Gloves and machine tools – my stupidity.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

As NDIY says, many are quite foreseeable, but waiting to happen.

Some are worthy contenders for the Darwin Awards

Howard

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

I can very much take the OP's point.

I've always found gloves safer when handling bulky swarf or heavy, sharp-edged metal parts, but generally not rotating machinery.

Back in the 70s as an operator I gave myself a bad cut in the web of one thumb fettling the rolled thread on artic trailer jacking screws just off the copy lathe, and wore heavy gloves for that particular job from then on.

I can't really see that there's any simple rule – you have to exercise imagination to anticipate the risks, and adjust your behaviour and PPE to suit.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

Not so much about gloves, but I remember a young guy who got a great "buzz cut" from a drilling machine, due to his long hair, all the fashion at the time. !

Gloves, loose clothes, even strong belts ect are all a BIG NO-NO near ANY machines..

Welding gloves ? OK since nothing is moving.

Power tools ? trust nothing, and I mean NOTHING !, a 1/2" power drill will break your arm, no problem !.

Have fun .

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

I use machine tools every day, and for many years would never wear gloves, nowadays having bad psoriasis I have no real option but to wear gloves, indeed I rarely take them off…..but there are gloves and there are gloves. Mine are made specifically for machine shop work, no loose threads, indeed they fit like a glove! I buy them in bulk and they are about 60p per pair with a pair easily lasting three to fout weeks. They are coated with something on the underside so there is nothing that can catch. Regardsing the Op's post, I also have white cotton gloves for things like the gas tanks we make in brass, and can confirm that they are quite dangerous if used near turning things.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

I have mentioned on here before that we were warned during my apprenticeship induction about wearing gloves on rotating machines, to reinforce the message a picture was shown to us of a finger with the tendons pulled out of the forearm laying on a machine table. The image has stuck with me for over 48 years and I have never worn gloves on a machine. I would imagine that the thin latex or vinyl gloves for skin protection would shred before any harm to ones hand occurs but I will let someone else try it. Most of us have given up on long hair but as an apprentice in the early 70s most of us had long hair and a snood was mandatory in the training machine shops for long haired apprentices. Gloves certainly have their place for hand protection but made from a strong material and rotating machines are a bad mix. If you like a nice gory picture search for degloved fingers, it may put you off rings and gloves.

Mike

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by peak4 on 01/01/2021 02:23:21:

Glad you're OK, but it's good to publicise these things occasionally.

My last manager, before I retired, let it be known that the would formally discipline anyone he caught using power tools WITHOUT gloves; he was after all the H&S lead for our division.

Sometimes I wonder………….

Bill

As a rider to that, as I forgot to mention it yesterday, one thing I didn't cover was gloves used with impact drill/hammers;
These have gel filled palms and were issued to help prevent vibration white finger.
All the ones I saw issued to staff were fingerless, a bit like older style cycling gloves.

You see both styles listed in safety catalogues, sometimes but not always, the fingerless ones are recommended for hand electric drills, and the full gloves for hydraulic/pneumatic impact hammers.

Bill

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I once saw some dummy severed fingers and theatrical blood on a horizontal mill, in a college workshop. That was back in 1970. Plastic they may have been but horrible enough to make the point I still remember. The same shop's safety posters also had one I have never seen elsewhere – a photo of skin disease on a scrotum, consequent on having habitually stuffed oily rags in overall pockets.

A friend who rides horses, and used to own two, says she never wears her engagement and wedding rings when rising – too many riders have had severe hand injuries from rings becoming caught in the bridlery.

To me, gloves of appropriate types are for when using hazardous portable tools like grinders and welders, or handling swarf, sharps, etc, not for when operating machine-tools.

I had a narrow escape once when cutting up a scrapped steel boiler from a 7-1/4 " g. loco (to determine how badly corroded it had become before its firebox sprang a leak in service). I was using a 4.5" angle-grinder, and the cutting-disc caught. It pulled the grinder out of my hands, then wrenched itself free from the boiler and went hopping around the yard. I dare not try to grab it, and had to switch it off at the wall socket.

I have used a 9" grinder to cut up some concrete paving-slabs. Only once. They are big, very heavy and very powerful tools and I am not confident I can handle them safely. I don't know the grinder size he was using but I recall a friend saying he had it catch when chasing out mortar for re-pointing a wall, and it bit his arm deeply enough to only just miss the artery.

(Ironically perhaps, I think this was the same friend who had a 5" g. ground-level railway round his garden, and you not only had to watch your balance, but also duck to pass below a large branch on a shrub!)

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

When ever I watch the pc video's with people wearing gloves, always makes me nervous. Gloves are as dangerous as loose long sleeve clothing ,or loose long hair and wearing Jewellery.

When polishing and wanting a near perfect scratch free surface, the material used to wipe away the previous grist size needs to be a scratch free material, like a lens cloth material. Washing hands between grit changes also helps.

[clogsParticipant @clogs]

The only gloves I wear are for welding…..

after years of good service, my hands / skin have work harden'd…hahaha…..

the only time I wear those nitrile type gloves is when dare I say it…? dye my wifes hair…..hahaha…

I can handle any kind of oil or grease even empting the sud's tank's on my hands

BUT just cant stand garden dirt ……very strange…….

all the best ….

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Our induction horror gallery also included the scrotum afflicted with dermatitis accompanying the warning not to keep oily wipers in your pocket. The apprentice induction program was run over three days and apart from the workshop safety presentation we had a lecture on company history presented by Ken Revis who was blinded defusing a mine on Brighton Pier. He drove an MG at 100mph while blind, that must be a special relationship with the co-driver. A bit of shock and horror certainly help to carry a message.

Mike

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Having suffered a couple of finger injuries including traumatic amputation through the bone, I can assure all that it is something to avoid.
One of the worst non-accident thngs I've seen was an older engineer facing off th end of a bit od 20mm tube in a lathe, polishing the outside with a strip of emery cloth. He then wrapped the cloth round his finger and stuck it inside the still turning tube. I didn't dare say anything until he pulled it out lest I distracted him. Once his finger was out I hit the E-stop and asked him to think about what he had done. He went white as a sheet and took the rest of the afternoon off.

Robert G8RPI.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

My nephew's an ambulanceman.

He's quite young, but he has seen more than enough 'degloving* injuries' for a lifetime.

Neil

*As in the skin comes off lik a glove

[the artfull-codgerParticipant @theartfull-codger]

I usually wear gloves when angle grinding,my cousin [a horse breeder] jumped up on a tall fence to check the horses then jumped down & her wedding ring caught & ripped her ring & skin off [yes it's called de-gloving!] didn't help when her husband photographed it & showed it to us all for a laugh,I was in our club one evening & the lads were laughing about one of our lads not being able to thumb a lift anymore puzzled I asked what they[& he] was laughing about & he held up his hand with no thumb!! he'd been polishing something on his industrial polishing machine with gloves on for a mate & it caught up & ripped it off,he said he didn't feel a thing,I never wear gloves when polishing now or the lathe .

[Roger BestParticipant @rogerbest89007]

Lots of experience here about what is fit for purpose PPE.

I am reminded to get some new nitrile gloves, I am running low, they tear so easy.

[brickyParticipant @bricky]

I always use nitrile gloves on the mill and lathe,but on the bandsaw I use a pair of very thick industrial leather gloves which have saved me on occasion.When I used to work I was using a 9" disc cutter on brickwork when finished it was idleing to stop when inatention let it catch my wrist, just missing my artery it ground a groove but didn't bleed ,then I noticed a fibre off the wheel sticking out,this fibre had travelled under the skin nearly around my wrist.I pulled it out with a pair of pliers.A very close shave and another lesson learned.

Frank

[Jon LawesParticipant @jonlawes51698]

When I worked at Boeing the they took the PPE to the extreme. When walking across the hangar you were required to wear safety shoes and goggles, when within touching distance of the aircraft you were required to wear a bump cap. The penalties for not doing it were fierce. The bump caps were very annoying, trying to work in a small space they would constantly fall off, and the goggles were not much better.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

My brother-in-law is a former seaman, and he lost a finger-tip by getting it nipped, inside a thick glove, between a bollard and the bight of a mooring-rope.

An acquaintance who works for one of Network Rail's civil-engineering contractors said his H&S bloke once had to investigate why so many of the staff started having eye problems. It was traced to the H&S department ordering them to wear goggles all day long, even when not needed.

Retired now, I worked on a trading-estate converted from a closed-down nuclear-power research establishment where part is still under that control while the remaining two reactors are being dismantled. Their staff were ordered to wear high-visibility jackets even to visit the site cafeteria on "our" side of the fence – no-one else saw any such need.

The safety-boot was on the other foot when I had occasionally to visit a certain RN base run by a civvie contractor who insisted all visitors had to go around in hard hats, even when there was no evidence of risk of head injury to us. Needless to say, all the Navy people around us were in their normal soft caps or berets according to rank, unless actually engaged in such work as slinging crane loads. Not only that, but the routes to our work locations were such that a builder's clumsy great hard hat was absurd, and more hazard than protective.

Back at base, our stores people were told to wear fall-arrest harnesses if climbing onto un-stacked shipping containers to fit lifting-slings. The only belay points on a container roof are the locking-eyes in the corners, about 2.5m off the ground. A shock-absorber type fall-arrest harness? Does that work on a drop of about 2.5 metres?

My mate and I watched someone dutifully attach the fall-arrest harness lanyard and continue working on a clerestory, using the top of a 10-tonne travelling-crane as scaffold, some 15 m above all sorts of things you'd not want to land on. " What happens ", we asked each other quietly, " if he falls, leaving him dangling by his harness, out of reach? How do we rescue him, safely and before suspension-trauma hits him? " (It can be fatal, and fairly quickly.) No-one knew. No-one had thought. No-one had heard of modern rope-access equipment and techniques that endeavour to prevent a fall, or at least reduce it to a couple of feet or so – nor modern-pattern, low-profile safety-helmets – developed by cavers and climbers; CE-marked and all. Not in the Procedures, Guv.

Then the real Health & Safety people, such as the HSE, wonder why their reputation is so poor!

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 10/01/2021 01:51:34:

The safety-boot was on the other foot when I had occasionally to visit a certain RN base run by a civvie contractor who insisted all visitors had to go around in hard hats, even when there was no evidence of risk of head injury to us. Needless to say, all the Navy people around us were in their normal soft caps or berets according to rank, unless actually engaged in such work as slinging crane loads. Not only that, but the routes to our work locations were such that a builder's clumsy great hard hat was absurd, and more hazard than protective.

Sounds quite reasonable to me. It means that you can easily identify the clowns that are not familiar with the site.

regards Martin

[Gary WoodingParticipant @garywooding25363]

I have a friend who likes to fly a fairly large kite. He is usually accompanied by another friend because it's hard to control such a large kite alone, but on one occasion he decided to fly it alone. With the cord looped around the end of his thumb he had a happy time until a strong gust of wind gave a hefty tug on the cord – and cut the end of his thumb right off.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Post's on H&S often worry me because they suggest the system isn't understood. Not unusual for chaps to believe 'common sense' should trump the apparent madness of rules but is it justified?

H&S isn't about rules and regulations. It's purpose is to assess risk and apply suitable countermeasures, both of which change over time.

Nigel's goggles are one such example. Stage 1, risk of eye-injuries caused the employer to impose goggles. But, stage 2, it's found permanent goggle wearing causes a new risk, so the system adapts. That's how H&S should work – it doesn't depend on a prescient H&S supremo expertly foreseeing all possible outcomes from day one. Beware If your organisation's H&S Guidelines aren't reviewed regularly!

More misunderstandings. Staff are often told to retain safety gear to stop them forgetting it on the way back. Forgetfulness is the risk, not canteen hazards! Nigel didn't spot it, but someone else did. Likewise visitors are often required to take extra precautions because organisations owe them an extra duty of care. They're at risk because they are unfamiliar with the territory, untrained, and probably slow to react in an emergency. By equipping visitors with PPE, the organisation demonstrates it isn't completely negligent, which is important if there's an insurance claim or prosecution. Nigel thinks being routed safely around a dockyard whilst wearing a hard-hat is daft, I suggest it's a reasonable precaution. Not from Nigel's point of view, but it's advantageous to the host.

Do shock-arresting harnesses work on a 2.5 metre drop? I don't know, but those I've seen would reduce the impact – surely a good thing. But as Nigel and I haven't seen the Risk Assessment, we can't tell. Similarly the chap dangling from a travelling crane. Possibly the crane could be moved if he fell off? I don't know – maybe the risk had been assessed, maybe the chap was so focussed on getting the job done he had ignored all the guidance. Many accidents are caused by people rushing to get the job done. Humans are wired to take risks, which is unfortunate because we estimate it so badly.

Nigel's comment 'No-one knew. No-one had thought' is guesswork. It supports the cosy notion that we know what others don't, but there's no evidence Nigel's assessment is correct. Maybe he's right, maybe not.

I've some sympathy with 'rules is rules' because all too often individual judgments are ignorant, lazy, pressured or unwell. The workforce rarely consider all the risks, especially responsibility and cost. I was briefly involved in a case were someone removed a steel safety catch to improve access (saving about an hour) and caused a visitor to receive a serious head injury. He would have been killed but for his helmet. Never saw the end result but just before the case got to court, the incident had cost over £2,000,000 and was still rising. As far as I know the person who removed the latch was never identified. Typical! People are outspoken about the stupidity of H&S, but don't own up when they get it wrong.

From the perspective of responsibility, it's wise for managers to avoid on-the-job short-cuts because worker assessments are often too narrow. Unfortunate because people doing the job are well placed to judge what's safe or not. Well worth listening to in my experience, but necessary to make sure they've thought it all through rather than just venting frustrated over-confidence! Ignorance may be bliss, but H&S is about getting the balance right.

Dave

[Roger BestParticipant @rogerbest89007]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 10/01/2021 01:51:34:

My brother-in-law is a former seaman, and he lost a finger-tip by getting it nipped, inside a thick glove, between a bollard and the bight of a mooring-rope.

An acquaintance who works for one of Network Rail's civil-engineering contractors said his H&S bloke once had to investigate why so many of the staff started having eye problems. It was traced to the H&S department ordering them to wear goggles all day long, even when not needed.

Retired now, I worked on a trading-estate converted from a closed-down nuclear-power research establishment where part is still under that control while the remaining two reactors are being dismantled. Their staff were ordered to wear high-visibility jackets even to visit the site cafeteria on "our" side of the fence – no-one else saw any such need.

The safety-boot was on the other foot when I had occasionally to visit a certain RN base run by a civvie contractor who insisted all visitors had to go around in hard hats, even when there was no evidence of risk of head injury to us. Needless to say, all the Navy people around us were in their normal soft caps or berets according to rank, unless actually engaged in such work as slinging crane loads. Not only that, but the routes to our work locations were such that a builder's clumsy great hard hat was absurd, and more hazard than protective.

Back at base, our stores people were told to wear fall-arrest harnesses if climbing onto un-stacked shipping containers to fit lifting-slings. The only belay points on a container roof are the locking-eyes in the corners, about 2.5m off the ground. A shock-absorber type fall-arrest harness? Does that work on a drop of about 2.5 metres?

My mate and I watched someone dutifully attach the fall-arrest harness lanyard and continue working on a clerestory, using the top of a 10-tonne travelling-crane as scaffold, some 15 m above all sorts of things you'd not want to land on. " What happens ", we asked each other quietly, " if he falls, leaving him dangling by his harness, out of reach? How do we rescue him, safely and before suspension-trauma hits him? " (It can be fatal, and fairly quickly.) No-one knew. No-one had thought. No-one had heard of modern rope-access equipment and techniques that endeavour to prevent a fall, or at least reduce it to a couple of feet or so – nor modern-pattern, low-profile safety-helmets – developed by cavers and climbers; CE-marked and all. Not in the Procedures, Guv.

Then the real Health & Safety people, such as the HSE, wonder why their reputation is so poor!

Great post Nigel, it could be used on a training course for how not to do H&S. Why goggles are not better than safety glasses, when builders hats just give you a pain in the neck. the difference between fall arrest and fall restraint harness. All are examples of poor selection and use of PPE.

I think that blaming the HSE is a little unfair. They publish loads of stuff and none of it says do any of the above, (there is a legal obligation to use appropriate PPE if anyone wants it spelt out). It does say that management must take responsibility and the reality is that they don't. They delegate to others, this sometimes means the little Napoleon who is too incompetent to be allowed to anything else, it almost always involves people who don't have the time to talk it through properly with the "experienced hand" who has never had an accident and knows how it should be done, because he has seen loads of idiots have accidents.

Safety management has improved hugely this century as has the equipment, the number of fatalities has steadily dropped and being killed at work is now an unusual thing. Amateurs would be wise to look at what the professionals are doing nowadays and bearing in mind that when working alone in your workshop there is no one to stem the bleeding when you have passed out.

Great thread this.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

H&S isn't about rules and regulations. It's purpose is to assess risk and apply suitable countermeasures, both of which change over time.

The ‘lowest common denominator’ has to be the idiot. The untrained, visitors, etc are then catered for, irrespective of their abilities, understanding or their knowledge – above that of the idiot. Simply ‘the worst case scenario’.

Among the very possible fatal instances I came across was that of someone with one foot inside a coil of rope (with a hook on the end, which could easily be snatched away under tonnes of loosened stone (in the hopper below) and pulled him along with it.

Another was when I stopped the whole plant because someone was straddling a running screw (about 900mm wide) perched on two feed chutes, either side of the screw, about 2-300mm above floor level, and shovelling material into the uncovered screw. No protection whatsoever for the fellow. Actually, the whole plant need not have been stopped – it could have been kept running, but I think the supervisor on duty disapproved of my action – I simply hit the emergency stop button for the screw.

I had to make a visit to the works directors office within the hour because of the reported stoppage. A chat with him to explain why I hit the stop button was obviously accepted and I didn’t hear anything more of the incident. He clearly agreed with me that had the fellow slipped and fallen in, the whole plant would have been shut down for a lot longer – to investigate his death

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

There are often 'hidden' improvers of safety too. If you insist on a visitor wearing safety gear they do not forget they are in a hazardous area.

I suspect the next generation will not be having this conversation, kids are very used to safety gear these days.

regards Martin

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