I had a fortunate accident today. I say fortunate because it didn’t cause permanent injury and has reminded me to follow our own safety procedures. I tend to get up close and personal when I solder. I was soldering a board today when a spot of solder flicked up and hit my eye lid. An 1/8th of an inch over and it would have been in my eye.
One guess where my goggles were. Right, hanging up on the wall, as in, not on my face. It made me realize that I haven’t worn goggles while soldering in quite a while. When handling a rocket or a big balloon we all very careful. The dangerous is apparent so as a result those our likely to be are safest times. It’s the common everyday dangers that bite you. So today I was very lucky and got solder in the face. It probably saved my eye ball in the future.
Yikes, lucky guy. I worked at a lab where we ran various gases through 2- or 3-ft long 2-in OD glass tubes. One time our lab director was inspecting it after a test shutdown, and it blew up — through glass shrapnel through his face (and knocked out some fluorescent lights 15 feet above the table). In the post-accident photos, among the blood and glass, you can see his safety goggles sitting where he left them on the table before inspecting the tube. Not such a fortunate accident for him, since he lost the sight in one of his eyes…
Years ago I worked at a science museum and saw a terrible shop accident.
No one is safer than me in a shop after seeing a man router the flesh of his thumb. Be careful.