Pacemaker? Besides being black, Jewish, disabled, a fairy with a Mexican boyfriend, a drug addict, HIV-positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, an invalid with one hand, and having a bad heart, I live in a shitty neighborhood.

At that very moment my boyfriend approaches and says to me, "Sweetie pie, my love, my little black heartthrob, have you decided who are you going to vote for next November? Hillary or Obama?"

Sonofabitch! Say it isn't so!!! I can handle being a black disabled one armed drug addicted Jewish queer on a Pacemaker who is HIV positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend, but _please_ don't tell me I'm a Democrat!!!!

Ha-ha! See? You must have been thinking about what would happen to you if a libertarian actually got elected, just before you went to bed. d8-)

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:58:46 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

All you democrats think alike, don't you?

I'll remind you that I've been a registered Republican -- the real kind, not a Gunnerian repo-libretardian hybrid, or a Liver-and-onion Rotarian like you, for 25 years. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

A couple of Loggers were working here a few years back, trying to light the slash piles in wet weather. Employee dumps gas on a pile, waits a while, tosses a lit stob on and WHOOF, Serious burns. The boss takes him to the hospital. 4 hours later, the boss gets hauled in with serious burns.

Worst i did was step into the back of a Beetle with one foot to lift out the battery, foot went thru the rust floor and the torn metal formed a nice trap for my boot. I had to have someone jack up the car and unlace my boot to get my foot out. Lots of little stuff, bits of carbide under the skin etc, thank god for safety glasses.

Guess he decided to keep farming till it was all gone.

You forgot: Destroyer of Beetles. ;-)

I've lost track of what a RealRepublican(TM) or a RealDemocrat(TM) is.

What are their similarities? What are their differences?

Wes

Democrats usually have more hair, but Republicans don't split infinitives nor end sentences with prepositions. Democrats have more fun but Republicans have better 401Ks.

Republicans have bigger cars or trucks. They buy more Metamucil. Democrats buy more pasta.

-- Ed Huntress

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:30:24 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

You keep saying that. Why do many of us not quite believe you along that line, Ed? (Clue: You often sound more like a Democrat than a Republican.)

I was a registered Republican for my first 30 voting years, then they changed, were corrupted (even further?) In any case, though registered, I didn't always vote the party line. I voted for whomever I thought would do the best job.

So, are you voting for Fred Thompson or Ron Paul? (After the RNS, in their now-usual mysterious way, nominate some other loser.)

To keep it short, there are two answers to your question. First, how one perceives my politics depends on who I'm talking to. If this was the Artist Forum on CompuServe years ago, where I was a sysop, or the Literature Forum, or a writer's online group where I used to spend some time, there would be no doubt in your mind who the Republican was. This place is populated mostly by middling conservatives peppered with a few ideological cranks; the left is so weak here that there's no point in arguing with them.

The other answer is that I come from a different Republican tradition, one that was influenced by people like Milton Friedman and George Will, rather than by Ronnie Reagan or the religious right. I became a Republican over welfare issues, not over guns, taxes, or religious self-righteousness. I was a welfare hawk and a balanced-budget fiscal conservative and I still am. Later, I got involved with the gun issue when NJ instigated an "assault weapon" ban. I wrote editorials opposing it and presented testimony at the NJ State Senate hearings on the issue. Based on that, the state NRA affiliate asked me to become a delegate to my county Republican convention and I agreed.

The Republican tradition is pro-defense and anti-war; pro civil rights and pro balanced budget; it favors the Madisonian republic versus the Hamiltonian or Jeffersonian. And most people who call themselves Republicans wouldn't even know what the differences are. When one of them pipes up with a line like, "this is a republic, not a democracy," and you ask them what the difference is between a republic and a representative democracy, they can't answer. A great deal of my personal study has been spent learning the answer, and the answer tells you that most of the "Republicans" in power today don't deserve the label.

-- Ed Huntress

VP Gore is out jogging one morning, notices a little boy on the corner with a box. Curious he runs over to the child and says, "What's in the box kid?"

To which the little boy says, "Kittens, they're brand new kittens."

Al Gore laughs and says, "What kind of kittens are they?"

"Democrats," the child says.

"Oh that's cute," Al says, and runs off.

A couple of days later Al is running with his buddy Bill Clinton and he spies the same boy with his box just ahead. Al says to Bill, "You gotta check this out" and they both jog over to the boy with the box.

Al says, "Look in the box, Bill. Isn't that cute? Look at those little kittens." Hey kid, tell my friend, Bill, what kind of kittens they are."

The boy replies, "They're Republicans."

"Whoa!", Al says, "I came by here the other day and you said they were Democrats. What's up?"

"Well," the kid says, "Their eyes are open now."

Whoop, I forgot to answer this question:

Neither one. I have low regard for Thompson and Ron Paul makes a good comedian but I don't see him as president.

I'm really not sure yet who I'll vote for. It won't be Giuliani; as I said, living within a cannon shot of NYC, we know him too well. He's a little bit nutty sometimes although he was a very good NYC mayor, IMO. I'd like to see McCain rise again but that's a very long shot.

What about Allen (Alan, Alen) M. Bunch? You've got to pay attention to a candidate who spells his first name three different ways on his own website, eh? He's a little vague about his family and his work but, as he says, he doesn't get Secret Service protection yet and he has to worry about aliens who want to do him harm. I assume, and hope, that it's earthly aliens he's talking about.

For me, it will depend on who winds up running against whom. I'm getting the feeling I'll again be voting for the least awful of two candidates.

-- Ed Huntress

If you're talking about the rusted-out VW, you don't have to destroy them, they kind of melt away an ounce at a time.

Jon

Any comedian would be better than what we have or any of the 'front runners'

Instead of voting for the lesser of 2 evils I think I'm going to vote for the evil of 2 lessors :)

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/