I still have the nick in my wedding ring that almost lost me a finger. Got
it while surfing (actually, while "trying" to surf) wthout a leash on the
board. Had a wipeout, grabbed for the board, and a fin caught my ring. Since
theboard & I were going in opposite directions with a few tons of seawater
pushing, it was quite painful.

"Tim Carver" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 06:37:36 GMT, "Mark Jerde"
wrote:

g Sorry, my practical experience is different. The extension cords on
the ceiling reduce a tripping hazard that existed when I ran them on the
floor Ideally, of course, I'd have outlets wherever needed. But the
panel
and subpanel are maxed out. When I rewire the house I have to get a
bigger
cable from the power company.

Mark -

You're making my point very well :-) We all do things that might not
be textbook-perfect from time to time. You've just given an example
of where you've done something that improves your safety situation,
even though you are doing something which is still technically a
no-no. Even though it improves your situation and is perfectly safe
in this case, there are a whole raft of passages in the NEC that make
what you are doing not quite kosher. But again, I'm not saying
there's anything really wrong with your cords on the ceiling, they are
certainly safer there than on the floor - but dedicated outlets would
be neater and safer.

Personally, I think that if you're close enough to a tablesaw blade
that the ring matters, you'll soon have no fingers left, ring or no
ring. And I'm sorry, but the kickback scenario where the ring got
smashed just seems extremely unlikely - if you set yourself up for
that kind of kickback, you could just as easily be killed by a board
through the throat or something.

On the other hand (couldn't resist :-)) I can imagine cases where
wearing a ring in the shop would be dangerous. My brother was a
welder and maintenance supervisor at International Harvester. Nobody
wore rings in his department. This may be a myth, but they were told
that there had been an instance of a guy falling off of a steel
I-beam, catching his ring on the edge as he tried to grab the beam to
save himself, and having the skin completely ripped off of his ring
finger as his entire body weight hung from the ring caught on the
beam. Nobody was quite sure if this was true, but they all chose
to not wear rings, because it seemed like something that could
actually happen to even a reasonably careful person. This is very
unlike the ring-around-the-tablesaw question, which requires several
concurrent stupid decisions in order for an accident to occur.



Tim Carver