Thread: Funniest Workshop Incidents....

My stationary belt sander has a fixed dust collection bag.
This weekend I emptied it for the first time, not expecting much, since I am using it upside down. Well... if you'd make a cup from your 2 hands... that was how much dust and grit there was in the bag. It really does work well.

I also regularly vacuum the floor of my work area, as well as the places where I have been filing, sanding or sawing. I am not a neat freak, but I see the value in keeping the grit and dust under control.

In the '60s when "Eastman 910," the first "super glue," came out, it was actually kept in a locked refrigerator at the computer manufacturing plant where I worked. At $95 an ounce it should have been!
One of our technicians was using it and then made a nature call. Imagine the look on the plant nurse's face when he got to her office... with attachments! No debonders then, either.

Respectfully
~Richard

Ok, Just today i was sanding some teak scales and i don't know what happened, but for some reason I stopped paying attention to what I was doing when I sanded clear through the end of the scales to the pivot pin. I noticed a little pain in my finger when I decided to look down and I was caught by surprise as though I had forgotten what I was doing.
Also today, I was finishing some cherry scales when I did the same thing and realized that I had CA glued my finger to the bench top with the debonder out of arms reach. It took me a few minutes to realize that I was wearing a glove and could take the glove off then go get ti debonder to remove the glove.
Needless to say I left the workshop after that.

-G

1982. Poured some sulfuric acid down the drain in my college chem lab sink during a qualitative analysis experiment. Hissing, strange smelling gas from drain, professor (very old Armenian who had made poison gas for the Germans in WW1) shouted "Gas!!!) and we evacuated the lab. He set up fans, blew the fumes out, and we returned without LAFD Hazmat being notified, as probably was required. Turns out there was some arsenic in the drain from another student who did not flush it completely down. ASH3, or arsine, is one of the deadliest gases in existence! Passed the class but nobody wanted to be my lab partner after that. No harm done, though.

Originally Posted by Croaker

1982. Poured some sulfuric acid down the drain in my college chem lab sink during a qualitative analysis experiment. Hissing, strange smelling gas from drain, professor (very old Armenian who had made poison gas for the Germans in WW1) shouted "Gas!!!) and we evacuated the lab. He set up fans, blew the fumes out, and we returned without LAFD Hazmat being notified, as probably was required. Turns out there was some arsenic in the drain from another student who did not flush it completely down. ASH3, or arsine, is one of the deadliest gases in existence! Passed the class but nobody wanted to be my lab partner after that. No harm done, though.

That's funny...

Lab Prof in high school spun up a small war surplus gyroscope with compressed air. At about beyond hearing range RPM, the bearings froze and we had a small brass buzz bomb ricocheting around the class room. No-one was injured but there may have been some strange smells!
respectfully
~Richard

Summer of 1975 I was putting myself through college by working at a mobile home factory. Those things were basically stapled together. I was building ceilings on a floor jig which were then hoisted onto the trailers. My basic tool was an 1.5 inch and 100 feet of hose. The safest way to carry the thing from station to station was to shoot the last staple in and hold the trigger down. No way to fire another staple. My gun broke and the guy in the tool crib handed me a semi-auto staple gun. See where this is going? Moving from one station to the next I had the trigger pulled and brushed the tip against the center of my knee cap. BANG! Down I went shouting, "I been shot!" They dragged my sorry butt to the clinic in the back of a pick-up truck and the old Doc pulled it out with household pliers. Hurt a helluvalot more coming out than going in.

Originally Posted by Croaker

1982. Poured some sulfuric acid down the drain in my college chem lab sink during a qualitative analysis experiment. Hissing, strange smelling gas from drain, professor (very old Armenian who had made poison gas for the Germans in WW1) shouted "Gas!!!) and we evacuated the lab. He set up fans, blew the fumes out, and we returned without LAFD Hazmat being notified, as probably was required. Turns out there was some arsenic in the drain from another student who did not flush it completely down. ASH3, or arsine, is one of the deadliest gases in existence! Passed the class but nobody wanted to be my lab partner after that. No harm done, though.

That's similar to something that happened in our lab. I can't remember what the substance was - it could have been phosphorus, but the professor told us to take a small nugget out of the bottle of liquid that it was stored in and hold it with long forceps in the air. The idea was to show how it spontaneously ignites in air, upon which we had to flush it down the sinks.

The class before us had been using alcohol, and hadn't flushed the sinks properly - the lab nearly blew-up. All the u-bends were shot to smithereens. No one was hurt though, but it took a week to fix all the damage. No more practicals and a new professor.

BTW: the old prof going was a blessing. He was a sadist who kept various bits of timber ranging from 1 x2 inch to 2 x 4 inches to whack us with, if he hadn't already satisfied himself by pulling us up off our seats by our sideburns or whacking us round the head indiscriminately with his large text-book as he strolled back to the board from the back of the class. That was just kid-glove stuff though. His brother worked there, too - as a woodwork instructor. guess where the timber came from!

Regards,
Neil