Wood lathe turning piece hits man in face - video

[Jon]

Wood lathe turning piece hits man in face. 0:19 video:

Previously:

Lathe safety/stupidity accident video

[IAMSatisfied]

Ouch! That hurts just watching it. Totally preventable, too. Lathes deserve tons of respect.

[N00b Machinist]

It would be great if there was some way to "chuck" your material securely to the headstock, appropriate to the mass and the turning speed. Also, if there were only some sort of shield you could wear on your head to protect your face from this sort of thing.

Guy who invents those two things'll have the world beating a path to his door.

[Beserkleyboy]

Noob, faceshields have been around for yonks...and pretty commonly used here, by any serious turner. Cheers

Jim in a cloudy South Coast day...
https://www.timbecon.com.au/extracti...ld-high-impact

[IAMSatisfied]

This gentleman that had the piece of wood bonk him in the head was ignoring several basic rules of wood turning:

1) Wasn't wearing PPE

2) Whenever you start up a wood lathe in which you've just chucked a piece of wood, stand off to the side when you turn the unit on and look, listen and FEEL the lathe with your hand to see how "wobbly" it is, and take proper steps to either remount the piece or turn it as slowly as practical.

3) He turned up the RPM on an unbalance piece of wood while in the path of destruction... you need to start at slower speeds, and once you've achieved a relatively balanced cylinder, THEN you might get away with more RPM.

I'm sure there's other basic rules I've missed, but these are what were obvious to me. Spinning gyros, especially when out of round and heavy, are a force to be reckoned with.

Jim, I went to your link on the face shield. As good a quality piece of PPE that shield is, I sure wouldn't want to get hit in the head with the force that this fellow was struck with... I wouldn't want to get that kind of impact even wearing a motorcycle helmet!

[Beserkleyboy]

IAM, too true, but it would help deflect the work-piece. On any machine, if the force of a kickback can be mitigated by ANYTHING, even an apron, it's a good thing...your points of watching initial speed/balance relationship carefully should be paramount in lathe work. We were taught in HS woodshop to balance our blank physically, usually by sawing it octagonal. If not (and I don't always...), at least start a square blank slowly and cautiously until it gets roundish. Your point #2 is probably the single most important stopgap to a horrific accident like this. Cheers,
Jim

[cmarlow]

Thank you for that wisdom.

[Big Sexy]

Been there and done that

[IAMSatisfied]

Jim,

I completely agree with you. What I said about face shields, helmets, etc. could be said another way: I think bullet-proof vests are wonderful protection, but it still hurts like *!@?% when you get shot in the vest.

I'm a fast learner when pain is a motivating factor... I prefer to avoid pain.

Best Regards,
Bryan

[Radioman]

Jim,

I completely agree with you. What I said about face shields, helmets, etc. could be said another way: I think bullet-proof vests are wonderful protection, but it still hurts like *!@?% when you get shot in the vest.

I'm a fast learner when pain is a motivating factor... I prefer to avoid pain.

Best Regards,
Bryan

Just like getting hit in the face with a 10lb blank while wearing a face shield hurts like the dickens. I’d still rather be wearing the shield though.