Ring work

[cubswin]

I believe the louder and shakier a machine is, the safer it is. When people operate a table saw or skill saw they seem to be very careful as they are aware that they can be dangerous and all the noise and saw dust flying around keeps the operators on their toes. The power tool in the shop that scares me the most is a band saw. It is so quite and timid looking that you can get careless around it and I have. For many years I did meat cutting and a band saw has no trouble with flesh and bone.

I've never mentioned this on a forum I don't believe but I have a brother one year younger than me. When he was 20 years old he worked with a printing press and one day he was cleaning a spot off of one of the ink rollers with a solvent rag. Simple operation done everyday in printing companies but this time the rag got caught. He didn't just lose a finger or a hand but both his arms were removed at the shoulders. Someone cut his shirt collar with a knife as it was cutting thru his neck as it went between the rollers. He has now spent the last 40 years with no arms and lucky to be alive over doing something simple on a machine that, if not respected, can be deadly.

Dick

One of the reasons I don't want to build cues. I'm fascinated by it all, have a father with enough woods to last 20 years and a kiln as well. Machines by and large just scare me anymore. I used to work in a slate factory that made wood slates for blinds. Was a slate saw operator and catcher. The catchers job was to pull the slates through 10 side by side circular saw blades, and keep scrapes from going back into the saw. I was watching someone else do it one day, and realized just how close I had come to losing some fingers. One of my buddies cut off the tip of his finger in a blink of a eye on the top cutters before they had spun down. They had a sanding machine that I had started on, had a press roller at the feeder end with a rope power cut off if you got caught. The girl that replaced me on that machine didn't respect it and got her fingers under the press, rolled them flat. God I can still hear her screams as the emt's removed the pressure from the press.

I just have too many concentration issues to work with machines that can maim you easily, which is why I just stick to computers.

 

[merylane]

Don't listen to 'em bug

you go right ahead acting like an aprentice potato head.
Really, work faster, cut a shaft in one day, build a butt from boards
to playing size in 2 days, I'm sure they will stay perfectly straight.

And you are right, we have meetings every week just to discuss
how we can hold you back from making cues. No one really
is worried that engaging in stupid, reckless behavior within
reach of powerfull machine tools indicates a criminal lack of judgement.

If you don't smarten up enough to get some training, and your attitude
indicates you will need a teacher with the patience of Job, the little
break you ask for won't be comming from the posters.

Dale Pierce<who is smart enough to know that the bug just enjoys
being annoying>

jut wait til he gets a BIG band saw

 

[jfscues]

bugs, it sounds like you're working with a piece of machinery that you're not trained on. You're seriously looking to get yourself hurt real bad!!

Have you ever wondered how difficult it would be to scratch your butt with no fingers?

tap,tap,tap

 

[cueman]

I believe the louder and shakier a machine is, the safer it is. When people operate a table saw or skill saw they seem to be very careful as they are aware that they can be dangerous and all the noise and saw dust flying around keeps the operators on their toes. The power tool in the shop that scares me the most is a band saw. It is so quite and timid looking that you can get careless around it and I have. For many years I did meat cutting and a band saw has no trouble with flesh and bone.

I've never mentioned this on a forum I don't believe but I have a brother one year younger than me. When he was 20 years old he worked with a printing press and one day he was cleaning a spot off of one of the ink rollers with a solvent rag. Simple operation done everyday in printing companies but this time the rag got caught. He didn't just lose a finger or a hand but both his arms were removed at the shoulders. Someone cut his shirt collar with a knife as it was cutting thru his neck as it went between the rollers. He has now spent the last 40 years with no arms and lucky to be alive over doing something simple on a machine that, if not respected, can be deadly.

Dick

A machinist once ran a piece of thin metal like 1/4" rod through his headstock and started making parts. The back caught some wobble and bent the few feet sticking out the back of the headstock and turned it into a propeller and sliced the guy from the top of his head all the way to his groin killing him pretty much instantly. Lathes can be dangerous. Another guy had his router catch his jacket sleeve and the router bit ate all the way into the bone behind his thumb. It dug a hole in his bone about half way through. Put him out of work for a good while.

 

[Tommy-D]

> Man I hope he listens. I was smart enough to enroll in a machinist's course because I want to survive,keep my hands AND make cues. My grandfather told me a story about an accident he partially witnessed,had to investigate, and report because he was the Senior Tool and Die supervisor for Goodyear Aerospace Division in Akron,as well as the man's URW union steward. The operator was said to be a genius as a machinist,but also had focus problems similar to ADD,as well as long hair. He was apparently incapable of standing still for very long,and would do things like walk around to the other side of the machine,or would fidget with his hands in his pockets if the length of the cut permitted. On this day,he was running a fairly large turret lathe that came off a WWII battleship,with a chuck diameter of about 16-18". He was facing off a large plate,according to the blueprint found at the scene the plate was 14.000,and had a flange on the back similar to a brake rotor,but solid all the way across. For whatever reason,he stood up on a plastic milk crate and was watching the cut from directly above. The chuck grabbed his hair while turning in a low gear at about 40rpm,flipped him over the machine by his hair and dragged him back between the chuck and the bed,and repeated a couple times before he got over there and stopped the machine. All he saw from about 30 feet away was what he initially thought was the "hippie" doing a cartwheel over the machine. It happened so fast the guy never made a sound either. He still to this day can't describe what the scene looked like,as you can imagine it killed him instantly. He's also the one that gave me the analogy of turning a machine like this into a grenade. As you can imagine,he saw a lot of things as the longest-tenured Tool and Diemaker in the company,just over 40 years. Tommy D.

 

[MVPCues]

Do we need a dedicated thread on what NOT to do with the various cuemaking equipment?

Having recently purchased a lathe myself, I greatly appreciate everyone's safety precautions, whether I have heard or read them already or not. Safety first....

Kelly

 

[gregoryg]

Dangers of using a lathe...

This thread is reminding me of my first machine shop class. First thing the teacher showed all of us new lathe rookies was the trophy case. It was a glass display case that contained what got pulled off of inattentive machine operators from previous classes. Among the trophies were pieces of clothing that were too loose to be near a spinning machine, and several lengths of hair that was not tied back, some of which still had parts of the victims scalp still attached. A gruesome but memorable warning of loose fitting clothes and untied hair.