mind your fingers

[Badger1bear]

A couple of weeks back I was using a corded dewalt drill (not a small one) with a flexible shaft and a carbide burr to remove fibre glass on a truck wing that had been hit and needed glassing. I thought I would save time and just undo the bolts halfway and carefully work the burr into the gap. Not being an Octopus I thought I would snap tie the loop on the drill near to where I was working ( if I was careful I would be ok I thought ) I pressed the drill on and pushed the button to hold it on and away I went. Everyting was going great for about 5 minutes until the gap started to get gradually thinner, be careful I thought, I dont want it to grab and get stuck

Famous last words

The burr jammed in the narrowed gap and instead of damaging the burr it sent a request to the drill to go into a fit and act like an EEL on a fishing line, it was a fairly long shaft but it didnt take more than a second or two to find its way to my fingers and whack them against the metal bars under the truck cab.........Bother I said, thats stings a tad

I untangled the mangled shaft and proceeded to see if it was still usable, it had a bit of a wobble but I could put up with that so I set it up again to finish the job.

High on my list of priorities was "dont do it again"

I was very carefully working the burr into the cab when it did it again only this time it chose a different route to my fingers, much faster than the first time (apparently drills and flexible shafts learn from their mistakes and home in on their prey faster the next time, I did not know this)

The drill hit my fingers so hard I thought it had broken them, the force was so great that it snapped the flexible shaft.

When I regained the feeling in my fingers I took the remains of the flexible shaft out of the drill and put it on the floor, it looked like a mutilated snake

I wont be telling the boss that I killed the flexible snake monster


When I saw the Bosch die grinder Chris had for sale I thought thats the tool for me, its got not tail to flick around and whack my fingers


The moral to this story is, if your inner voice says its a bad idea, you had better go along with the voice because apparently it knows better

 

[madkayaker]

It's always the way the bloke in head says don't do that and you do and it bites you

 

[Badger1bear]

It's always the way the bloke in head says don't do that and you do and it bites you

I will listen next time

 

[bigegg]

I laid myself out cold a couple of years ago with a (cheapo) flexible drive shaft.
I was cleaning some alloy wheels, prior to having them painted, and the shaft seized.
The drill jumped up and whacked me on the jaw - out like a light!

The <censored> thing was still jumping round when my wife found me - spent an interesting couple of hours in casualty, then went home and threw it straight in the bin.

I won't be using a flexible drive shaft again.

 

[PaulC7]

Thankfully ive not had anything like that happen to me but i have seen the results of when it does happen and it wasnt nice... so i think your very lucky.

I was having some metal work done... and the boss of the place said to the employee use an old disc to cut some 5mm steel angle and cut it from both sides and not from the corner...

well he didnt listen he used a new disc and started to cut the way he was told not too... he was down on one knee... and when it snagged he sliced his leg twice above the knee and also the back of his hand.

 

[pidgeon chit welder]

That'll teach him to be a Catholic

 

[normspanners]

I was very carefully working the burr into the cab when it did it again only this time it chose a different route to my fingers, much faster than the first time (apparently drills and flexible shafts learn from their mistakes and home in on their prey faster the next time, I did not know this)

I laid myself out cold a couple of years ago with a (cheapo) flexible drive shaft.
I was cleaning some alloy wheels, prior to having them painted, and the shaft seized.
The drill jumped up and whacked me on the jaw - out like a light!

The <censored> thing was still jumping round when my wife found me - spent an interesting couple of hours in casualty, then went home and threw it straight in the bin.

I won't be using a flexible drive shaft again.

See sometimes they dont need practice to get a direct hit on the first go.
I used to work with a guy called Emmy he used to use TONS of coppa slip on everything, including his hammer shaft, so much so that, he used to hold his hammer just behind the head so that when he swung it, by the time it had slipped through his fingers it was at the correct 'end of shaft grip position' .
Anyway this day he was under a 40ft trailer getting wing brackets off and was swinging wildly with a 4lb'er long handled lump when it slipped a bit further through his grip so his swing was extended hit an overhead cross member which deflected the hammer to the back of his head, OUT COLD ! in a second !!HA! everyone took the p**s for weeks. and when anyone worked with him would don a crash hat for a laugh. He couldnt wear one coz of the size of the lump on his bone dome.

 

[Shox Dr]

Mate of mine mixing plaster with a drill, leaning on the wall with fag in one hand. He was warned they bite. Sure enough it did: Cable rapped around the drill then his arm, while evenly distributing the contents of the bucket in a 15' circle. He then spent the next 2 hours removing it from the walls and floor.

The bloke I work with at the moment is of the same ilke, warn him not to do something and he goes out of his way to prove you wrong. And while most of the time, you do get away with it: truth is you never do eveytime. Can't wait

 

[naughtyboy]

cleaning up an old landy ambulance chassis with wire brush on grinder.
didnt see wire running along chassis didnt half hurt when it wrapped rd brush and started whipping me.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Early days of working on aircraft. An engineer was cleaning a control cable that was still attached to a part inside the tailplane. He used a bench grinder with a wire brush on one end..... It caught and wrenched the tail a bit. Did he learn? NO. carried on and it really caught. Wound the cable round the brush and ripped a two foot long gash in the tailplane. That was very time consuming and expensive to repair. The owner of the crop duster asked me why I didn't stop him. I said that he was a 50 something qualified engineer and I had been on the job for a couple of weeks, so he was going to listen to me?