Help! > Mistakes, muckups, and dangerous behaviour

Do Not Try This At Home

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Tennessee Whiskey:
Seems like this is one of our least used sub forums and that's a good thing. Now, I have debated since Sunday whether I was going to share this with you guys and I've decided I probably should. I think it will good for "new" machinist, for those of us starting to have our first "senior moments", and will give the ones accustomed to having them a good laugh. So, here goes. Sunday after lunch I started making studs. I was using 1/4" 416 SS. Here comes the senior moment. I decided to just stick the length of rod thru the headstock and lock the outboard end with the spiders. There was about 2' sticking out on the outboard end. I set BooBoo on 800 RPMs, brought the tool bit up to face off, and turned it on. Well, about the time I touched the bit to the rod centrifugal force overcame the strength of the rod and it bent to near 90 degrees at the spider. Here's the real kicker. My lathe is right in front of a window, about 18" away. When that rod made it's first rev of course it hit the glass, it sounded like bomb exploded, glass was flying, and I was fighting back bodily functions and trying to get the sucker shut down. Nobody was hurt or cut, DOG took off to the far end of the shop and hid, and I stood there shaking. I cleaned up the mess and removed the broken window, ( got the price this morning $102.2 + tax) filled in the hole and called it quits. At least the shop was clean to start in yesterday morning. So, that's my confession. PLEASE pay very close attention to these kind of things. Think about what could happen to any section of your workpiece, not just the end you are working on. I hope my mistake will at least keep someone from making it.

Y'all come see us'
Whiskey

b.lindsey:
Thanks for sharing it Eric. Far better that the window was broken than that bent end of SS tearing through flesh at 800 rpm!!! 

Bill

ths:
Something similar happened to me once, but not to that extent. I now have a block of wood about 18" away from the rear of the mandrel, with an aligned hole that longer pieces can be restrained by. Bummer about the window.

Hugh.

ColH:
Don't feel too bad one of my class mates at school did the same thing except the lathe was against a wall.  I would think that if I went back today the groove carved in the wall would still be there 40 odd years later.  :ROFL:

wagnmkr:
Thank You for that. I have been in the habit of doing the exact same thing. I won't do it any more.

Cheers,

Tom

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