What's the dumbest thing you've ever done or seen done with a power tool?

[billyboy]

A friend of mine who was a high school metal shop teacher told me about catching a couple of his students taking a cutting torch to the oxygen tank that was supplying it. Fortunately for the other kids and the teacher, the two idiots hadn't been at it long before he caught them. They explained that" they could not find any scrap to practice on and this(the tank) look like a willing subject". This must have been a case of circumvented possible Darwin award candidates.

[Dantilla]

Dangit you guys!

I've framed lots of houses, torn Porsches apart, worked with all kinds of power tools, needing no more than an occasional band-aid. Now I'm afraid to step into my own garage!

[86 911]

This one happened about 4 years ago when I was 12. My dad and I were working on cutting a pile of branches out in the back yard, and I was using the chainsaw. Well, since the chainsaw required oiling every once in a while, I saw some sawdust and some specs of wood near the blade of the saw and in the oil. With the blade still running (very stupid), I reached down to wipe off the oil/saw dust with my middle finger. The chain then caught my finger and ripped the skin off and some of my finger nail! It hurt like hel!.
Next one is pretty funny, although it did not happen to me, but to my classmate Jeremy. Now Jeremy is pretty stupid (as well as on drugs) so half of the time he does not know what he is doing. Well, the woodshop teacher introduces us to the drill press, and tells each one of us to drill a hole in our practice wood. Now, I'm behind Jeremy, and it's his turn on the drill press. He starts the machine up and starts to drill, but he was not holding the wood well enough and the wood starts spinning with the bit! He quickly jumps out of the way and hides behind a door while I quickly get ahold of the machine and stop it. From this day, he says: "Remeber, Matt, when you saved my life that day when we were on the drill press?" LOL. Too funny.

[david.avery]

Heh, I have two.

One, while welding a new susp pan and longs in a rusty 71 911E I had years ago, I was wearing work jeans that had become threadbare in the crotch. Dry white cotton fibers, you know.

Well, some slag dripped on me while I was doing it, but I wasn't aware of anything but a little heat... it was after all a hot day. I smelled something odd burning, but different than the steel I was welding. I had set my crotch on fire, a good one. Luckily I'm a boxer guy, there was another layer there

The other isn't really a power tool mishap, but it's close. I was laying a new parquet floor in a room in my house, which got messy with the contact adhesive. I didn't realize it, but a lot of it had accumulated on my pants. I stooped to look at the floor, which was starting to go crooked, and rested the backs of my arms on my lap as I stooped.

Wham, glued my arms to my pants. Hot shower to seperate!

[Porschekid962]

I cut my finger tip off in a self closing door when I was 8 or so. Now my middle finger on my left hand is a good 1/4 inch longer than the right haha. At school in the shop I was using the rotary sander when I stop and look up to see a cloud of pink in the air. The kid using the 24inch disc sander had taken off all the skin on his palm and there ya go, pink clouds.

Do motorcycles count? Took off two fingernails, skin to the bone on two fingers, burned my back on the exhaust pipe, friends still wont let me forget it and all because of a defective tyre, no it wasnt a michelin. What pisses me off more is that I was given a 2002 gsxr 750 today and i want to ride it oh so badly haha.

Not a big injury but it was very funny. In the spray booth at school someone was painting without enough sleep. He unwittingly thought the gun was empty and was going to blow himself down with the cold air. What he got was a nice new skin color, lamborghini metallic lime green hahahaha.

[M.D. Holloway]

First Job out of school - working in process development for a co that makes polyurethane foam for the auto industry. I was rebuilding a foam machine - a Martin-Sweets. The various componants are injected into a mix head at real high pressures and sent out the bottom. The mix head travels anywhere from 1000 to 10,000 rpms, depending what your trying to acheive.

I took the case off and started the machine in order to see if the mix elements where spinning correctly, forgot to turn off the feed streams and all the componants shot out at anywhere from 500psi to 2000 psi. Fortunitly it was cycled for a short run (5 second burst), when it stopped I went to check it out but I forgot about the solvent flush - 2 liters of MEK powerwashed my chest and "lower". Oh waht a cooooool feeling.

After visting the safety shower, I decided to change the mix element but forgot to replace a bottom bolt. I did remember to turn off the feed streams though. I started the machine and it sent the mix element flying about 200 feet into another section where some other engineer was doing a demp presentation for GM.

I was reassigned to R&D the following week!

[RoninLB]

small, non structural, multi room second story house fire. The experienced ladder guy with a chainsaw was supposed to only vent one room from the outside. Not cut thru the perimeter stringer between 1st and 2nd floor. A routine re-do changed into structural. Law suit on that one.

[RickM]

Here's how I was almost decapitated.....

A few years ago I was opening the pool ('cause I'm too cheap to pay someone $500 to do it)...anyway, all is setup and ready to go. So I think.
I turn the filter/pump on and I see the pressure buliding in the large stainless steel filter tank via the guage.
I'm thinking to myself "Wow, the pressure is building really fast and way higher than I remember." What the Fu....#@&* BA BOOOOOM @#&^%.
I had neglected to open the gate valves for the return lines!
This 4 foot tall steel vessel exploded at it's seam and launched like a rocket. I was mere inches away. About 20 seconds later I hear it land in a neighbor's yard several hunder feet away.

[johnco]

I used to ride my brother from the hook from our cherry picker. all good fun until he slammed his head into the barge we were building when the cherry picker tire went into a hole. try slamming your ear into a solid plate of steel at a high rate of speed. or the time I sat him on the headache ball of the crane and would dip him into the river. problem was the ball dropped alot faster than I could pick it up. when the hook came up covered in mud, I think I might have gone a tad too deep with him. he was a good spark checker for a while too. "Here, hold this wire while I crank". we haven't talked in years for some reason

[masraum]

Man! Seriously. You just need to stop. You need a job stuffing cotton balls into bags or something.

It's amazing that you aren't the holder of a Darwin award already.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by LubeMaster77
I was reassigned to R&D the following week!

Brillant way to get a head.

[johnco]

Darwin Awards? I've probably come close several times, I've done some stupid things. I've got some interesting scars on almost every part of my body. and plenty of stories. I live a dangerous life, mostly by my own doing I would say. you should see the pics of the slab of meat I cut off my calf a few years ago. while sewing me up, the emergency Doc said it was the second worst cut he had seen in his career. he brought in the whole staff to see. he should have seen my arm and leg from the lawnmower incident.

[wludavid]

Originally posted by dhoward
Only on this board could you read a sentence like that and not raise an eyebrow....
"There are eels in my hovercraft"

I don't mean to nitpick, but it's "my hovercraft is full of eels."

[M.D. Holloway]

Originally posted by kach22i
Brillant way to get a head.

I'm actually not that stupid, at least not anymore. Back then I actually did stuff. Now, I just sit around and waste time on this silly board! Worse thing that can happen is a blister on the finger or my leg will fall asleep.

That mishap actually helped me in a weird sort of way - the other young guy with the same background I started with is still doing process development work in the plant.

[masraum]

What no more. There have to be more.

[gassy]

I have a kerfed left thumb tip as well. When it happened, my glasses got sprayed completely with blood--thought I cut my thumb right off.

[johnco]

standing on a ladder, drilling a self drilling self tapping screw into 3/8ths plate hanging a computer screen on a drug interdiction boat, the screw finally broke through and tightened down on my finger holding the mount before I could let off on the drill. of course, because of the instant pain of having my finger crushed, I dropped the drill. now I am standing there with my finger screwed to the wall above my head, the drill is on the floor where I can't reach it, and no one else is in the room. after following the yelling, someone finds me at last.. but before handing me the drill, they had to go get the rest of the crew to come check out the idiot screwed to the wall. I glad it wasn't lunch time. I would have been hanging there for quite a while

[BlueSkyJaunte]

I'm lazy, so I always stop doing dangerous stuff when I get tired. Thankfully I haven't had any run-ins with power equipment when I'm fatigued.

However, that doesn't save me from my own stupidity.

Just a couple of months ago I was trying to enlarge a hole in my motorcycle frame. Didn't have the right equipment so I used a carbide cutting bit in my Dremel. End result: billions and billions of nearly-microscopic steel needles all over the garage. They stick to (and into) everything. How I didn't get any in my eyes I'll never know. I vacced it all up but I still have a few in my fingers though. Irritating as hell.

Not life-threatening, but stupid.

[craigster59]

Back when I did construction, I was framing a wall and was cutting 2x4's the "framer" way (resting board across your left instep and cutting to size with the blade gaurd wedged back). I was wearing loose Army camo pants and when I brought the Skilsaw up after making the cut, the blade caught my pants at the knee and zinged all the way up my thigh to my crotch. I immediatly dropped my drawers on the spot ( the camo pants were'nt the only thing I was doing "commando style" that day) and had little red blood dots running from my knee all the way to my crotch. I never wedged the blade gaurd back since.

[pwd72s]

I've been pretty lucky, generally speaking. My latest "owie" was chewing up my left hand with a small electric chain saw. My own stupidity...holding a 2" dia. branch in my left hand, trimming it to kindling length with the saw in my right. My new rule is to treat a little electric chain saw the same as a gas powered one. Respect mixed with a healthy fear. Think before you cut! No fingers lost, just a long time without the use of a left hand. Most power tool mishaps are really a case of brain fade...usually happens when you start to tire, but still want to finish the job. IMO, that's when you should set the tool down, take a break.