Safety tip # 97: Never wear flip flops in the shop

Sounds like you had a bad day. The only cure for this is to spend some additional time in the shop making some sawdust.

-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.

I think your injuries qualify you to go shopping for more tools!

-- Earle Wright, Lenoir City, Tennessee

I think there are some rules which we all must learn the hard way. Glad nothing worse than a couple bumps happened to you. hmm I bet now you at least will wear closed toe shoes when you are in the shop. I agree with Scott go make some sawdust…..

-- Splinters - Living and Loving life in the Rockies - http://www.splinterswoodworks.com/

If you had only been wearing shoes you would have never dropped that wrench and all would have been well with the world. See, they make these rules for a reason. ;-)

-- When you give someone a chance it may well be their last.

i agree with earl , poor guy needs a shopping trip after such a horrendous ordeal !! lol

-- if you aint the lead dog the scenery never changes

Remember Eric. When you drop a chisel, it always lands on the tip. You start cutting off toes, you’ll be falling all over everything. :o)

-- Tim -- http://tmuli.com

hmm, wonder how this ranked 97th! I think it could be at least 74th!

-- Rob (A) Waxahachie,TX

It’s sandwiched between

96 “Turn the table saw off and lower the blade before sitting down”

and

98 “If you can’t find your safety glasses you’re probably wearing them”

Some people have all the luck!

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

You are clearly justified for a couple of expletive outbursts. If you just took it in stride without cursing then karma owes you a release or two.

-- Greg, CT

Reminds me of the old story of the guy that was using a rope and pulley to pull-up a load of bricks in a bucket. Remember that one?

-- Ron in Osseo, Minnesota

A bricklayer working on a three-story-tall chimney had set up a pulley system so that his helper could raise the bricks up to where he needed them. As he was working, his helper complained about how difficult it would be to get the last of the bricks up to the flat roof of the building. Just then another contractor had some material delivered and it was placed on the roof by a fork lift brought to unload it. The bricklayer asked if the driver would load the rest of the bricks up there as well and the driver agreed. The bricklayer realized that he would not need his helper any more and sent him home.

When the bricklayer completed the chimney he noticed that he had quite a few bricks left over and that the fork lift was no longer at the jobsite. Now he had to figure out how to get the leftover bricks back down by himself. If he dropped them, they would surely break. So he decided to use the pulley he had set up earlier to lower them down.

First he went down to the ground and raised a large metal bucket up to the roof level using the rope and pulley. Next, he tied the rope off onto a railing and climbed back up to the roof and loaded the bricks into the bucket. Then he went back down to the ground. He knew that the bricks would be heavy, so he wrapped the rope around his hand a couple of times and then untied the end of the rope with his other hand. Well, the bricks were heavier than he imagined and with physics being as it is, he was immediately launched upwards at a high rate of speed.

As he was racing up towards the roof he encountered the bucket full of bricks coming down at an equally fast rate. He collided with the bucket and broke his nose and his shoulder. The bucket passed him by as he sped upwards. He reached the pulley just before the bucket hit the ground and broke a few of his fingers as they were pulled into the pulley. When the bucket hit the ground, its bottom fell out and all of the bricks spilled onto the ground. Now the fun reversed. As the now light bucket sped upwards, the mason took a shot to the groin when one of his legs slipped into the empty bucket.

He then tilted enough to fall out of the bucket and continued with his gravity experiment. Eventually he landed on top of the pile of bricks and broke both feet. He collapsed in pain there on the bricks, but was glad to be alive. He let go off the rope and cried out for help.

It was then that the bucket hit him in the head and fractured his skull.

-- Maplewood, MN

Hello Eric;
—-and I thought you were going to tell me:

#98 ….and then the nut holding the bench grinder in place was defective with a hairline crack and on my way back up after hitting my head….the bench grinder fell off and landed on my other big toe….

Now thats a reason for wearing steel toed safety boots….LOL

Have a ‘very good’ day today…..and,

Thank you.
GODSPEED,
Frank

-- --frank, NH, http://frank.wordpress.com/

Thanks Rikkor for the ‘now the rest of the story’.

-- Ron in Osseo, Minnesota

Thanks rikkor. For those of us who have led sheltered lives we would have spent a lot of time scratching our heads in confusion about the bricklayer story. Now we know.

-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.