Welding Tips and Tricks

Whats the worst injury (Burns,gashes,etc) you have ever got on the job ?

I got married once. Been a lot of pain in that one. Lol

Good one Mike.

What's that gag about the worst food, that once you eat it, it will make you feel miserable for the rest of your life - oh yeah - wedding cake...

Only joking.....

weldin mike 27 wrote:I got married once. Been a lot of pain in that one. Lol

I'm telling on you!!!
-Jonathan

Hey! What happens on the forum, stays on the forum.

Papercuts

I got fingerprinted.
I used an Aloe Vera plant for bandages.
It took the pain away and it healed up in a week.

I thought we had done a similar post?

My worst grinder accident was in the late 1980's; I had a grinding wheel explode (yes I was using the equipment wrong, and had thrown away the blade guard). The wheel sliced through the muscle on my shoulder, down to the collar bone. I ended up with 65 stitches (when I tell the story now it is, umm .. 76 stitches), inside and outside, and a great scar. At the hospital they were convinced it was a knife cut, because it was so clean. I had picked up a piece of the broken wheel and put it in my pocket to show them, just in case.

Lets see .. working around my storage yard in about the same era, I spilled gas on my leg as I was moving around some garbage. Later, I was welding in some high weeds, the weeds caught fire, I caught fire ... and it wouldn't snuff out, just burn and burn. I had a bucket full of ice, ice water and beer on the other side of the yard and tried to make a run for it, but I collapsed. One of my workers grabbed the bucket and snuffed the fire with the water. Bad, bad burn over most of the back of my left thigh. Blacken skin, strips of flesh hanging off ... yuck. Very painful. I never did go seek medical attention, I just dealt with it. But I certainly learned my lesson. After that, for many years, I would ALWAYS have bucket full of ice, ice water and beer on the job, as a safety precaution.

Many more stories ... but I think I did that in another thread!

Stay safe!
Gary

Stabbed in the hands and arms by a crazy person, back in my paramedic days. He was aiming for chest, so I guess you would say I had defensive wounds. Either that or the time the defibrillator malfunctioned and I got a 360 joule shock across both arms (back in the days when you had to still hold the paddles in your hands)...that hurt like a MOTHER!!

DeepSouthWelder wrote:Whats the worst injury (Burns,gashes,etc) you have ever got on the job ?

Grinders are the most dangerous thing in our shops.
They mostly get to your eyes, and hands.
I've been welding since 1954 and they still get me once in while.
I mostly work by myself and make my own rules.
My rules for grinding are:
Always wear gloves
Always use the wheel guard
Always use eye protection
Simple, right?
The injuries I've witnessed are usually missing one or more of those safeguards.
Funny thing, since I put my grinder guards back on,
my stack of ruined left hands gloves is not getting any higher.
Be safe,
Jack

Good point, cptjackm! Misuse of grinders has cost me about ninety stitches (real number, not inflated over time) over the years!

WerkSpace wrote:I got fingerprinted.
I used an Aloe Vera plant for bandages.
It took the pain away and it healed up in a week.

I know that hurt, I did something similar last year when I took my new gloves off to move the frame I was making and grabbed the damn area I just welded...got 4 fingers.

Worst injury for me was a 1st degree chemical burn. I was doing maintenance at a chemical plant, fixing the plumbing of the caustic soda pump and the glue failed on the cpvc joint. Got sprayed all down my left side and the emergency shower didn't work when I tried to use it. I used vinegar to neutralize the burn. Edward norton in fight club made vinegar look like it felt good. It doesn't. Oh and we got the emergency showers working afterwards.

[quote="Louie1961"]... or the time the defibrillator malfunctioned and I got a 360 joule shock across both arms... [quote]

DAMN! That put it hand-to-hand, and the juice went across YOUR heart! That could have been far more serious than "F#$K THAT HURT!" I'm going to assume you were kneeling, and "some" of that juice went to ground through your knees...

Steve S

No I am pretty sure all the juice went hand to hand. Felt like a telephone pole was being driven through my chest. When the current hit me, the way my muscles contracted, it threw me against the ambulance bulkhead. I was seeing stars for a few minutes afterwards. I scared the poor volunteer EMTs half to death. On the plus side, I don't think there was anything we were going to do that would have helped that patient. I shocked her so many times, we had to change defib batteries. Again that was the old day when you would hit them with the juice repeatedly if they were in vfib.

Okay, that officially qualifies as a "bad day" on almost every level, getting your ass fried trying to save someone you couldn't.

Steve S

My worst "injury" while welding left no lasting damage.
I was standing chest-deep in water welding on a pier for a floating boat dock on Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. 7018 DCEN on a generator set for 120A. My rod pile was on the gangway above me to stay dry.
My gloves were slowly getting damp from sweat.
My boss got out of the water, and walked down the gangway. He stopped over me to observe a bit while I was welding. He dripped water all over my rod-pile. The next rod I put in the stinger LIT ME LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE!
I could NOT let go; I couldn't do a damn thing. "Hand to heart" for sure. I couldn't even speak/yell/whimper/breathe.
I finally (fortunately) had a convulsion. (It may have been as little as five seconds, or as much as two minutes. I lost all sense of time.) The rod went one way, the stinger another. I rushed as best I could to get out of the water, and was flat on my back for a good 20 minutes.

The boss got an earful, I promise you!

Steve S

New Stupidvisor didn't see any need for a tank watch on a 95 F summer day. 12 of us were carried out unconscious
with heat stroke. Luckily the dumb ass called down the general foreman to write all of us up for sleeping on the job!
The GF immediately called in the rescue crew! Fucker could have killed us!

I was working for a lawnmower mfg. We had to use electric grinders with wire cup brushes to "clean" up the welds. Was cleaning in a corner, cup brush kicked back and proceeded to go up the side of my face,grinder fell on the ground and was bouncing around all over the place before I could get it unplugged. Two days later they went to all air grinders.

Here is one I don't think I posted on any thread out here:
I was working on a four man crew at US Steel, Gary Works back in the 1990's. We had a job on the cast house floor; what happens is that slag from the blast furnace runs through these channels cut into sand on the cast house floor, and then the slag runs into holding areas to cool and be disposed of. There was a trench about 5' deep with a 1" (or about that) steel plate at the end, that was supposed to cover the end of the trench. Our job was to replace the burned out plate. The temperature inside the trench was appalling. We had torch rubber laid out on the ground leading over to the work area, and it melted through. Working in those conditions, you had to wear multiple layers of clothing to protect you from the heat radiating off of the surfaces.

The first guy to fall out passed out and was completely white - which was the wrong color for a Hispanic guy. I was the second guy to fall out. I was helped over to a rail, where I laid on the catwalk puking over the edge. I was half out of it and shaking. The last two guys were in the hole, still working on that plate. Some 'white hat' (mill safety guy) came along and told me that I need to get to infirmary, and I refused to go. I told him I was not leaving as I needed to keep an eye on the rest of the crew. This stupid white hat had put a gas detector out where the guys were working, but he put it about six feet over their head, about ten feet from the bottom of the trench. Blast furnace gas will knock you out cold right now, and is heavier than air. So, I didn't trust the white hats or the placement of the gas detectors. They last two guys didn't last too much longer, and they fell out. One of the guys, the foreman, a local hand, asked me (I had more mill experience than all of the rest of them) what a bigger company would do in this case. I told him that they would have a line of guys ready to jump into the trench. A pair of guys would work for a set time, say ten minutes, then get pulled out to go hydrate and rest while the next pair went in, and so on.

So, we lost a whole crew in about two hours.

But hot, hot, hot, hot. I did all kinds of work all over USS and Inland. Blast furnace, cast house floor, BOP, coke battery, sintering plant, ore bridges ... and so on and so on. Filthy, dangerous places, but very, very cool to work in and visit. Lots of over time!

My first aluminum mig job, I got a 3rd degree burn on my hand from the middle of my index finger up to my thumb. There was no training there, and I was the only welder. At first, it was just a bit warm, so I doubled up gloves. Then it was still hot, so I put a tig finger between them (this is definitely not a bad review of the tig finger lol). Then it stung for a while and stopped hurting. When a burn stops hurting, that's how you know it is third degree, as it has killed the nerve endings in that area. My mom is a nurse, so she was able to score some silver ointment and plenty of bandages. It hurt like hell when those nerves started growing in, and it took over a month to heal up right. Now I hold the gun right.

Not really any injury, but a way to avoid one.

After reading Nathan's post it reminded me that when I was learning TIG, if it was anything on steel, my instructor welded away with his normal shield, gloves, the usual.

However, whenever he did anything on aluminum, the top shirt buttons got done up tight right to the collar, even though his neck was behind the shield. He correctly stated that the UV reflection from aluminum was so much higher that he could get neck burns, even behind the shield. He was right I'm sure. Now all my aluminum work has me very buttoned up. Never had a problem.

Trev

Trev,
Your instructor was a very wise man. When I first learned to Tig weld I wore a bandana around my neck and buttoned up my shirt and had no problems. Then one day I was wearing a flannel shirt that had the top button missing, in spite of the bandana the little "v" at the top of the shirt gave me a Superman burn that took months to heal. It was a conversation piece for awhile, I told all the neighborhood girls it was a Superman birthmark. Thinking back though, it hurt like hell and didn't lead to any trim so from then on I buttoned up, good advise.

Len