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Re: Arcs off the fingers and getting killed in the process...

Hi Dan, all,

> Original Poster: Dan and Nancy <ntesla-at-ntesla.csd.sc.edu>

(Nick wrote:)
> >I was wearing googles, and heavy duty
> >leather work gloves, and had all body parts accounted for at the
>>end of the day, but I fear for the person that does not take all
>> possible precautions--even the ones that don't seem necessary
>, are!

> Arrgh! When building anything, including Tesla-coils, and using power
> tools, *do not wear gloves!!* It's ten times better to screw up and
>lose a finger-tip than it is to get your glove caught in something and
>have half your forearm ripped off! No ties or loose, long hair either

Snip

Sorry, but here I have to disagree vehemently. It COMPLETELY
depends on what kind of power tool you want to use. I will agree
fully, when it comes to lathes, drill press, milling, sawing, etc.
There are, however, at least two jobs, where HEAVY leather
gloves are a MUST:

1.) Welding. Any welding work MUST be done with gloves for a
     number of reasons:

-If you have ever touched that innocent looking ceramic tip
 on your TIG welder or a piece of "cold looking" AL, you
 know what I mean.

-Any kind of arc welding (be it TIG, MIG, MAG or stick) generates
 huge sums of UV light. Your fingers are right near the source. Not
 something you want to have prolonged exposure to. DONīT wear
 white clothing while welding, either.

- If you have ever done the welder dance, you WILL know that
  gloves are a MUST. Having a piece of welding slag or a weld
  "drip" fall in your sleeve is an experience, which is da** #+!-at-!#
  unpleasant, to say the very least

2.) Using an angle grinder. ALWAYS (!!!) use leather gloves. I donīt
     care what anyone says. Let me relate an experience I had: I was
     grinding a coolant support frame for my homebrew TIG welder
     using *only* a sanding disk (on those rubber disks). Usually, I DO
     wear gloves around this machine. However, in this one incident,
     I was NOT. The grinder I was using, *only* had 900W (roughly
     1.2 HP). Somehow it got caught in a corner. In a split secondīs
     time, the disk slip through my hand, cutting it up badly (needing
     stitches) and finally stopped in my sweater. Luckily enough, I was
     wearing a very heavy sweater (winter time), so the only blemish
     I had (stomach area) was a big fat black and blue spot on my
     chest. I would hate to imagine what might have happened, if I had
     NOT been wearing this sweater. Had I been wearing gloves, I
     would not have needed needle and thread on my hide and this
     was only a SANDING disk, not a grinding disk.

- I remove a lot of paint work from metal using those tough industrial
  wire brushes on an angle grinder. I donīt mean those cheap, single
  wire stranded ones, which you can buy at the local hardware depo,
  but the ones with heavy, twisted tuffs of wire. They WILL go
  through your skin (all the way to the bone) about as fast or even
  faster than they go through the paint. I would NEVER use these
  w/o gloves!!!

There are other jobs (like sweat soldering), which do indeed
require gloves, so the bottom line: USE common sense. Any kind
of loose clothing or apparel is ALWAYS a NO-NO around ANY kind
of machine work, but a sentence like "never wear gloves" is (to say
it politically correct) NOT true! Sorry for the hot wording ;o)), but I
wanted to clear up on some machining myths. I have been working
with all sorts of power tools since the age of 5 (I got my 1st power
drill on my 5th birthday). The incident above was my only true
accident after some 26 years of working with and around power
tools and I sure hope it remains to be my last one.


Coiler greets from Germany,
Reinhard