I've just got back from the local A&E, having had a tiny speck of steel removed from my eyeball... damn angry grinders!

And I was wearing eye protection...

David (aka "One-eye" at the moment)

Bad luck David - even worse luck if it got past the eye protection too.
I went through a similar experience a few years back when I got some rust in my eye.

Have you seen Pirates of the Carribean yet? Eye patches are all the rage at the moment
Yaharghh me hearties !

[Edited on 14-12-06 by RazMan]

I had a similar thing when a small piece of rust went in my hair, fell down onto the inside of my specs into my eye.... bugger!!!!

Steve

what were you wearing? goggles or safety specs?

Safety specs - probably not enough. The plan now is to get a pair of proper goggles. to be kept for difficult grinding jobs (I was grinding into an awkward corner, just above eye-level). I wear glasses all the time, so it's a pain having to wear goggles as you can never get a perfect seal.

The doc showed me the piece of steel - about the size of this full-stop. Amazing how bad it felt...

DJ

i used to wear safety glasses, felt some stuff bounce off my cheek, off the glasses and onto my eye lids.

I wear goggles now after having a couple of close calls with other stuff around my eyes.

In fact i'm a bit paranoid. Often wear safety glasses / face shielf doing 'innocent' stuff just in case.

I've had stuff shoot up a small gap between safety goggles and my face where it didn't seal 100% onto my face (odd shaped head I suspect ). I now have a full face guard which is great apart from it's tendency to mist up.

[Edited on 14/12/06 by MikeRJ]

You could always try a welding mask with a clear lens/without the filter plate in it.

A full-face guard sounds good - I'd forgotten about them. Very useful when wearing glasses.

A friend uses one of those that blow filtered air from the top, but that's mainly because he turns some varieties of wood that can be obnoxious...

DJ

Cant you just keep your eyes shut

I had a spec blow up under a full face shield. Hit my cheek so no damage. Maybe safety specs under the shield?

Always think about safety...

otherwise


Steve

Hi,

Once had to take someone up to casualty when they decided that it would be a good idea to use a wire brush in a die grinder. He couldn't close his eye for the inch long piece of wire sticking out his eyeball
He was lucky and everthing was OK but could have been so much worse!

Davidwag

You don't want to be hit in the face by a suspension spring compressor.

I was using an old style screwed rod type compressor when it failed and flew up and bounce off the wall and hit me down the face. Push my glasses into my face below my eye, cut was taped together, cut open my eye brow to bone, 5 stitches and burst open my lip. My first trip in an ambulance. Could have lost my eye or worse.

The saving grace was that the front of the head is designed to take an impact and my glasses were ok. It scared the sh*t out of my mate. Blood was all over the work shop floor.

Paramedics were great, even managed a laugh on the way to A&E.

Never trust anything that is put under force! or spins!

Hope this hasn't put people off there tea. Wanted to post this after it happened 2 months ago, but didn't have the guts too, thought it was a stupid thing to have done but if someone learns from this then its a good thing.

Hall

Unfortunately it isn't difficult to do daft things - it's amazing that we usually get away with it. Owning up to this sort of carelessness may at least make others think about what they're doing.

I'm just fortunate that most of my injury-causing mishaps only resulted in minor damage...

[Edited on 14/12/06 by David Jenkins]

Well done for posting it!

Never hurts to have a reminder... there's still plenty of people on here taking risks they would be well advised not to!

Ah, well. They'll learn!


Get well soon David!

Cheers,
James

[Edited on 14/12/06 by James]

mines not as bad as any of those but a couple of days ago i got a load of plaster in my eye and it burnt it ,bloody sore it is

I learnt my lesson when after cleaning up a chassis with a wire brush drill attachment (and wearing safety glasses) realised i'd missed a bit.

Thought 'just give that spot i missed a quick go' and did'nt pop the glasses back down.

Sod's law and one piece of rusty metal stuck in my eyeball.

I thought i'd try and save the NHS some money but even trying to get it out with the vacuum of a pipet did'nt work

Local A&E could'nt shift it so it was regional eye infirmary time

So the moral is - although you have two of them, always treat your eyeballs as though you only have one (Moral can be applied to other parts of the body too )

nothing to do with my eyes but ive a bit missing if anyones seen it & nt just up top
Rescued attachment DSCF1782.JPG

Whenever I grind (and that is usually a good few hours a day!!!), I always wear goggles, but also try and keep a (gloved) hand in the way of the ground dust. I figure that the gloves will absorb energy from grindings and slow them down, thereby preventing them from hitting me in the face, or hitting something hard and receiving a deflection into my face. Be careful though, as grinding are very hot, and will quickly warm a glove (may even set it alight!!!).

ATB

Simon

Friend of mine, a race engine builder, has had several close shaves:
1/ Cleaning a timing chain on a rotary wire brush. Brush snatched the chain out of his hands and it wisked round lashing him across the head! many stitches and a permanent scar on his forehead (which is getting bigger as he is now loosing his hair and exposing more of it!).
2/ Cleaning a component held in his hand with an airline and gun. Gun slipped and stabbed his palm and his whole arm inflated! Called an ambulance but because he is so remote they couldn't find him. Held his arm up in the air and kept massaging it from the armpit towards his hand and eventually managed to get all the air out .
3/ Finishing a component in the lathe using a file with no handle, the file hit the chuck and it was forced through his palm and out of the back of his hand! Even worse the tang of the file was bent round into a hook and it was stuck. Drove himself to casualty but the doctor on duty didn't know what to do. He wanted to just pull it back out but as it was hooked around a tendon it would have done massive damage. My mate had to sit in casualty and slowly extract it himself, with no anaesthetic!
You have been warned!!!
ATB
Phil

can't help thinking the warning here is not take precautions but use tools properly.

which of course i always do (NOT)

I know a girl (well woman now - this was about 20yrs ago), who was mucking out her stables, and somehow managed to stick a pitch fork clean through her foot.

More amazingly, she managed to drive 7 or so miles to hospital!

She's ok, though she now has about 30 cats instead

ATB

Simon

quote:

---

Originally posted by MikeR
can't help thinking the warning here is not take precautions but use tools properly.

which of course i always do (NOT)

---

heard a story about a bloke in a plastic injection moulding company.

Forgot to depressurise the machine before changing the nozzel. Ended up with red hot plastic injected into his arm between the two bones. Luckily because it was red hot it cauterised the wound. Still needed a lengthy trip to hospital / long operation / long recovery but kept the arm.

NS Dev also knows one about someone who got their arm trapped at his place and had it broken lots of times.