Watch Yourself !

[petemoore]

  Anytime you see tasks involving heat, drilling, chemicals, high voltage...
 Re-Think through every possible move !
 Heat seems obvious and we're all accostumed to it, I got burned just fine a few times...
 Drilling:
 You'll probably need a stronger-torque drill, before you plug it in consider with extreme-condition foresight what you'll be using to [besides your hands] clamp 'it', slower drill speeds work well sometimes, use goggles, beware of projectiles.
 Cutting Tools: Be uber careful with the cutting tools, consider using scissors or nippers instead of blade.
  Chemicals:
 Go outdoors and stay away from Nitro-Cellulose, uber-strong chemical smells, read and research ingredients when in doubt, use plastic bag/newspaper to protect nearby surfaces.
 Don't mess with potentially lethal high voltage if you don't want to get shocked...anything above 42v.
 These are some of the big ones.
 It's much more pleasant to have mulled over all the possible scenarios, sufficiently beforehand than afterwords, you know we get into them.

[JKowalski]

Ah, I've had about a billion iron burns and one iffy incident with the drill press.

It's a shame that the best motivation to improve your safety comes from those occasions where you fail to... 

[Hupla]

mmmm i love the smell of burnt skin

[mth5044]

I got on the wrong end of a soldering iron before. Had a blister spanning the entire middle segment of my pointer finger on the left hand. Couldn't even play my trem when it was done 

[robmdall]

I learned a very valuable lesson early in life. Respect your tools and respect what you are trying to achieve. Back 20 years, I was a seasoned cabinet maker, or so I thought. The whole building process got to be second nature, or so I thought... One day cutting a small board for a Valance with a Radial Arm Saw, a cut I had made a thousound times before... My hand slipped of the board and 'bloop' off went my Right hand thumb just below the knuckle. After multiple surgeries and years of PT, I have some use back. I still cannot hold a Guitar Pick because I have no feeling in the thumb.

Learn a lesson the easy way... Heed the warnings "Watch Yourself"

[sean k]

Hey, that's all the good stuff

One little trick that I used to use very often, not so much now and I'll explain later why, is that when you burn something on your body you can completely minmise its effects by putting that part on your earlobe. What

Basically most of your body is quite hard to have touch you earlobes but your finger tips and most of your hands aren't. I do lots of welding and it's part and parcel that alot of the steel gets very hot, even when it doesn't look like it's hot, then picking it up and finding out you finger tips are burning is fairly normal but dropping the hot steel and grabbing your earlobe with the burny bits results in no burns and no scars.

It's absolutely true and I've no scars to prove it. Overtime though I'm no longer picking up hot steel because my hands have become so sensitive to heat that I can feel that something is too hot to pickup just before my fingers grasp it.

Even yesterday I did some wood carving, which required sharpening a bunch of chisels and knives to razor sharp, and though my left hand index finger, on the outside towards the thumb, is basically numb from the number of chisels I've run through it, I now subconsciously always am aware of the likelyhood of jumping blades and no longer cut so deep or so often.

What I'm saying is that an awareness of danger only really comes from encountering danger, and if you live to tell the tale, you subconsciously become safer in your practise. This then is the problem with blades on mechanical apparatus and fire thats invisible, electricity, etc as opposed to naked flames and hand held blades. The latter allow us a feedback that doesn't usually result in death or handicaps because our physical closeness to the source keeps us aware and slips, which always happen, are minimised by our inherent foresight in conjunction with our abilities to handle the tools whereas with machines and anything else that increases our abilities to do work the feedback is minimised and then the blaise attitude arises which results in accidents.

So my personal approach is that we need to always start with the handheld stuff. If you wanna cut steel learn how to use a hacksaw, you wanna cut wood the use handsaws and learn to sharpen them and apply this to all the other stuff so you build up an awareness of the actions involved and how they all work.

I've still go all my limbs, all the joined digits and all the bits at the end of the digits... but I'm scarred up to buggery all over my body.

It's a jungle out there... go hard!

[alanlan]

Must be something to do with the blood circulation in the earlobe keeping the temp down I guess but it sounds weird.  I always stick the offended burnt bit under cold running water for a good 5 minutes but if I can't find water I'll remember your idea!

[Ibanezfoo]

Yeah but make sure and look at the big picture when you are focusing on safety.  I was working on a power supply and my boss kept telling me to watch the caps because they can zap me.  Yeah, well I spent so much time making sure the caps were drained I didn't notice the most obvious safety item:  UNPLUG IT FROM THE WALL.  Grabbed the device and it grabbed be back in a big way.  Couldn't let go, my hands and arm muscles were completely locked.  Had to do a backwards somersault and knee the unit from my hands... Permanently ruined my shoulders, they pop out of the sockets very easily now.  Can't throw overhand or reach for stuff on high shelves... Lucky it didn't get my heart.  I have a few little triangle scars from soldering iron tips.  They say nerds don't suffer injuries with our hobbies.... hmphf

[aziltz]

Take a shop course, and if you're going to work on a machine and you are NOT a professional, have a buddy with you.  I have access to a number of machines in my student shop, but I'm required to have a buddy with me, for safety.

[petemoore]

  Yupp, it's like dumping cold water in the pan cooking the egg as your'e removing it from the burner, the egg [or your hand] won't get quite as 'done'.
  When cold water isn't available to help stop the cooking process, I use the 'lick and blow on it' evaporative saliva process to help cool the cooking flesh.

[juansolo]

Chemicals:
 Go outdoors and stay away from Nitro-Cellulose, uber-strong chemical smells...

Just got a flashback to the time I was laid in the footwell of my old Westfield kit car (Lotus 7 style) reattaching some carpet using some spray adhesive. Nice confined space and my first and only experience of solvent abuse. F**k me people do that for pleasure?! Managed to extract myself, high as a kite, and pretty much fall on my ass instantly, not pleasant. As a sledgehammer fix to the problem I came to the conclusion that carpet was unneccessary weight anyhow, and pulled it all out. ...and the heater, washers, windscreen, doors, wipers, roof...

[deaconque]

One thing I've learned ,that should be obvious, is don't mix alcohol with tools.  I was drilling an enclosure a while back ,after I had a couple of drinks, and since my better judgment was impaired I wasn't holding the box tight enough.  The drill bit grabbed the enclosure and started to spin which gave me a nice gash on two of my fingers and my stomach  .  Lesson learned.  Needless to say that the box now looks nice and "reliced".

[liddokun]

Indeed I learned the majority of these safety precautions through failure.
Being burned by the soldering iron numerous times, inhaling chemical fumes, slicing half my finger open from cutting tools, gashes from drills, and of course being electrocuted.

Makes you realize how easy these things can happen to us if we're not careful.  You go about these hobbies saying it happens to other people, and not you, and then one false slip and you could have lost your life or a limb. 

I don't know if there's a sticky yet, but perhaps one should be made about general safety precautions, not just with working with high voltage, but with soldering irons, chemicals, and the like.

[deaconque]

Unfortunately I don't think a sticky would be all that effective because as so many have already said, You don't really learn until it happens to you.