o/t Hand grinder horror stories, who's got one?

I was doing the cylinder heads on an old Mustang. I lapped in the valves by hand and was just about to spray paint the heads. I had been wearing safety goggles all day. I noticed one little spot of rust that I missed so I grabbed my pneumatic die grinder with the wire wheel brush on the end. I figured one little hit and it would be good to go. I did it without the safety glasses on. One of the wires came loose and went right into my eyeball. It hurt like crazy. I went in the house and asked my wife to take a look. She said there was a piece of wire half in my eyeball. She wanted to pull it out but I wouldn't let her. She called Urgent Care and asked them if they could remove it. They said no problem. She drove me down there. When I got there, the guy said "Oh SH*T!" and he sent me to the ER. We drove to the hospital, they took one look and asked me if I wanted to take a helicopter ride. They wanted to send me straight to Stanford. I ended up taking the ambulance about 75 miles up to Stanford. By the time I got there, the wire had been completely sucked into the eyeball. They called in a Vitreoretinal Surgeon. His specialty is working on the retina with the eyeball in your head. He told me that the vision would be lost and the best he could hope for was to keep a real eyeball instead of a glass one. The next day they took off the bandages and I could see shadows. I missed 3 days of work, and now I have 20-30 vision in the eye. I lucked out. The only problem is I am a little sensitive to bright lights. ALWAYS wear your safety glasses!!!!!!

 

I had an early Makita 6" grinder (running a 36 grit disk) which did not have a dead-man switch, just an off/on switch that stayed on until you physically switched it off.
I was working on the rusted-out rockers of my boss's POS Mercedes, squatting cross-legged on the ground wearing nothing but cut-off shorts - caught an edge which ripped the grinder from my grasp and it proceeded to dance around in my lap - ripping out chunks of flesh with each contact as I tried to get away from it.
Still have scars all up & down my inner arms & legs more than 15 years later.
It tried to eat it's way through my shorts, but luckily it never got down to my pecker.

 

Thanks for all the gnarly pics! I'd post one of the scar on my hand i got from my 4.5" grinder but its nothing compared to the crap I've seen here! I'd just put my shop gloves on and started grinding something and it didn't register that I shoulda been wearing my thick leather gloves until after. It's small but I knew it was kinda deep cuz I could see all the fat? layers of skin? in my hand , some off white shit whatever it was.

Anyhow I've had a couple blow up in my face....working under the car....thank baby Jebus I was wearing a full face shield and not a scratch on me

I just don't feel comfrotable unless I have a full face shield on(but I don't always wear safety glasses underneath, I know I should)

and like I said I wear the heavy leather 'welding' gloves from harbor freight or any cheap leather gloves that are thick

and after reading these threads and not wanting my nuts cut off I try to be really concious of making sure that thing is OFF before I plug it in!

The other thing drummed in my head is when I'm in a hurry and want to take a shortcut(protection wise)...is THAT'S WHEN ACCIDENTS HAPPEN!!! I swear its like a tape starts playing...

 

Quite a few years ago I went out to the prototype shop where I was working. As I was coming up to the proto shop forman he was grinding some welds with a hand grinder. Just before I got to him he dropped the grinder and the wheel hit the floor and the grinder spun back up and the housing part caught him dead nuts (no pun) between the legs in the nuts. He immediately went to the floor not saying a word but tears were flowing like a river from his eyes. The paramedics took him to the hospital. He was out of work the rest of the week and the whole next week.

 

This scenario is my nightmare! Coulda happened to me anytime with those cheap ass HF grinders! Thanks for reminding me to wear an apron. Fuck!

Glad to hear it missed!

 

I've done the nail gun thing as well, dont have any pics of that though...

 

i was using a flat wire wheel attachment on the grinder to clean up some parts for my pickup, well stupidly, i was sitting down, the grinder slipped, caught on to my shoe, tore up my sock and luckily just skimmed the top of my foot. if i hadnt moved just alittle bit to try and prevent it, my foot would have been chewed up.

oh well, live and learn, I only lost one sock out of the deal. i can only imagine how bad it could have been.

 

I took the guard off my 4" cutoff wheel to get into a tight area. Three guesses what happened....

 

Not a hand grinder, but a 10HP, big rock, stationary grinder. This thing had 3x18", 24 grit rocks and was used to grind spring leafs.

One of our brainiac tire techs decided to dress up the end of a tire iron and went in the shop without approval. Held the tire iron VERTICALLY above the tool rest, got his glove caught against the rock, and that jammed his hand between the spinning rock and the now wedged tire iron.

In about 2 seconds it had totally ground away the side and two fingers of his left hand before he could get help. ewwwwww.

 

I had a friend slice his neck very baddly. He was under his truck cutting off the trailer hitch when the grinder got caught in his coat collar. The grinder was in the locked on position. It just kept working it's way up his neck. His wife saw it happen and called 911. Everytime I grab my Makita I think how dangerous it could be. When they kick back things can get scary real fast. A grinder with a basket type wire wheel can be nasty also.

 

I hate those, for some reason those hurt worse than big bloody stuff.

 

I call 4" high speed grinders the "death wheel" for a reason.

Almost cut my little finger off with one a few years ago, you can still see the black mark from the disc under the skin. That shit got my attention pretty quick.

Got my shirt wound up in a cup brush last year (or maybe year before last) cleaning undercoat off the bottom of a car. Felt like it was gonna strangle me but the shirt shredded first. Lost a little skin off my chest and for some reason it took forever to heal.

A big magnet (like from a speaker) can be used to pull little slivers of steel out of your eye. I used to do sheetmetal work and the first aid guy at our shop did it that way. You'll still need to go to the clinic though.

Oh yeah - when you're TIG welding, don't lay all over the (grounded) table, then spazz with the filler rod and let it touch the tungsten. That involuntary yelp from being electrocuted is kinda hard to play off in shop full of people.

 

A few years back I was trying to cut a piece of tubing off a motorcycle project and the grinder kicked back and caught me in the face and broke my safety glasses and cut up the left side of my face JUST below my eye, 2hours waiting in the ER and luckly they had a plastic surgion on call- 75 stiches, looks ok now but I still have a blue hue in the scar area. A face shield would have better!

 

Grinding rivets down on my 60 F100. I was wearing safety glasses but one rivet was about half gone and shot off the frame hit me between the eyes just above the glasses. I looked like a Quikie Mart guy for about a week.

 

Ha... I just got 5 stitches in my knuckle last week from a cutoff wheel in a 41/2" grinder cuting the sraps off of an old A rear spring. It wasnt so much the cut as it was the bone sticking out thru it when I bent my finger. We have nick named this tool the "Man Killer"

 

ive nicked my hands and arms on griders and cut off wheels but the one that hurt the most was when i was takin the seats out of my brothers wreacked car i got the front buckets un bolted and was having a hard time gettin oue to slide out so i did the screw and try yankin out approach well needless to say i found the busted windshield with my middle finger on my right hand all the way to the bone through the nail bed took the nail off and darn near the whole tip of my finger lucky enough there was enough left they were able to get the end of my finger back together its got a flat spot now and not much feeling but i still have it.......just goes to show how sharp glass is

 

Add me to the list of "grinding wheel exploded" victims. Bench mounted grinder with a 6" disc. Been using it for years. Finished sharpening up a chisel and went to flip the switch behind the grinder *BOOM* the wheel let go. Chunk caught the meat of my palm and broke the bone in there I'm sure. Never got it looked at but it was pretty much useless for a while. Since it didn't bleed I didn't put it at the top of my worry list. Thumb moves a little funny now though.

 

one time i was cutting off a bolt head,had my hat on the ground, unknown to me the red hot cut off bolt had flown into my hat, got up slapped my hat on my head and started cussing, had a big red mark on my forehead for a long time, I didn't know a cap could fly as far as it did. I've been lucky operating angle grinders, I always always wear a face shield with safety glasses and gloves. I pay special attention to where my hands are to the grinder at all times, and never set the thing down until it stops turning. Some people give me a hard time for being so careful but the things can potentially kill you.

 

I was working on thanksgiving last year when a grinding disk exploded and a piece that looked like an arrowhead hit me in the cheak so hard I fell over... I reached up and felt it sticking out, with blood pouring down my face... I knew I was in trouble! so I ran into the house covering my face as best as possible and doctored it up in the bathroom... a little super glue and away I went... 2 inches long, but somehow no scar! I think I missed my calling as a plastic sugeon. Damit! and I love fake boobs too!

 

I had some of that brown shell stuff from eating popcorn stuck in a tooth once, for like 5 mins.

 

I've been told to stay the hell away from my bench grinder. I was grinding an ax with the sharp end up (dumb, I know) and in a split second it caught, drove the dull end of the ax into my chest (hard!) and broke the wheel. I had safety glasses on, thankfully, as a hunk of wheel hit my safety glasses right at my cheek bone. It busted open my cheek, but my eye was good.
Another time I caught my hand in the wire bristle wheel and took off a nice patch of skin. My hand looks like a burn scar from that one.

Bench grinders = bad

 

I had 7 stitch's put in my hand after a grinding fiasco, was 70' in air on a lift. The spookiest was a router, doing a climb cut when it caught my sleeve and wound up in it all the way to my neck. Was a 3 hp router, I figureatly crapped my pants and left job for rest of day. No more long sleeves when using power tools

 

Had a 10" "Mickey" winding about 10,000 RPM get away from a co-worker and fileted my left forearm 20 years ago. Got a V shaped scar 3-1/2" on a side, nicked a couple tendons and missed the bone by one layer of tissue. Kind of numb inside the V, hurts like Hell when the weather changes and lost about 10% of the strength in it. Didn't feel a thing when it happened and never bled a drop, as mentioned by someone else it cauterized on it's way through my arm......... A few hours later it was a very differnet story. It was almost 8 months before I could fully straighten it again.

 

No hand grinder story here but I did drop a tailgate on my toe. It squished the meat out the side and I danced around like a little girl because I was in so much pain. I pulled my shoe off and my dad almost puked. weinee. I now have a tendency to be careful around tailgates. I would show a picture but in the heat of the moment, no one would look to take a pic.