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had guy on jobsite, ripping plywood, reaches under sheet with free hand to see if blade depth was going all the way thru sheet! problem was the saw was still running!
no kidding, the guy has three less fingers now.
fgw
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I once witnessed an incredibly dumb incident. I don't call it an accident because it was from stupidity.
The local tool/nail store saleperson was at the jobsite and I asked him a few questions about powder actuated guns because I was going to purchase one. He drags my partner and I over to his van and picks one up off the floor and presses it to his palm and pulls the trigger and says it's that simple to nail with it. He further explains that that gun is going in for repair as you both heard it didn't click. My partner and I stare at each other for 5 seconds thinking to ourselves this guy is out there we can't believe he just did that. He then picks up another holds it to his palm again and pulls the trigger (all within a time span of 8 seconds from the 1st time). Well neither time did he check to see if it was loaded. The second time it was. There was no nail but the powder alone drilled a hole almost all the way through the bottom of his palm just about where it meets the wrist. It didn't start to bleed for about 10 seconds and it looked like someone drilled a 1/4" hole in a bloodless body. Then it started to bleed, to the hospital we go. Three operations later it still wasn't entirely right. According to his brother it really fried his mind for a few years also.
*i have been doing woodworking for about 3 years, and reading this column has re-inforced my already large fear of table saws. i have a $250 Delta 'contractor' saw, and i have decided not to use it. it gives me the willies. unfortunately, i do not know of any other machine that i can use to rip or crosscut plywood or other wood. i wind up having the lumber cut at the lumber yard, but they do not always cut accurately. any help from you guys ?????
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I've got a friend, a good contractor and not normally prone to stupidity, who managed to shoot a Ramset nail all the way through his hand and into his thigh.
*circular saw -- the other version of the table saw
*
This goes back years ago, when I was working for a roofing contractor in Texas. We were doing an airplane hanger, retrofitting fiberglass insulation. The roof was about 120' at the peak.
We'd take off the sheet metal panels, bolt chicken wire to the cross beams, put down 4' wide batts of encapsulated fibreglass, and then put the same sheetmetal roofing back on.
My boss had me unbolting the sheetmetal, ahead of the other guys, who would remove the loose piece, do the process, rebolt it, go on to the next...
So I was about three panels ahead of the team when one of the guys steps on one of the unbolted panels and it slides right out from under him. He dances for a second or two and then plunges towards the concrete floor 100 feet down... It just so happened that there was a larger steel beam three feet down, he hooks it with his arm. Everyone is frozen in place, watching him - roofers, airplane mechanics on the floor below - all utterly silent. He hangs for a minute and clambers back up. Without even taking a second to catch his breath, he's back to work.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting on the roof, white as a sheet, and gasping for air over the whole thing. My boss comes over and tells me, "Just leave one bolt in from now on."
*We were working on an isolated island on the French River in northern Ontario, before the season opened, and staying in this cottage that overhung the water. Every day that we worked on this addition the smell of something dead got worse and worse. It reached the point where we were looking under lumber and carefully lifting plywood expecting to find the owners long lost pet or worse, the helper who'd never shown up. The smell finally got so bad no one would work on the west side of the addition unless a strong wind was blowing, and in the next couple of days the humour of the situation was long gone and with some reluctance we went looking, seriously, for whatever had died. As it turned out, a moose had perished in the ice in the winter and its bloated remains had drifted, like the Goodyear blimp, under the cottage and wedged itself between a rock and a hard place. At least it explained why the water intake was always getting plugged with hair................
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In the early to middle seventies, a bridge was being built across the Milwaukee harbor maybe 200 to 300 feet off the water. One of the carpenters was carrying a 4x8 sheet of plywood when a gust of wind came off the lake. Seems the sheet got above his head, carried him from one side of the decked bridge to the other (decking in the center was open to the water). Once he landed on the other side, he put down his wings, took off his tool belt, went to his truck and found a different job.
Dennis
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That's not trick photography. That's a 3 1/4" gun nail buried to the hilt in the end of my femur.In a hurry,coming down an extension ladder,finger on trigger,bumped the tip of the gun.Unbelievable pain... It's as good as new now.If this x-ray can prevent one nail gun accident then something good came out of it.
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Hey Guys
Well this one has probably never been heard of before - but it happened to me - who would have thought!
Cutting some screen molding on my power miter saw one day - I have the molding flat to the fence with my (left) thumb - palm atop the fence and four fingers hanging over the back side of the fence - having finished with a square cut I rotate the table and blade around for a right 45 deg. miter - the blade brake didn't activate and my dangling fingers on the back side of the fence were caught by the back side of the blade. I had turned the blade right in to my unsuspecting fingers - fortunately I only lost an inch off of my left middle finger.
Watch out for this one!
*Ouch....hurts to even think of it. I'll bet you spent the first few seconds just trying to figure out what happened.
*All healed now - happened three years ago - ever have a small piece kick out of your miter saw? - well - that's what happened with the finger tip - blade ringing and things going "thump" off the wall - incidently - the piece flew five feet to the back wall of my shop and ricocheted about twenty feet to the front of my shop. After coming home from the hospital I was obsessed with finding it - didn't want it "showing up someday". Another good lesson out of this was a matter of keeeping your mind on your work - my mind at the time was seriously elsewhere.
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Suzyt,
Don't fear your tools, respect them!!!
If you're not sure how to use the table saw, take a course. Many community colleges offer evening courses. Take your time, use common sense, and always use Sharp blades appropriate for the type of cutting and materials your working with.
Peter "I still have all my fingers" B.
*I don't recall all of the circumstances, but two co-workers of mine managed to drive a ground stake thru one or the others left hand, this was the last step installing a lightning rod system on a pole barn. Right where the meat is between thumb and pointer finger, almost in the palm, after stitches, x-rays, and therapy, those two are still on the job, communicating more often, etc.
*
Me and another guy was working on a roof 2 storys. the ladder blew down, but me being younger and able to fly hopped off. Hell it's only 25 ft. He said he heard my ankle pop all the way on the roof. My ankle still isn't right, but i guess it could have been worse.
*It's like they say, "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end."
*
Smashed thumb, burned finger....
This topic started as a posting in Construction Techniques>Framing Tricks, where I described my best trick as NOT hitting your left index finger with a 22 oz checker faced framing hammer when trying to sink a 16D spike. The postings that followed were so good that I had to start a new topic.
*I left the last topic with this one, so I'll start the new one with the same. Sorry if you've already seen it:My bud thought the worst framing accident would be to drywall screw his left hand (right through the web between thumb and index finger) to the ceiling when hanging rock. Actually, he said the worst was when he had to switch the gun to reverse and back out the screw.
*Building a house now for a client who elected to have his concrete slab scored with a concrete saw and then stained after completion of the building. Advised us not to get cokes,coffee,snuff,etc on slab but said the hairline cracks in the slab gave it "character". I almost gave it character when the 2nd day on the job I had a nail shoot out of a top plate and bounce into the backside of my hand. I bled like a stuck pig but luckily I was in the bedroom (which gets carpet) instead of the living room.
*I shot a finish nail thru my left middle finger, no big deal, probably happened thousands of times. But about a month later while nailing down cement backer board on the subfloor of a whole house with 1 3/4" roofing nails, my buddy and I got into a nail driving race. I was flipping and driving nails like a machine, thump...THUMP....thump....THUMP . I took a quick glance to make sure I was still in the lead, and drove a big FAT roofing nail thru the same finger and partially into the backerboard. I gotta agree with your buddy Rich, comin out was a lot worse than goin in. Chuck
*I've got chills.
*'Ol Timmy, bless 'is 'eart, was always one to go a little faster than everyone else. He was absolutely fearless--once he headbutted an oak 4x4" to see if he could dent the wood. Well, there was a dent alright...Same guy, different day...he's up on a 24' stepladder framing an arch for the porte cochiere (sp?) when the ladder starts to wobble. Forced to think quick--too quick--he reaches above with his free hand to grab a rafter and brings his other hand up just as the ladder gives way. Instead of dropping the gun, he tries for a two handed hang and ends up nailing his hand to the rafter. Howling in pain he drops the gun and ends up hanging by the 16d in his palm.Call me sick, but the other four of us stood there laughing at him, even though we had realized it was no joke. We let him sway in the breeze for a couple of minutes. He was always doing this kind of stuff, but always healed better'n new in a few days. You had to know Timmy.
*had guy on jobsite, ripping plywood, reaches under sheet with free hand to see if blade depth was going all the way thru sheet! problem was the saw was still running! no kidding, the guy has three less fingers now. fgw
*Speaking of tablesaws...There is a very fine painter in this area. He's also a very good carpenter. Every thing he touches looks awesome. Anyway, as a boy of 7 he was in the shop with the old man ripping some stock when the blade jammed. Before his dad could switch off the juice he reaches in to yank the wood that's binding the blade. Ouch, there go five fingers. Makes me shiver everytime I think about it, Can't imagine what dad would've been going through at that moment.
*My first job in the trades was a concrete laborer. One winter morning, we backed the truckload of forms (stacked horizontally) up to the edge of the "hole". I climbed to the top of the stack and proceded to drop the steel framed forms with appropriate accuracy. A clean jerk, and the form was overhead w/locked elbows, in perfect balance. About the 3rd form: As I stepped to the edge to drop, the form I was standing on slid out/off (Surf's up!) Fortunately, my instinct was to seperate myself from the form I was carrying. Landed upside down on the footing (still soft from previous day). Had a headache;took off at lunch.Taught a building class to teenagers and one lad trying to impress others w/his hand saw speed: qualified for 15 stitches.But who am I to talk? About 10 years ago I managed to fasten my index finger to my middle fingerw/ a 12d. Pulled it out with pliers. No muscle or nerve damage. Way too lucky. Actually I was upset that I did'nt have a camera.(for the NO pictures in the OSHA pamplets) In hindsight, I believe that an 8d would have been sufficient to secure the connection.Can you buy duct tape with antiseptic glue?
*I'm sure most of you have heard all about my recently tablesaw chewed thumb...but I like Rob's story better;We were framing in the winter, were finally putting the final few sheets of ply on. A youngster who showed up every day...but wasn't shall we say, inspired to work hard, had helped us put some planks on the roof to aid traction, (ice and snow daily in this resort area). The owner of the house had chopped all the 2-6" fur trees down to a depth of 2' or so, surrounding the house. Rob was heading across the roof with a hand held snow blower clearing the snow for us to work when he discovered the kid had nailed the planks to the roof, at a toenail angle so that Rob's weight was sufficient to remove the 2x4. During his decent Rob pitched the snowblower, fumbled for his hammer and dropped it, and ever so silently proceeded to land with one cheek exposing a 4" wide 16" high....stump. That coulda hurt!
*I haven't seen it in any of the catalogs, but sounds like a good idea to patent. Our standard field dressing was always fast food napkins and electrical tape.
*Just remembered a story my high school carpentry teacher told us about a class in a nearby town. He said this kid was installing drawer knobs in some cabinets they had built and his screws were'nt long enough. So he took a drill with a 1/2" spade bit and started to countersink the hole from the inside, with the drawer opened against body. He must have been really bearing down because the bit broke thru and drilled into and twisted up in his scrotum. He said they rushed him to the hospital with the drill in the drawer and the drawer in his lap. Chuck
*About nine years ago we were putting in fireblocks in a house we were framing here. One of the guys was trying to toenail the end of one block through the edge of the stud. He had too much angle. The nail glanced off the edge of the stud and shot into his chest. All I heard was a groan and the thud of the gun when it hit the floor. I ran over and he started pulling off his sweater and I saw about a half inch of a 12d gun nail sticking out of the middle of his chest. All he could say was "pull it out! pull it out!". So I did. We took him to the hospital and they kept him overnight to watch for internal bleeding. He was OK. Just missed his liver.Ed. Williams
*This is a gross; can't verify it, but the guy who told me swears it's true. I was working in a museum furniture conservation lab when this was told to me; my boss and I had to team with some guys from another unit, and we had some time while someone went for a tool. One of the guys from the other team told us how a bunch of them were in his brother in laws shop, hanging out , woodworking, etc, and one of the guys chopped a finger off with a tool (must have been a saw). Most of the guys rush buddy off to the hospital, but one guy stays behind to clean up. The doc says "If you have the finger, we could maybe reattach it". So back to the shop they go, to find that the guy who stayed behind had a ferret he was trying to teach to hunt, and he had fed it the finger, to get him used to fresh meat. My boss and I just looked at each other; what do you say to that?One more; I used to work for a little while with an Israeli carpenter, 6' 5" and big. He told us about his partner on the kibbutz, taped back the safety on his framing nailer. The two were standing there talking, his buddy squeezed one off, and nailed my friends foot to the deck. He was still pissed off.
*Okay Rich just for you because I've got a million of them.A few years ago I was framing a large hillside home and was looking for some help as we were short handed. Along comes Art who says although he is 46 he feels just like two 23-year olds. He feels that after 25 years as a carpenter he can definitely do the deck at the rear of the house, which was about 30 feet from the ground. The beams are set and the joists are rolled and the time comes to cut the ends which are to cantilever 30 inches including the rim board. He snaps a chalk line and tells our laborer to square down from the top with a pencil line while he goes to get his saw. The laborer has marked the left side of the boards as you look from the back wall of the house, except for the last one which is reversed because of a wayned edge. So Art cuts away, saw in his right hand and the pieces fall away. He gets to the last joist where the mark is on the right, turns around and steps out on the soon to be cut off end and saws his way into carpentry history despite some yelling from the laborer and myself. Luckily there was a fresh mound of sand below and he got away without a scratch. It was a sight to behold.
*All this about nails going where they aren't supposed to go reminds me of a story I heard from my friend Rick. Seems that the boss' son was a lazy no good for nothing, and was caught sleeping on the job pretty often. He liked to lay on top of units of plywood, and when he slept, he snored loudly and slept soundly, despite all the jobsite noise and mayhem. The rest of the crew decided that if he liked laying around so much, he deserved to be nailed down permanently. Rick says that 20 or so roofing nails shot through loose clothes kept him there 'til his pa pryed him up.
*I'm glad to say that this summer, when we were starting an ICF wall, and the footings had 3' pieces of rebar sticking up 16" o.c., and I was pulling on a load of styrofaom forms and lost my grip, and landed on my ass right on the footing, that I landed directly between two rebars. Not as good a story as it could have been, thank God. Be careful out there!