I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?
A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

"Toller" wrote in message
...
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since
no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

He's got to be a complete moron to make such an irresponsible and inaccurate
statement.


I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported.

Probably because lathes are not as widely used as table saws, bandsaws,
jointers, etc.

The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?

Yes, especially with inexperienced turners. Sufficiently heavy catches can
also break tool rests and steel turning tools. Other dangers include loose
clothing, jewelry, and long hair getting caught on the workpiece or spindle.

A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal
frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

Even though it's fairly thin, the shield has a radius to it, so a flying
object is more likely to be deflected away than result in a full-force
impact as a flat surface would.

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

I personally find dust masks annoying and don't use them much, but I often
pay for it with a couple hours of coughing and sneezing afterwards. Other
turners take dust more seriously and wear breathing apparatus resembling
full hazmat suits.

B.

There's a maxim I've heard: "Never chuck anything on a lathe that you
wouldn't want to get hit in the head by", or something like that. Those
thin faceshields can do a pretty fair job of deflecting/dissipating
most of the energy of a thrown workpiece, but I still wear safety
glasses under my shield. Call me chicken. Tom
Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?
A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

Toller wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable,
since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

snip

Pardon me for being so gross, but the guy is a ****ing idiot.

You are working around rotating machinery.

A little common sense goes a long way.

No ties, jewelery, loose clothing, exposed beards or long hair that is
not tucked into a net.

Follow Norm's advice, wear a full face mask.

They are low cost and should be in stock at your local WW Grainger.

Lew

Wed, Nov 29, 2006, 4:46am (EST+5) (Toller) doth
tentatively state:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; snip

Sounds like your instructor is an idiot.

You should be asking woodturning questions at
news:rec.crafts.woodturning instead of here.

I wear a face shield. It's better than nothing if a piece lets
loose, and it keeps the small bits off your face and out of your eyes.
I wear a dust mask too, because it's dusty.



JOAT
Democratic justice. One man, one rock.

"Toller" wrote in
:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable,
since no one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

snip

I've been working with wood for my whole life, and seriously, as in
furniture making, for the last six or seven years, as a hobby. I bought a
lathe 18 months ago, and have turned some interesting pieces, bowls, etc.
up to 14" in size.

I had a nasty catch a couple of days after Labor Day, and the scraper
managed to catch me in the left hand, at the base of the second finger. I
wore a major bandage for 6 weeks, and only in the last couple of weeks have
I been comfortable wearing my wedding ring again. The scar doesn't show
too badly.

Nobody ever gets hurt, but I did. And I was very lucky that's all that
happened. I nearly passed out from the shock.

BTW, the bowl is still mounted on the lathe. It's finished now, but it's
still out there.

Be careful.

Patriarch

Toller, head on over to rec.crafts.woodturning and check out the
group. More than you could imagine about woodturning over there, and
some really stellar turners. Many are very generous with their time
and ideas and some have gotten to be friends (the kind that drink
coffee!) over the years. Lots of talk about injuries from time to
time; some serious, and some just scare the crap out of you.

I turn a lot on Jet minis, and when I get going on a turning jag, I
might turn for a few hours a day, 5 days a week. This nonsense has
been going on for several years. Two years ago I was deep hollowing
(yup.. entire possible on a Jet mini) when my bowl gouge caught on a
twisty piece of grain I had uncovered by peeling away the insides of
the vessel. It rolled the gouge over and smashed my finger so hard I
thought it was broken. It turned kinda black and hurt like hell, but
that was it. My wrist was sore for about a week.

Flying wood has shot off the lathe (for different reasons) at such
great velocity that it has left the lathe and embedded in the garage
wall. I have had smaller pieces leap to their freedom (only to find
themselves in the burn pile) and not hit the deck for about 15 feet.
According the the spinners on that group, you can achieve aboutg 70 mph
of velocity under the right conditions, and the have the math to prove
it. I believe them.

So how would your instructor react to being hit in his unprotected face
with a piece of rough, spinning wood weighing a few POUNDS going 70
mph? If you persue this, you should join local club. They will help
you keep straight.

Always wear a dust mask, even a paper N95 is better than nothing. You
will be standing right over your work all the time breathing wood dust.
Always wear a full face mask. The ONLY time I wear goggles is when it
is my turn to demo, or if I am teaching. No other time.

And as far as no one getting hurt... click the link in the message
below and see what you think. Many thanks to Owen Lowe, who tracked
this down for us.

Robert

************************************************** **********

Owen Lowe


Northwest Woodturners
Pacific Northwest Woodturning Guild
___
Tips fer Turnin': Place a sign, easily seen as you switch on your
lathe, warning you to remove any and all rings from your fingers.
Called degloving, extended hardware can grab your ring and rip it off
your finger. A pic for the strong of stomach:
www.itim.nsw.gov.au/go/objectid/2A3AC703-1321-1C29-70B067DC88E16BFC/i...

Just a follow up. The pic didn't happen while a guy was turning, but
stories abound in the spinning community of things like that. No
watches, rings or hair should be hovering around an object spinning at
5000 rpms.

I can be breathtaking to just freehand a tool into something like
that... imagine getting caught...

Ouch!

Robert

Toller wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work.

Generally that's a good idea -

The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe.

- unless the instructor is dangerous. Sounds like yours was.

I wonder how true that is.

You're holding a sharp tool, applying it to a spinning piece of
wood of uncertain soundness, turned by a quarter horse to
a horse and a half and you've probably got chips of wood
or ribbons of wood flying around. That's if the piece of wood
starts out balanced and you've got the rpms below where things
start to vibrate or rock around. Does this sound like a place
to be careless and assume you're completely safe, no matter
what you do?

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported.

Check to obituaries. Look for man killed from blunt trauma - may
include unexplained discovery of large chunk of wood on the dented
hood of the car in the driveway and the mysterious hole in the garage
roof.

The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds.

Haven't turned above 1200 rpms so I have no personal experience

Does that happen much?

A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

Probably lexan or other polycarbonate - pretty unbreakable unlike
regular plastic. Protects your eyes from flying wood chips and
could distribute the force or a larger flying piece of wood.

I don't use a face shield often but that's because I've got a mini/
midi lathe (JET) and my glasses are polycarb. A face shield if
you don't want to wear safety glasses would be a good idea.
Getting a chip out of your eye ain't always easy.

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

Maybe, but the smart one, unlike myself.

charlie b

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:46:08 GMT, "Toller" wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Certainly people can and do get hurt on a lathe, especially if they
wear loose-fitting clothing. Now a lathe itself isn't going to cut
your arm off, but it can certainly cause serious bruising, fractures
and even breaks if your sleeve gets caught when it's spinning and
pulls you into the work.

A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

That's probably more of a concern than bodily damage, having a piece
come apart at high revolutions and hit you. A face shield is
manditory when using a lathe and I'd recommend a dust mask, at least
when working with materials that might be toxic or hazardous (I do it
all the time, but that's just me.)

Most of the shields out there are strong enough to withstand small
pieces of wood hitting them at high speed. I've seen some really
extreme shields, made of thick Lexan and the like, but I think that's
probably overkill for most people's needs.

Face Shield

I've got the one you see Norm wearing.

North KHG5001, $15.84 as shown in Grainger CAT 394. (An old CAT)

Add about 10-15% to be safe.

Lew

Others have expressed themselves quite succinctly regarding the sagacity
of your instructor and I fully concur with them.

But let me add a short note on lung protection.

I have a shop-built air cleaner that I calculate (back of the lunch bag
numbers) filters my shop air roughly 3 times a minute. Yeah ... that's a
pretty noticeable breeze! I have a stack of three filters. The first is
a normal 79 cent furnace filter that grabs stuff that would have settled
out of the air if I weren't stirring it up so much. The second, a 5
micron filter, gets the air clean-looking ... that is, if it was the
final filter, I'd be fooled into thinking that my air was clean. The
third filter is rated to pass nothing bigger then 0.3 microns. Thats
smaller than dust. Smaller than bacteria. Smaller, even, than some viruses.

With that much air filtration, you'd think that dirty air would be the
least of my concerns, eh?

But I still wear a 1/2 mask respirator (~$26 at Harbor Freight) because
I am closer to where the dust is generated than the filter is ... so my
lungs get first dibs on it.

There is an older carpenter that I know. He provided well for his family
and retired with a workshop bigger than my house and yard combined. But
he never wore so much as a dust mask.

He's doing well to get 2 or 3 words out between coughs.

Lathe work generates a lot of dust to go with the shavings.
You do the math.

Bill

--
Political Correctness relies on the presumption that it is possible to
pick up a turd by the clean end. -- Me, 2006

Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.


There are occasional injuries. I would worry about the thing catching my
clothes and pulling me in.


I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?


I don't think so.


A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?


It's probably OK. Your mask doesn't have to deflect a bullet. It's going to
both deflect and spread an impact out over a larger area, reducing its effect.
It also keeps the crap from flying into your eyes all the time.


I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.


That would be the inside of your lungs otherwise. I wear eye and lung
protection when there's stuff flying around to get me. If it's noisy I wear
hearing protection as well. If I had known way back I was going to live so
long, I'd have taken better care of myself back in the days when I thought I was
bulletproof.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

In article , "Toller" wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Completely false. I remember an especially gruesome incident described
either here, or on rcw, a number of years ago in which a long-haired turner
failed to tie his hair back, and managed to get a pretty hefty lock of it
wrapped around the spinning workpiece. I'll leave the results to your
imagination, which likely isn't going to be any worse than the reality.

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?

Never to me, but it has happened. Why not post in rcw (rec.crafts.woodturning)
and see what folks there have to say. It seems to me that this is a problem
mostly with bowl turning, where the workpiece is of a fairly large diameter
and often being turned with the axis of the grain perpendicular to the lathe
bed. If all you do is spindle turnings (e.g. pens, candlesticks, baseball
bats, chair rungs, table legs, etc.) this is a fairly low risk.

A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

Good enough -- and a lot better than simply goggles. I've said it before, and
I'll say it again: there are other things on your face besides your eyes that
are worth protecting. Teeth, for instance.

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

Then it would seem that you have more sense than the others. Without the mask,
the stuff that's making it dirty would be making your lungs dirty instead.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
That would be the inside of your lungs otherwise. I wear eye and lung
protection when there's stuff flying around to get me. If it's noisy I
wear hearing protection as well. If I had known way back I was going to
live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself back in the days when I
thought I was bulletproof.


Pretty rare, injuries at a lathe. As far as life-threatening injuries, it's
safer than walking across the street, certainly. Potential is there for
the careless to ding themselves, but it's fairly easy to move the ON/OFF
switch to where you don't have to lean into the disintegration zone to
activate, reasonable to cut standing outside the zone if you push the tool
handle. Makes you an unlikely impact point.

Eyes are very vulnerable and deserve protection. Face shields are often
more trouble in distortion, distraction and discomfort than they're worth,
especially when the above procedures are followed.

Cutting doesn't make dust, though sanding certainly does, so makes sense not
to overload the body's natural defenses and wear something to cut down on
access. Makes better sense to collect close to the point of generation.
When that's done well, it's tough to work up a booger even if you don't wear
a mask.

In article , "George" wrote:

Eyes are very vulnerable and deserve protection.

True -- but they are not the only parts of your face that should be protected.
Teeth, for example...

Face shields are often
more trouble in distortion, distraction and discomfort than they're worth,
especially when the above procedures are followed.

It does not appear that you have much, if any, experience in wearing face
shields. Mine gives *no* problems with distortion or distraction -- and
comfort is one of the reasons I prefer it to goggles. Vision is so clear, and
the shield so lightweight and comfortable, that I often forget it's there,
even to the point of banging my knuckles on it when I reach up to scratch my
nose. In addition to being more comfortable than goggles, it also takes less
time to don or doff -- which means I'm *much* more likely to use it, as
there's really no excuse at all for not wearing it. The one downside I've
experienced with a face shield is the importance of remembering to flip it up
when I feel a sneeze coming on. :-b

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

"Toller" writes:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Wood moves. Sharp edges don't. So a lathe's safer than other tools.

HOWEVER:
* You can still get sleeves/clothing caught in the rotating chuck.
* Your fingers can get mashed by a chuck.
* That wood can break loose and fly at your body!

I don't know if anyone was seriously injured on a Jet Mini.


--
Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to this account incurs a fee of
$500 per message, and acknowledges the legality of this contract.

In article ,
Bruce Barnett wrote:

....

HOWEVER:
* You can still get sleeves/clothing caught in the rotating chuck.

Never had that happen (yet)

* Your fingers can get mashed by a chuck.

Or the wood (yesterday)

* That wood can break loose and fly at your body!

Last week (bounced off the face shield)

--
--------------------------------------------------------
Personal e-mail is the n7bsn but at amsat.org
This posting address is a spam-trap and seldom read
RV and Camping FAQ can be found at
http://www.ralphandellen.us/rv

In article ,
"Toller" wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?
A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal frame.
Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

.... I wear a full-face shield that is also a mask. Mine is a Trend, but
there is also the 3M and Triton.
There are two kinds of woodworkers, those that have wood dust allergies,
and those that will.

--
--------------------------------------------------------
Personal e-mail is the n7bsn but at amsat.org
This posting address is a spam-trap and seldom read
RV and Camping FAQ can be found at
http://www.ralphandellen.us/rv

Hi--

I've been turning a lot over the last three years and have racked up a few
injuries--none serious but enuf to make me take protecting myself seriously.

I wear a face shield. It gets dirty, picks up sap when I turn green wood,
fogs in the winter, and when I sneeze you don't wanna know. But I turn a
lot of wood right off the tree, and it does fling small split pieces off, as
well as bark. Even at 450 rpm, they move. Several have caught me in the
face (mask) making me glad I wore it.

I've had about 5 bowls come unglued from the face plate. They don't fly,
they just sort of wander off of the lathe, mostly at the back.

I turned a plate from an old butcher block top. Got it all done, and spun
it at 1200 rpm to melt the wax. There was one crack sound, and I stopped
all to see what happened, didn't see anything. When I turned it back on,
there was another, and the thing flew apart in three pieces. Two of the old
glue joints let go. I caught one on the side of my arm, one in my gut, and
had bruises for a week. I think my face shield would have resisted the
impact.

I hit my fingers a lot with corners before I get the wood rough rounded. You
can't see them. And really knocked my knuckles on "natural edges" spinning
fast.

Finally, I've been turning some larger bowls--start with a chunk of trunk
about 13" in diameter and maybe 15" deep. Have to balance it carefully
before, but even thin it is off balance. I lag screw it to the face plate,
make several checks of clearance and balance before I hit the switch, but
when that wood (weighs in at about 30-35#) starts spinning and shaking its
pretty impressive. I stand next to the off switch, out of the line of fire.

So, take care, you can get hurt, but sensible precautions and knowing which
part of the air belongs to the turning and which part your hands can go into
help.

Have a grand time turning--join a turning club and find some of the
resources on the internet. They are great. http://www.woodturner.org/

OldGuy


"Toller" wrote in message
...
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since
no one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

I read through the website on woodworking injuries, and there aren't many
lathe injuries reported. The main problem seems to be the work breaking
apart at high speeds. Does that happen much?
A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal
frame. Is there something better, or is it strong enough?

I am the only person wearing a dust mask, and it gets pretty dirty after a
few hours.

In article ,
Bill in Detroit wrote:

Others have expressed themselves quite succinctly regarding the sagacity
of your instructor and I fully concur with them.

But let me add a short note on lung protection.

I have a shop-built air cleaner that I calculate (back of the lunch bag
numbers) filters my shop air roughly 3 times a minute. Yeah ... that's a
pretty noticeable breeze! I have a stack of three filters. The first is
a normal 79 cent furnace filter that grabs stuff that would have settled
out of the air if I weren't stirring it up so much. The second, a 5
micron filter, gets the air clean-looking ... that is, if it was the
final filter, I'd be fooled into thinking that my air was clean. The
third filter is rated to pass nothing bigger then 0.3 microns. Thats
smaller than dust. Smaller than bacteria. Smaller, even, than some viruses.

With that much air filtration, you'd think that dirty air would be the
least of my concerns, eh?

But I still wear a 1/2 mask respirator (~$26 at Harbor Freight) because
I am closer to where the dust is generated than the filter is ... so my
lungs get first dibs on it.

I wear a full face shield/filter, and add a dust collector (with the
nozzle at the lathe) to the above whole shop air filter

There is an older carpenter that I know. He provided well for his family
and retired with a workshop bigger than my house and yard combined. But
he never wore so much as a dust mask.

He's doing well to get 2 or 3 words out between coughs.

See my other post in this thread....

--
--------------------------------------------------------
Personal e-mail is the n7bsn but at amsat.org
This posting address is a spam-trap and seldom read
RV and Camping FAQ can be found at
http://www.ralphandellen.us/rv

Toller wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Lathes have a good safety record, which probably has more to do with
how _many_ accidents they have, not how few.

Lathes have lots of accidents, particularly with beginners. They're
_small_ accidents though (in general), so no-one gets hurt. It does
encourage a good attitude to safety though, certainly compared to most
other woodworking machines.

People using jointers, planers and spindles have a cavalier attitude to
safety because they've never seen one of these rare accidents and they
take an "It'll never happen to me" approach to it. OTOH, there are no
small planer accidents. You ever get caught by one of those and it's
going to be messy...

Lathes are comparatively benign. We've all had catches, we've all had
work fall out of a chuck. Many of us will have been walloped by
something. Few get really hurt by this, but it's the most direct lesson
you can get that if it hits your nose today, it might get you in the
eyes tomorrow. Turners aren't safety nazis, but more of them are
wearing appropriate safety gear, more of the time, than you'll find
with most other machinists.


A consideration of rotational dynamics and Newtonian mechanics is
reassuring, as regards their log-throwing behaviour. A lathe just won't
throw turned cylindrical work at you -- there's no resultant linear
inertia in a rotating cylinder and so it all ever does is drop quietly,
at worst with a bit of pole vaulting if it hits something else. To get
a serious wood-chuck accident, you either need to be turning an
unbalanced piece, or to have something dismantle itself whilst
rotating. So start off slow on those green logs!

Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

You're kidding right? In HS metal shop I was standing right next to a
kid wearing a long sleeve sweater working on a lathe. Sweater got
caught on the work and ripped completely off his body before he or I
could hit the red button.

Luckily no major injury, bruises and brush burns from the fabric, but
could have been much worse. He did have to indure the humilitaion of
having his sweater stapled to the bulletin board in the class for the
rest of the year.

The instructor is a jackass and has no business trying to teach anyone
anything.

Toller wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable,
since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

I agree, the guy is a dickhead! I have been using metal and wood lathes
since I was 15, (now 55) and I can remember one poor chap at work getting a
piece of wood that broke off stuck in his forehead! very nasty.. You should
all ways work with great respect for machinery, accidents can and will
happen if you don't.
Eddie.

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:34:18 -0800, Ralph E Lindberg wrote:

In article ,
Bruce Barnett wrote:

...

HOWEVER:
* You can still get sleeves/clothing caught in the rotating chuck.

Never had that happen (yet)

More of a girl/Hippie/suit problem--the first two get their hair caught,
with the third it's his tie.

* Your fingers can get mashed by a chuck.

Or the wood (yesterday)

* That wood can break loose and fly at your body!

Last week (bounced off the face shield)


--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:44:39 -0800, Andy Dingley
wrote:

Toller wrote:

I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Lathes have a good safety record, which probably has more to do with
how _many_ accidents they have, not how few.

Lathes have lots of accidents, particularly with beginners. They're
_small_ accidents though (in general), so no-one gets hurt. It does
encourage a good attitude to safety though, certainly compared to most
other woodworking machines.

People using jointers, planers and spindles have a cavalier attitude to
safety because they've never seen one of these rare accidents and they
take an "It'll never happen to me" approach to it. OTOH, there are no
small planer accidents. You ever get caught by one of those and it's
going to be messy...

Lathes are comparatively benign. We've all had catches, we've all had
work fall out of a chuck. Many of us will have been walloped by
something. Few get really hurt by this, but it's the most direct lesson
you can get that if it hits your nose today, it might get you in the
eyes tomorrow. Turners aren't safety nazis, but more of them are
wearing appropriate safety gear, more of the time, than you'll find
with most other machinists.


A consideration of rotational dynamics and Newtonian mechanics is
reassuring, as regards their log-throwing behaviour. A lathe just won't
throw turned cylindrical work at you -- there's no resultant linear
inertia in a rotating cylinder and so it all ever does is drop quietly,
at worst with a bit of pole vaulting if it hits something else. To get
a serious wood-chuck accident, you either need to be turning an
unbalanced piece, or to have something dismantle itself whilst
rotating. So start off slow on those green logs!

A comment about "log-throwing"--while there's no translational kinetic
energy, there's plenty of rotational kinetic energy that can be
converted to translational under the right circumstances. Here's an
extreme example. This wasn't a lathe incident but one time a propeller
(again no translational kinetic energy) came loose in a test cell at
Humongous Aerospace (where I used to be an engineer) and climbed the wall,
sawed a hole in the roof, walked across the roof and then trashed a row of
cars in the parking lot--IIRC it didn't stop until it got tangled up in a
high chain-link fence that it mostly tore down. Now that was a _lot_
bigger than most of us are going to be turning--it was 12 feet in
diameter, weighed about half a ton, and was consuming about 5,000
horsepower when it came adrift, but the point remains--if the rim gets a
good purchase on something a heavy piece turning at high speed can manage
to launch itself pretty hard.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

George wrote:
Pretty rare, injuries at a lathe. As far as life-threatening injuries, it's
safer than walking across the street, certainly. Potential is there for
the careless to ding themselves, but it's fairly easy to move the ON/OFF
switch to where you don't have to lean into the disintegration zone to
activate, reasonable to cut standing outside the zone if you push the tool
handle. Makes you an unlikely impact point.


I don't live in fear of being killed using a lathe. OTOH, I've lived through
two plane crashes and have a full understanding of the concept of lightning not
always striking the other guy. That being said, there's no point in being
stupid. You do what you can do but there is a point of diminishing return. I
look for the most bang for the buck in concepts of safety. If I don't consider
the return high enough, I'm not likely to bother.


Cutting doesn't make dust, though sanding certainly does, so makes sense not
to overload the body's natural defenses and wear something to cut down on
access. Makes better sense to collect close to the point of generation.
When that's done well, it's tough to work up a booger even if you don't wear
a mask.


I have a 1 micron dust collector piped into my big tools and also have an air
cleaner mounted on the ceiling of my garage, uh, I mean workshop. On occasion I
end up out in the driveway with something that produces clouds of dust or chips.
If I do, I wear a respirator. I never need to wear one when I'm cutting boards
at the jointer, band or table saw. The dust collector handles them well enough
to suit me.

Irregardless of what I'm doing, if a cloud of dust exists, I wear the
respirator. But that's the only time I wear it.


--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

"Toller" wrote

A number of people recommended full face shields. I have one, but it is
pretty thin flexible plastic; I don't expect it would help much against a
high speed chunk of wood. I looked up a few websites (amazon, hartsville,
woodcraft) and they just sell ones like mine, except mine has a metal
frame. Is there something better, or is it strong enough?


I will give my standard rant concerning face sheilds.

When I was setting up a small metal shop, I asked a friend of mine who
worked in steel mills where I should go to buy some basic safety equipment.
He referred to to an industrial safety suppplier. Most cities of any size
have them.

There is an amazing assortment of safety equipment at them and most of is is
much better quality than what you get at the borg. I ended up getting a red
hard hat with a face shield attachment. The face shield was a sheet of
flexible polycarbonate with holes in the edge that matched the frame on the
helmet. It quickly changed out from the old one to the new one.

Polycarbonate, although tough, does have a tendancy to get scratched up. So
replacement shieds are a must. One of the reasons why I bought this setup
was because my steel mill friend had some tall tales of how they saved
somebody's face/eyes. i have had a number of solid objects impact the face
shield when grinding down metal parts.

One time it hit hard enough to knock me over onto my ass from a forward
bending position. I have also taken hits on the hard hat as well. If I am
going to do anything in the shop, metal or woodwork, that has a potential to
do me bodily harm, I armor up. Hard hat, face shield, ear protection, safety
glasses and dust mask are a minimum. I often wear a leather apron as well
with a break away strings on it in case it gets caught in anything.

Call me a safety freak. But I grew up around all kinds of industrial
accident victims. I vowed from an early age that nothing like this was going
to happen to me. And I have been a bonafide safety freak ever since.

wrote in message
oups.com...

Lew Hodgett wrote:
Face Shield

I've got the one you see Norm wearing.

North KHG5001, $15.84 as shown in Grainger CAT 394. (An old CAT)

Add about 10-15% to be safe.

Lew

And as far as dust masks go, I wear these a lot, from many different
manufacturers, but all made for people leaning over an ugly cesspool of
germs and ground, powdered bone and amalgam.

http://tinyurl.com/yhu4e6

At 7 cents each, there really isn't much of an excuse for not wearing
them.

Sometimes I wear 3 or 4 a day, so I buy them 200 at a time. Almost all
of those guys on Ebay have lot of those masks so just contact them and
ask for more at the same price.

If you like those, get the ones that have ear loops, and make sure they
have a wire nose clip. I have found that they are not nearly as hot as
my 3m dustmasks that I buy for the guys.

That is what I have been using also. Rather more comfortable than the
plastic ones with replaceable filters.

I don't know what is done in shops or at homes alone, but I have been hit
bit a flying cutting tool that sliced through my arm, and flew across the
room. I was cutting with the ~16" gouge facing away from me at the time.



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wrote in message
oups.com...

Lew Hodgett wrote:
Face Shield

I've got the one you see Norm wearing.

North KHG5001, $15.84 as shown in Grainger CAT 394. (An old CAT)

Add about 10-15% to be safe.

Lew

And as far as dust masks go, I wear these a lot, from many different
manufacturers, but all made for people leaning over an ugly cesspool of
germs and ground, powdered bone and amalgam.

http://tinyurl.com/yhu4e6

At 7 cents each, there really isn't much of an excuse for not wearing
them.

Sometimes I wear 3 or 4 a day, so I buy them 200 at a time. Almost all
of those guys on Ebay have lot of those masks so just contact them and
ask for more at the same price.

If you like those, get the ones that have ear loops, and make sure they
have a wire nose clip. I have found that they are not nearly as hot as
my 3m dustmasks that I buy for the guys.

Robert


Those masks are designed to keep "germs" from leaving the mask. not sure how
effective they are at keeping dust particles from entering.

The instructor is a jackass and has no business trying to teach anyone
anything


I could not have said it better.

Accidents, when they happen, are not when you start worrying about
protection.

About a decade ago, a high school student was turning when a bowl let
loose and hit him in the head....today he is ten years older and still
a vegetable.

All lathes were removed from neighboring public schools because of this
incident...I have one sitting in my shop.

Others have done an excellent job of covering the safety concerns and
equipment that you need to have.

Use the safety equipment, practice good safety measures and enjoy
turning...and teach anyone else you know that safety does count.

TMT


RayV wrote:
Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

You're kidding right? In HS metal shop I was standing right next to a
kid wearing a long sleeve sweater working on a lathe. Sweater got
caught on the work and ripped completely off his body before he or I
could hit the red button.

Luckily no major injury, bruises and brush burns from the fabric, but
could have been much worse. He did have to indure the humilitaion of
having his sweater stapled to the bulletin board in the class for the
rest of the year.

The instructor is a jackass and has no business trying to teach anyone
anything.

Locutus wrote:


Those masks are designed to keep "germs" from leaving the mask. not sure how
effective they are at keeping dust particles from entering.



I've never seen a paper mask that didn't have gaps at the edge that are
plainly visible.

Bill

wrote:

Sometimes I wear 3 or 4 a day, so I buy them 200 at a time.**Almost*all
of those guys on Ebay have lot of those masks so just contact them and
ask for more at the same price.

Try the "DustBeGone" mask. It's a little spendy, but it'll be the last dust
mask you'll ever buy. I've had mine for 12-15 years and it still works fine.
Also, it won't fog my glasses, doesn't warm my face as much as the paper
masks, and is easier to breath through. The last two comments are of course
my subjective experience, but every other user I've talked to says the same
thing.

No, I have no interest in the company :-).

--
It's turtles, all the way down

Bill in Detroit wrote:
I've never seen a paper mask that didn't have gaps at the edge that are
plainly visible.


You need to look at the N95 paper masks. We use them to work around TB
patients. They don't gap around the edges at all.... rather they are shaped and
they have a flexible nose bridge that you squeeze to form a fit.

If they won't let TB in, I doubt they'll let dust in either.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Is he nuts?

r

Bill in Detroit wrote:

I've never seen a paper mask that didn't have gaps at the edge that
are
plainly visible.

Check out Moldex, much better than 3M, IMHO.

Lew

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
Bill in Detroit wrote:
I've never seen a paper mask that didn't have gaps at the edge that are
plainly visible.


You need to look at the N95 paper masks. We use them to work around TB
patients. They don't gap around the edges at all.... rather they are
shaped and they have a flexible nose bridge that you squeeze to form a
fit.

If they won't let TB in, I doubt they'll let dust in either.


Not to mention, they're really cheap when the staff's not looking!

People seem to get hung up on the sieve theory of filtration, which isn't
really what's happening here. If the dust hits a fiber, there's enough fuzz
and too little vacuum to have it go further. That's why you see a faint
trace of dust around where your smile gaps open the mask. Also why silt
precipitates in slow water.

Not to mention that dust particles have to enter into your nasopharyngeal
cavity, which is equipped with hair to cause turbulence, mucous to trap
anything, and cilia to take out the trash.

It's fumes, not cellulose you should be concerned with. Or in the case of
wood, the poisonous extractives the tree uses to fight off critters, fungi,
and bacteria that want to eat it. Dust carries or contains them.

Of course, these problems are not unique to lathes, and are actually much
less of a problem than with many other tools in the shop.

"Robatoy" wrote in message
ps.com...

Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since
no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Is he nuts?

Probably just experienced. What he doesn't realize that others may not
follow what he's teaching and the safety that's automatic to him. That can
mean trouble.

In article , "George" wrote:

"Robatoy" wrote in message
ups.com...

Toller wrote:
I have just finished a bowl turning course; my first lathe work. The
instructor is very casual about safety; he says that is reasonable, since
no
one ever get hurt on a lathe. I wonder how true that is.

Is he nuts?

Probably just experienced.

No, he's nuts -- and *not* experienced, either, if he really thinks that "no
one ever got hurt on a lathe".

What he doesn't realize that others may not
follow what he's teaching and the safety that's automatic to him. That can
mean trouble.

The OP said "the instructor is very casual about safety" -- that doesn't sound
like safety is "automatic" to him; quite the opposite, I'd say, and that
*does* mean trouble.

I don't mean to suggest that lathes are vicious, murderous tools, lurking in
the corner of the shop waiting to leap upon some unsuspecting rookie turner
and strangle him, but, like *any* power tool, they do have the potential to
cause serious injury. To suggest, as the OP's instructor apparently did, that
one need not worry about safety precautions at the lathe because the tool is
inherently harmless, is dangerous and irresponsible.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.