We all know that there are instances of repetition/fatigue that will increase the risk of injury, especially with the type of work we're all doing out in the shop...

I thought it would be nice to have a thread in this forum for people to share thier shop related accidents in order to help remind all of us to take our time out there.

I'll get it started:

About 3 months ago, I proved that an .045 filler rod can go thru your ear drum, with ease...

Between welds, I use my mouth to hold the filler rod, to free up my left hand, Countless times, daily... This also allows me to check the end of the filler rod for contamination and flip it or clip it for a clean start.

Well, just as I would any other day; I go to flip the rod, at the same time as I look to the right, at my workpiece and the filler rod and my ear drum shake hands... Immediatly no hearing in my left ear. zero, no ringing, nothing.

Off to the doc. After inspection, the Dr. tells me I "have a Perforation of the ear drum and it looks as if it were burned thru..." After multiple hearing tests, they determine I have zero response from my left eardrum. I'm also told that " in these cases it's hard to estimate a recovery time, if any".

This brings me to today. After 3 months of treatment, my eardrum has seen an 80% recovery in response. While I can still notice a difference in hearing between both ears, something is much better than nothing.


Ken

 

Wow, I do the same thing and I burnt my lip and mouth a few times. My X partner burnt his ear drum out with the mig tacking.

My worst story was a late night working on my own car. The lift was tied up so I lay on my back tacking an exhaust together when a spark set fire to a rag under my leg. It didn't burn at first so I didn't know what had happened, by the time I felt it and got out from under the car it had stuck to my leg and burnt that crap out of me.
I have a huge scare to tell the story with, Back in my aprentiship days I was told by an old man. " If you gunna weld, your gunna burn yourself". I thought , what the hell does he know.....He is smarted the older I get.
Take care of yourself...

 

That's extremely scary!

Didn't happen to me personally, but in the shop I was overseeing, one of the techs was rotating the tires on a lift, and one of the lift's airbags blew out. I thought for sure the dude was dead or something. Knocked him on his butt pretty good, but he was O.K.

Also, not a personal injury accident, but carelessness nonetheless. Another tech had removed the lug nuts for the wheels, then ran the lift up in the air to get underneath it, the jostling of the lift going up caused the rear tire to jump off the car. It bounced hard and went directly into the brand new (at the time) 2005 Dodge pickup in the next lift. Put about a two foot square dent in it.

A moments inattention can cause big problems. I just about cut my index finger off with my angle grinder. It's about 3 months and 8 stitches later, I have about 60% movement in it.

 

Man....at least I'm not the only one putting filler in my mouth. I curse to myself about that practice every time I burn my mouth, but yet never quit doing it....haha.

I've been lucky...no real incidents beside some cuts and burns. I only have a few scars from Honda's....no real big ones though.

 

I burnt my neck a few times with filler rod..and put it half way into my index finger through a glove.

Did the welding under a car on my back deal.... ended up with a scar on my chest where slag fell off.

flicked a ball of aluminum off the end of my rod and it went into my shoe.... burnt socks, shoes, and foot resulted. (3rd degree burn)

arc'd through my elbow to the table and made my arm numb for hours.

forgot to put the ground clamp on and my welding table grounded through my grinder's power/ground cable. could've started a fire.

On the topic of fire... I poured out 7 gallons of 3 year old gas and lit it on fire. The heat was soo intense that it melted the clear off of a nearby minivan and lit a 32 Ford's tire on fire. yeah that was expensive.

In woodshop I saw a guy cut off his finger with teh table saw. The look on his face was priceless! I knew he cut his finger off before he did lol.

 

Damn, I need to find a safer profession.

 

when i get to tig weld at work i always forget to put the ground clamp on the block iam welding on and i get a nice pimple looking thing on my hand you think i would have learnd the first time i got the shock of my life hahah and to make it worse most of the time i have honing oil or wd40 on my hands

 

A guy i used to work with was grinding something with a 4 inch and the wheel exploded and a chunk went straight into his liver. We had to carry him up to the hospital (which was a block away). it was gnarly

 

Im recovering from my last idiot move. When welding aluminum we all know that the filler will sometimes melt and ball at the end if you're not quick enough with the dip. What I do is just flick it when its still hot to clean the end of the rod. Did that and it dropped onto my office chair that Im using when I weld. Needless to say the hot aluminum melted right through the vinal and caught it on fire. Next thing I know its getting hot and half of my pants were on fire by the time I felt the heat and got my mask off. Got some nasty burns plus some nice plastic melted into my skin from nylon work pants.

 

one of the guys at the was pulling the bob cat in the shop when one of the linkages broke... so he is stuck doin circles just missing a cavalier and a concrete pole...nobody got hurt or anything hit... but it was funny as hell to watch

 

What's up with people putting the filler rod in their mouth? And how the hell do you get the filler rod anywhere near your ear?

After getting some slag in my ear, I always wear ear plugs when welding.

 

Watch out for electric fans....


that is all

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by turboteener &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">What's up with people putting the filler rod in their mouth? And how the hell do you get the filler rod anywhere near your ear?

After getting some slag in my ear, I always wear ear plugs when welding.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

I have the same questions.

One time when I was hanging in a ceiling in a harness doing a sanitary weld I got the filler in the inside of my nose, red hot, it was so painful.

 

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT let gasoline get in your ear. How do you do that, you say? I don't know, maybe changing a fuel filter?

It burns so bad, I just convince others in the shop to do it instead of me for fear of doing it again lol...

 

wear gloves

super sanders eat fingers

 

haha...i remember another one.

My dad's 67 dart GT had a squeeling fan belt...so we popped the hood and i got the belt lube out (spray type) pointed it at the fan...well the nozzle was pointed towards my dad...shot him straight in the eye.

I immediately burst into laughter which promted my father to become irate and try to choke me.

 

gotta be more careful with that filler rod, it will get ya

 

I was putting together a cherry picker and was welding the casters on and had my hair catch on fire (last time with no skull cap).

I almost shortened my index finger by about an inch one time with a sawzall.

I don't even want to get into the alcohol related shop incidents.

 

haha good times

 

i broke my habit of putting filler rod in my mouth, burnt one to many times...

i now have a nasty habit of putting the rod hot side out on my table so its pointing at me. now i just end up burning my fingers when i goto pick it up to clip it.

one of my neon customers, was over at the shop one day and i had just finished welding up a wastegate flange to put on a manifold and he came over seconds after i stood up and picked the thing up and started to walk away with it. It took him a few seconds to realize his hand was melting. RTErnie, ask derek about that one lol...

 

Great thread.

Let's see here...

I've got a nice scar right above my left nipple where I stabbed myself with hot SS filler that I was holding in my mouth.

I dropped a nice fat fluxcore fireball down my boot while welding under a car once. I was kind of jammed up in there so by the time I got out and got my boot off it had actually burnt a hole between my achilles and the ball of my ankle. I had to pick the piece of slag/steel out with a pair of tweezers. Took 3 years for the scar tissue to fill in the hole.

I had a grinding wheel explode and a chunk hit me square in the tip of my dick. I cried.

Doing overhead dual shield I had an arc blow fireball roll down my chest, down my pants and singed my nads. Close call but all is in working order down there

Had a grinder get caught up in my shirt and rip into my belly pretty good. Long time ago and no scars anymore

I have **** tons of scars on my forearms from welding overhead and spatter burning through my flame resistant sleeves. BTW those things suck I need leathers.


**** I could go on for awhile with this one. I have some pretty sweet scars from when I was a carpenter too.

 

Oh I forgot my most recent near accident.

I was welding overhead in a manlift about 18-20ft off the shop floor and being the dumbass that I am I was sitting on the manlift railing with my legs hooked in so lean out backwards and catch a small overhead weld I had to do. Apparently, the Actelyne quick connect on my torch had sprung a leak and filled up the bottom of the manlift. When I started my weld the spatter ignited it. I damn near **** my pants.

I am OSHA approved!

 

nothing welding related but about 4 months ago i dropped a $50,000 truck off the lift at work

 

I was working on a custom turbo project car at one time and I needed to relocate a few AC lines to clear some charge piping.

The car was up on a hoist and I was removing all the brackets assosciated with the AC lines. One of the bolts look exactly like a bracket (a metal bracket shared the same bolt). Guess what, I took the bolt off and this bolt happened to be the same bolt that attaches the AC fitting. I had a full blast of frozen AC refridgerant right in my face, in my eyes, everywhere. My vision was foggy for several hours, but glad there was no serious damage done. Boy that was refreshing, but too bad it was winter

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tony the Tiger &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I was working on a custom turbo project car at one time and I needed to relocate a few AC lines to clear some charge piping.

The car was up on a hoist and I was removing all the brackets assosciated with the AC lines. One of the bolts look exactly like a bracket (a metal bracket shared the same bolt). Guess what, I took the bolt off and this bolt happened to be the same bolt that attaches the AC fitting. I had a full blast of frozen AC refridgerant right in my face, in my eyes, everywhere. My vision was foggy for several hours, but glad there was no serious damage done. Boy that was refreshing, but too bad it was winter </TD></TR></TABLE>

I had a run in with an AC accident too. On the 3rd week of 15 hour shifts, tired and on auto pilot, I forgot to turn the valve off to the schrader valve after checking my pressures. My gauges have a quick release so when i zipped them off I dumped the charge and still being in zombie mode, i took my bare hand to screw the service cap back on (instead of turning the valve off!) . It only took a second to almost completely freeze my hand and wake my *** up.

A frozen hand HURTS!!!! lol


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As for building manifolds, dont wear flipflops. Ive dropped a topmount on my big toe, breaking my toe.... giving me a purple toe nail for over a year. And Ive put a red hot filler rod a 1/2 inch into the back of my heel.