This is specific to the wood lathe in this instance, but is a good example for anything involving power tools in general, so I’ll leave it in the general woodworking section.
The other day after taking the wood lathe class, I was practicing to get better at things and get more of a feel for it. Well, I didn’t realize it at the time, but the piece had cracked slightly near the end.
What had resulted, was a 2’ long chunk of wood exploding into two pieces, a primary piece of about 20” in length, and a secondary piece around 4” or so. These pieces flew off the lathe at a little over 1k RPM, and the big one bashed me near the top of the head, mostly knocking off the face shield. The little one on the other hand, impacted directly where my right eye was, and if I wasn’t wearing the face shield, I likely would have lost sight in that eye.
This happened Saturday, and I knew that I likely had a head injury. Turns out I was lucky and didn’t even get a concussion, but I did come close with how much force there was. Anyhow, be careful folks. Doesn’t matter how safe you think you are, this stuff can still be dangerous if you don’t respect what these machines are capable of.
Attached are pictures of the secondary piece that flew off.
