On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:04:36 -0500, Ignoramus3537
wrote:

On 2010-07-13, Gunner Asch wrote:

I had a 3/4 HP..yes..three quarter horsepower hand drill once upon a
time. Damned thing weighed about 10 lbs and would not turn much over 200
rpm. Huge gear box on the front of the drill...

But when you hung the bit...there simply was no way to stop it from
twisting. I put 18" bars on it..and it would still twist anyone who was
hanging on to it.

Guy came over..wanted to borrow a drill to punch a hole under the bed of
his pickup truck for some reason and I told him where the drills were
and kept on working on my project. About 10 minutes later..I kept
hearing this funny sounding "kitten sound" and went looking for the
source.

Found the guy under his pickup, wrapped up in 100' of extension cord,
wrapped up like a bug, wide clear spot in the dirt from where it spun
him around and around and around, after it wrapped his hands around the
drill.

The sqeeking noise was him trying to scream for help..but the cord had
wrapped around his neck and he was having some trouble breathing....

Got out the wire cutters....

The thing was..Id told him on several occasions to NEVER use that
particular drill. Ever. Never. He was fascinated by the 3/4" Jacobs on
the end of it.....damned near killed him.

I eventually sold the drill to a professonal shop who put it into an in
house made clamp on drilling rig for some field use.

I loved the drill..simply because it appealed to my "More Power! Huh
HUH!" side...but..shrug..it was simply too damned dangerous to have
aound a home shop

So, how did it happen exactly?

I have hard times picturing the exact chain of events here, starting
from when the drill became stuck.

This sounds perfectly plausible... once upon a time the bit stuck, and
at the very same instant the guy caught sight of a 2' centipede.
Startled, his finger clenched the trigger instead of letting go. Then
the drill started to rotate him like a will-it-blend test, and his
panicked death grip caused him to become unified with his tool.
Unfortunately he was using one of those popular 100' cords that allows
one to neatly unravel every last coil before it pulls out of the
socket. Thank goodness gummer the magnificent was there to save him,
and they all lived happily ever after.

It happens that I have a similar story. A friend wanted to bore some
big holes in his trailer. I handed him my fearsome wrist-busting 1/2"
Makita, and warned him to keep clear of the side handle in case the
bit snagged. About 30 seconds later it did, and he held on snapping
the bit clean off. Dang, that doesn't sound very interesting, does it?
begin absurd embellishment So then I welded his hand to the trailer,
and told him that if he ratted me out I'd drive 8 million miles to
hunt him down and use his carcass to build a pinata filled with razor
blades and acetone. Which I'd flail with barbed wire that was covered
in the putrid hair of a cow that died of...

Wayne