What's the most stupid thing you've done in woodworking?

[Distinterior]

An early woodworking accident happened to me when I was 14 in 1974......Back then, I used to build balsa wood models. I was trying to cut a small notch in a bit of quite tough 40mm square balsa with a Stanley knife with a brand new blade in it.....I was resting the balsa on my leg and as I tried to make the cut, the knife slipped off the end of the wood as I pulled it towards myself....Blade went through my Jeans and cut a DEEP slice into my leg.....No blood initially, and you could see right into my leg.
I went and told my Mum, who had little sympathy if I'm honest....She then bandaged me up as the blood was flowing big time by now, and then she made me walk with her the 1/2 mile to the Doctors surgery...by the time I got there, the bandage was absolutely soaked......6 stitches later, the only ones I've ever had, I still have the scar as a reminder to use tools in the manner they were designed for.

 

[Phil Russell]

About 40 years ago I made our son a (very solid) modular cabin bed ... 6'6" bed on top of cupboards, bookcase at one end and ladder to get into bed. Yes, it was modular but when the time came I could not get the cupboard part upstairs as it would not go round a bend. Oh how my wife and daughter laughed.
Cupboard dismantled and rebuilt to a new design was the result.
I remember that when our son graduated to a 'proper bed' when we moved house, we sold the cabin bed for a very good price.
Cheers, Phil

 

[jcassidy]

Using a powered polisher, turned the wrong way, and got the cord wrapped around the spindle. 110v plug whiplashed into my groin. Thankfully after half and hour laying on the workshop floor crying softly to myself, I felt much better.

 

[JAW911]

Years ago I worked for a salmon smokery. The process started at the ‘wet end’ where the fish were filleted by hand using extremely sharp straight-bladed filleting knives. For fun the young ‘Samurai warriors’ would stab the stacked-up empty polystyrene fish boxes. Unfortunately one of the boxes still had its narrow steel packing band around it which stopped the blade......sadly the guy’s hand didn’t stop and slid all the way to the box. Luckily no fingers lost but cuts to the bine in all four. All knives were instantly replaced for versions with bolsters fitted which would have saved his fingers.
Personally my most worrying involved the mezzanine floor in my garage. I set up a step ladder to get up there but had to clamber across sideways to climb onto the floor. One time, dressed in slippers, on the phone with it held in the crook of my neck, I tried this and almost made it. Slippers did what it says on the tin and I fell, landing on my back on my lawn mower. I lay there thinking that’s going to hurt shortly......but no pain came at all and I thought the worst. But no damage to me except a small hole in my jeans. Close call which reminded me I was still on the phone to a customer who was talking all way through and none the wiser!

 

[Doris]

Making a garden seat out of Ash

 

[Jonzjob]

I was almost the victim of a right muppet when I was on a disk course. I was a mainframe hardware engineer for IBM and on this course we were sorting out a power problem on this cabinet. A 3ø power supply and the muppet wanted to check that all 3 phases were there so he checked 2 of them by strapping a mains tester screwdriver across 2 of them. There was a blinding flash and everything went quiet in the not so small room! It had blown the main breaker off of the wall.

Anyway, a couple of hours later we were back in the class room and I still had spots in front of my eyes and I took my glasses off to clean them. I found that one of those spots was a neat little round ball of metal burnt in to the lens. It had been blown off of the terminal during the BANG! Those glasses had saved my eye as it was right in the middle of the lens but as my bad luck would have it they weren't safety glasses. If they had been safety jobbies i would have had a £1000 award from IBM and another £1000 from the Golden Eye Award for an accident being saved with safety glasses.

IBM paid for my safety glasses and suddenly realised that they would be paying for a lot of other pairs too as we engineers rarely had them. I have worn them ever since and they are my main glasses.

Edit : -
I have just had a look back at the title of the thread and I realise my story is nowt to do with wood working, but the safety glasses most definately are so please forgive the off thread post.

 

[alex_heney]

There is an amazing number of nasty accidents that have occured over the years but most were not accidents in the true sense, they are what is classed as preventable incidents.

Accident does not mean what you seem to think it does.

It does not mean unpreventable, it just means unintended.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/accidenthttps://www.dictionary.com/browse/accident

 

[Jetset]

Not using a push block on my first planer was the stupid thing, many many years ago.

The good thing was that the first ambulance arrived within about 3 minutes but were going off shift so once they found the injury wasn’t life threatening did first aid, and a second ambulance came about 5 minutes later who took over.
Then My local A&E was closed so I got taken to the main neurosurgical centre for the southeast U.K. that happened to be the next nearest A&E. The end result being that instead of having a finger shortened I had an in-place flesh graft (by a consultant ) that gives me a strange finger print and eventually I now have virtually full sensitivity.

Ouch! Where’s the main neurosurgical centre for SE England?

 

[Spectric]

Hi

The reason accidents are classed as preventable incidents is that then there is somewhere to lay blame, someone was responsible and actions can be taken to reduce the risk of that hazzard reocurring.

 

[sploo]

Using a router table whilst tired, and trying to trim the inside of an MDF ring by running the outside of the ring against the fence (i.e. material between the bit and the fence - a major "no no").

The hospital story is a whole comedy in its own right, but safe to say I have one slightly shorter thumb, and a lesson that's stayed with me for life.

 

[Austin Branson]

A few years ago I ran a woodwork course for a few friends, no charge, and I introduced them to a number of tools. One evening, one of the guys walked over to the sliding compound mitre saw, placed his wood on the table, started the saw with his right hand, then held down the right hand end of the wood with his left hand............I shouted so loud he nearly jumped out of his skin, but it stopped him cutting his arm off.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Ouch! Where’s the main neurosurgical centre for SE England?

Well it has probably changed by now as this was about 45 years ago I no longer remember the name or exact location of the hospital but it was probably Harefield hospital, they don’t have A&E now but still does neurosurgery. They claim “The hospital is one of the largest and most experienced centres in the world for heart and lung transplants.”

this is the non gory strange fingerprint result of the option I chose, almost all other hospitals would have just shortened the finger, sometimes you can be in the correct place a the correct time.

 

[Linus]

I do the most stupid thing every day.... I use a lathe, chopsaw, bandsaw and numerous other sharp things....and I'm on anticoagulants

 

[Doug71]

I think I could add to this everyday at the moment, this one doesn't involve any blood or gore it's just an "I should know better"

I went to do a bit of a fix on a friends gates a couple of days ago, pair of drive gates, BFL construction, curved top rail. I made them probably 20 years ago, they are looking a bit sorry although it doesn't look like they have had any more stain then the original coat of Sikkens I put on them.

The only fix I was doing was putting a new capping piece on the top as the original had rotted away, I soon found the top of the gates were quite rotten and there wasn't much to fix down to especially at the ends. The tops of the tenons had rotted away so I cut out a kind of slot so I could fix in a piece of 2x1 about 10" long a bit like a loose tenon, would strengthen the joint and give me something to fix down to. The 2x1 was a nice friction fit so I covered everything in PU glue and tapped in the 2x1, said I would come back next day to fit the capping when the glue had set.

I turned up yesterday morning to find a nice little mountain of foam about 3" high on top of the gate with the 2x1 sat on top of that, as the glue expanded it had pushed the lose tenon up and out, I did feel a bit stupid, I re did it but this time put a screw in to hold it in place while the glue set

 

[britinfrance]

Back in the 70s, with very little spare cash, I bought some CK cutters which were for putting in a drill mounted in a drill press to achieve router type cuts, milling of edges and tongue and grooving etc. With drill mounted I pushed some stubborn wood [probably more the inefficient cutter] through the cutter, when the wood skipped forward taking my thumb inbetween the cutter and the wood, bringing the drill to a standstill. Quickly killed the power, then by hand, had to turn the cutter in reverse to extract my thumb. I had cut to the bone, the hand towel was red and dripping by the time I got to A & E. Must have been in shock as I have no recollection of the treatment. Fortunately eventually healed without longlasting effects - never used those cutters again - can still see the scars to this day. (Counted my blessings)

 

[peter-harrison]

Here's mine!

 

[marcros]

Most Stupid thing I’ve done is buying Axminster brand machines, an expensive mistake.

really, I have several older Axminster white machines, aimed at professionals (I am not) and I have found them to be solid machines?

 

[stuckinthemud]

Owch, how?

 

[alex_heney]

Hi

The reason accidents are classed as preventable incidents is that then there is somewhere to lay blame, someone was responsible and actions can be taken to reduce the risk of that hazzard reocurring.

Absolutely.

But "preventable incidents" are a (large) subset of "accidents".

 

[billw]

Absolutely.

But "preventable incidents" are a (large) subset of "accidents".

If you take preventable instances out of accidents, what’s left exactly? I mean surely every accident could have been prevented?

I watched one of those programmes about the air ambulance and it went to a car accident where the driver had been impaled through the chest by a pole.

So - stronger windscreens, better fencing, lower speed limits, make all metal things out of jelly....