Originally posted by wood carver 2:
He's right about the gloves. Potentially very dangerous. I use a block of wood to put pressure on the lams while using the sander.
A guy I worked with nearly got pulled into a 16 inch jointer because he was wearing a loose sweatshirt.
Dave.
A block of wood is all it takes!
.
I may be new to bow making, but I'm not new to shops. I used to make heavy machinery for a living. Most of that time, I was the guy that made the comparatively small parts from large stock. I have run saws, lathes, drill presses, forklifts, press brakes, a few different types of grinders, and even a laser. All of this was in an industrial capacity for large scale production, so I'm not talking about a few hours here and there. I'm talking about pulling some serious serious time on these machines in both the heat of summer and the cold of winter.
That being said, I never personally witnessed a serious accident because we where careful about that stuff (a couple close calls though). I do know two second hand stories from reliable sources about gloves specifically directly leading to injury though.
One of the old hands at the factory told me about a guy that worked there well before my time. The guy was running a drill press while wearing gloves because he didn't want to get cut by sharp steel shavings (it happens). One day, he got got his gloved hand too close to the bit and got grabbed. Threw him into the wall behind the drill press and he was lucky in that the glove tore out there before it went any further. Even being lucky, the forces involved broke his arm, dislocated his shoulder, and caused severe damage to the tendons and such in his elbow and shoulder. He had to permanently stop doing the work because he no longer had very much function in his arm, even after several surgeries.
The second came from one of the cnc machinists and was something he saw when he was going to trade school. One of his classmates was running a lathe with gloves on because he was too green and didn't know any better. The lathe caught his glove, yanked him off his feet threw him up over and behind the lathe just like something you would see in an old werner brothers cartoon. In this case though, the glove did not give before this students wrist did. It literally tore his hand off of his arm.
All that being said, I really don't have a problem with alcohol in a home shop. The risks there are quite obvious, even to the untrained person, and if they are willing to take those risks that's their call. I wouldn't mix the heavy machinery with alcohol, but once the heavy machinery portion of a build is done... Well, there's still risk there, but it's nowhere near as severe.