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Funniest build injury

selhardt

selhardt

Well Known Member
So I'm blind riveting my outboard leading edges to the spar and having lots of trouble with the modified rivet puller. While messing with it at the bench, I manage to catch a bit of my stomach (kind word for belly) between the handles when a rivet pops - this morning I have 2 round bruises on my stomach where my blind rivet tool 'bit' me.

It wasn't funny on Saturday - but it is today and it occurs to me there must be other tool tales out there... Come on, be honest!

Scott
RV-8, tanks are sealed but not leak tested, LE are riveted, ordering the fuse kit this week.
 
None of them were funny at the time, but ...

1) Grinding down a bolt to use as a drift pin, I was reminded that just because it is no longer glowing dull red does not mean that it is cool to the touch. That's why you got out the cloth to hold the piece in the first place, and placed it right by the grinder before you started.

2) Saving time by using cyanoacrylates to tack some fiberglass pieces in place doesn't always save time when you tack your left hand in place as well.

3) Thinking "I should de-burr that corner before it bites me and I bleed on my airplane" two seconds before it bites me, causing me to bleed on my airplane.


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&e...snum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=cyanoacrylate&spell=1
 
I raised the tail wheel in order to have better access to the top of the engine on my -4. I looked at the trailing edge of the horizontal stab and saw two sharp corners. Thought to my self, I bet that would hurt. A day later I tried to get around the horizontal stab and verified that in fact that corner did hurt. Now I have two horizontal scars on my belly about 2 inches long. I guess if I ever want to know those dimensions, I can just measure my belly.
 
Helping a buddy by bucking rivets on his upside-down canoe RV8A. I dropped the little tungsten bucking bar on my head from a height of about 18 inches (arm's length). Didn't really hurt but the corner of the bar gashed my forehead. What I first thought was sweat turned out to be a rather large amount of blood streaming from the wound. There is still a small scar.
 
Bruce,

Probably didn't really hurt because you destroyed the pain detection section of your brain. To be sure, you should try smashing your thumb with a hammer and see if that still hurts.

Cheers,
Dr T.
 
drill

I drilled a small "hole" in my finger.

Of course I then deburred and dimpled it before putting on the band-aid.
 
During the empenage construction, I went to pick up a soldering iron used to remove the vinyl, and picked it up from the wrong end! Sizzle!
 
1) Shortly after I built my wing jig, I was out moving things around the garage and stood up under the end of the angle-iron support meant for the spar. The angle left two 10" long gashes down my back. Now the funny part, two days later, I did the same thing on the other side - made it look like I had racing stripes down my back.

2) After cutting the hole in the fuel tank end rib for the access plate (using the fly cutter) I was left with a good piece of scrap with a razor-sharp edge. I thought it would be a good idea to deburr the edge so I wouldn't cut myself, so I grabbed up the piece and took it to the wheel. The "razor-frisbee" caught on the wheel and flung across the garage a 60 mph, slicing open my finger along the way...I have a picture of that one..haha
 
I permanently trapped a mosquito to the underside of my top wing skin, because he was stupid enough to mess with me while I was priming the skin. I guess he's still in there.

Not really my injury but an injury nonetheless. Although MY blood was involved.

The term "Blood, Sweat and Tears" can be taken quite literally in this hobby.
 
Drill Attack

This happened many years ago, when we were building a "new" Bonanza for a customer. I was removing the skins on the nacelle area, and as I got down to the final rivets the skin and stringer started to separate and flex with the pressure of the drill. Well it was just not convenient to walk across the shop to get some clecos, so I just put my hand behind it and applied pressure to keep everything steady.
About 5 rivets later, the drill pushed through and I drilled a #30 hole in the web between my thumb and nasal maintenance finger! Fortunately (?), the bit snapped so I did not suffer the further indignity of being one with the drill and the airframe. I can tell you however that using the pliers to "unwind" the bit from my hand was no picnic!
 
I drilled through a skin/rib assembly right into my forefinger. Yikes that hurt. So of course I went and got a bandaid and put it on. Then, I moved along to the next hole, and drilled right through the bandaid into the same %$#@ hole in my finger. I have never forgotten that one (1982). I still cringe when I am drilling with my hand on the other side of the aluminum.

Vic
 
Oh only two

"Drilled a hole in my finger" injuries?..I drilled two holes on this airplane and one on the one before!

That 20,000RPM air drill sure makes fast work of that hole too!

Frank
 
6" wire wheel on a bench motor....I was brushing something when a crimped wire flew out and stuck in the end of my nose. I mean stuck, like 1/4" deep, standing straight out, dead center on the tip. I marveled at it for a few moments, quite cross-eyed. Wish I had a picture.
 
Well, I thought everyone has set their beard on fire while soldering battery leads. No? Or am I the only one to admit it?

(Solder splash got me. BTW, it wasn't that incident but having to solder overhead whilst working on the wiring that caused me to dig out an old paintball mask to protect my good looks.;))
 
KBOOM!

Never ever rotate the propeller when dessicant plugs are installed.
Guaranteed to blow their top and reward you with a shower of BB's! :eek:​
213537b.jpg
 
jaws of death!

Watch out for those scurvy cleco side grippers...they hurt like heck if (when) they get a piece of you...
 
I can entertain my kids by taking a sharpie and tracing all the permanent scars accumulated on my left hand during the build, cuts and drill holes and such. The right hand gets to wield the weapons, so the left hand is the victim. I'm sure my left pointer finger thinks the right hand is trying to kill him.

TIP: In a pinch, painter's tape and a shop towel make a decent enough band-aid to keep working without bleeding all over parts. Oh, and most of my injuries happened around 3am when I should have been sleeping. ...just one more step, and I will go to bed...
 
Rick6a said:
Never ever rotate the propeller when dessicant plugs are installed.
Guaranteed to blow their top and reward you with a shower of BB's! :eek:​
213537b.jpg
Click to expand...

also, never rotate the prop after removing the dessicant plug and before draining the preserving oil while standing inline with the plug hole..........it's amazing what a little oil will do to a nice shirt !! it comes out at an amazing velocity..............
 
When I started building the horizontal stab I borrowed a friend's pneumatic squeezer. I decided to try out my brand new Avery dimple dies on some scrap. Somehow something slipped and I dimpled my left index finger with a pop and a crunch sound. It took about a year to fully heal. That was in 1996 and still today when the weather is cold my finger goes numb from the last joint to the tip.

Paul Danclovic
Jamestown NC
RV-8A N181SB
 
More Funny Injuries....

While riveting the turtledeck on (doing one of the horizontal row), I dislocated my left shoulder....I was kinda stuck inside the tail cone and in pain...I was able to inch-worm my way forward and finally sit up. I grabbed on tho the rollbar and luckly the shoulder went back in. I was very sore for a few days.

Like all good builders, I've drilled my fingers....more than once!

I spun a piece of steel in my drillpress and sliced my left thumb to the bone. I wrapped a shop rag around my hand and continued to work....can't stop for the small stuff. My wife came out to the garage, saw the now slightly red rag and nearly fainted....I didn't hear the end of this one for some time.
 
Rick6a said:
Never ever rotate the propeller when dessicant plugs are installed.
Guaranteed to blow their top and reward you with a shower of BB's! :eek:​
Click to expand...

I don't remember how it happened, but a friend had a dessicant plug break. My job the next build night was to chase those BB's out of the cylinder fins. Many were wedged in so I had to attack them with the shop vac and the long steel ruler.

I keep hearing these stories so I know it's coming but I haven't directly injured myself yet. I did manage to get myself with a flush trim saw a couple weeks ago building a stand for my sander. I was cutting dowel pins flush and holding the stand steady with the other hand. I thought, Gee when I cut through my hand is going to be in a bad spot. About 2 milliseconds later, I proved myself right. I grabbed a paper towel and went and watched New Yankee Workshop until it stopped bleeding. :D
 
I don't recall the exact part, but I do recall the injury.

I was grinding down some metal and I sat it down for 2 seconds - or at least long enough for me to remove my glove and pick it up.

That's when I realized that it was hot - hot - HOT! It sizzled my fingers and man they hurt. I couldn't help but think of how stupid I was. Plain Ole Stupid!

As long as I kept my fingers in cold water, they were numb and didn't bother me as much. I slept on the couch that night with my hand in bucket of ice water. The next couple of nights, I put crushed ice in a pair of zip lock bags and brought them to bed with me.

Much better after a few days and healed completely in a couple of weeks.

My Achilles heel seems to involve hot items, but I've shed my fair share of blood too.
 
mild concussion from a cleco?

While on a "building date" with my now wife, I was permanently removing a bent cleco from my inventory. We almost always wear mechanic gloves to build to "protect" our hands and the bent cleco was thinking it didn't want to be removed from inventory, so as I was tossing it across the hanger in a sidearm pitching motion, it hung slightly in a small hole in the glove and THEN started flying in a direction 90^ of my aim. Hit my lovely Moonpie square in the middle of the forehead. I was sick to my stomach and she got woozy. SHE says it was a slight concussion and I did give her mouth to mouth. :D Never threw another cleco. I haven't drilled MY hand yet, but did drill HERS!! :eek: Thank goodness for the glove as it took most of the hit, but drew blood.

She married me anyway and I think waiting to get revenge!
 
Just some general shop advice from one accident-prone person to another: Always keep a bottle of superglue in the shop. I have "fixed" more deep cuts with superglue than I dare count.
 
The most painful result of "brain at idle"...

....was when I drilled a #12 hole dead center in the palm of my left parts holder (read:left hand). About 1/2 second before the pain started, I was thinking; "I need to be careful ... that brand new #12 bit is really sharp." Yep. Sure was. :eek:
 
Not quite RV but...

Using a ball pien hammer and drift to remove a bearing off a shaft. Missed with the hammer and managed to smash my thumb against the vise. Lots of blood & sutures, screamed like a little girl! Twenty years on and that thumb is still sensitive to careless bumps and knocks....which seems to happen a lot while building the 6!!
 
WingsOnWheels said:
1) Shortly after I built my wing jig, I was out moving things around the garage and stood up under the end of the angle-iron support meant for the spar.
Click to expand...

Did that while helping my buddy build his RV-8, only hit it with my head which, as head wounds are wont to do, bled pretty good. We have a rule...we keep a "This Shop Has Had X Accident-Free Days" thing, but it's not only and accident if you have to stop work, so we just kept riveting away until the blood stopped dripping out of my head! :) Wouldn't want to have to reset the accident-free days counter LOL!
 
OOPS

We were doing something, I forget exactly what, but it required Evan to hold a piece from behind while I drilled it. Evan, are you sure your thumb is not in the way? Yeah... its clear. It wasn't.

Ned Rose
42TD
7A
 
Injuries

Have done almost all of the above. One more - just starting to use cut off wheel in electric grinder, clumsily. Friend who is stone cutter suggested removing the guard, since it just gets in the way. Took of the guard and withing 1 minute had cut a slice about 3/16 deep in my thumb. Didn't hurt at first, and didn't bleed much. Maybe the hi speed disc sort of cauterizes the tissue. Guard is back on, even tho it is inconvenient and gets in the way!
 
Funny?

I thought the title of this thread was FUNNIEST build injuries.:confused: Now that I've finished reading them, both my head and my left hand are throbbing!:eek: The one I most identify with is catching my left thumb and forefinger in those %(#@&^ cleco clamps.

I do have to say though, that Dan Horton gets my vote for funniest so far. While reading it I acutally crossed my eyes and discovered that I CAN see the tip of my own nose, and can imaging that wire bristle sticking out of it. Only the fact that I'm at work keeps me from ROTFLMAO.
 
One not-so-funny almost-injury I had that I'll share - I was running a dremel tool with a cutoff wheel while fabbing some part or another on the wing, and as I spun the wheel up to speed I thought to myself "I probably should be wearing safety goggles for this", stopped just long enough to put them on, and about 5 seconds later I had a pizza-slice shaped wedge of cutoff disc sticking partially through the top of the left lens of my safety goggles.

Caution is advised....
 
Had my share of hot parts and drilled fingers type incidents, but the ones that stick out most are the "almost" ones where you think "man, that was stupid!". (like standing on a kiddie chair, pouring lead RV-4 elevator counterweights in flip-flops! Part shifted, glob of molten lead hits the astroturf floor and splats in a solidified starburst one foot under my bare feet. Time to re-think this procedure!)
 
Greg's cutting disk story brings something to mind. NOT funny, but a caution worth repeating......

An A&P friend was watching at the airport one day and gave me h*ll about how I was using safety wire pliers. My friend worked on C-130's in the Guard and witnessed an ugly flight line injury. You know how you clamp the wire pair in the jaws? Take a moment to bend the ends back toward the tip before you pull the twist. A co-worker did not, the twist broke, and a wire end stabbed him in the eye.
 
Cleco in the eye

I was working on the floor of the RV-7A somewhere with clecoes going in and out. The holes were an odd size or something, so the clecoes would sometimes come out after a minute or two. I was ALWAYS good about wearing safety glasses around clecoes except this time... After about 10 seconds, a cleco popped out of a hole arms length from my head. Straight into the inside corner of my eye! Felt like it bounced off the backside of my skull. I think it would have popped my eye if it would have hit straight on...
My eye was red for a week, but I it recovered fine.

Seb Trost
RV-7A 350 hours
 
DanH said:
Greg's cutting disk story brings something to mind. NOT funny, but a caution worth repeating......

An A&P friend was watching at the airport one day and gave me h*ll about how I was using safety wire pliers. My friend worked on C-130's in the Guard and witnessed an ugly flight line injury. You know how you clamp the wire pair in the jaws? Take a moment to bend the ends back toward the tip before you pull the twist. A co-worker did not, the twist broke, and a wire end stabbed him in the eye.
Click to expand...

Also a great reason to wear safety glasses even for seemingly innocuous tasks...
 
bsacks05 said:
Helping a buddy by bucking rivets on his upside-down canoe RV8A. I dropped the little tungsten bucking bar on my head from a height of about 18 inches (arm's length). Didn't really hurt but the corner of the bar gashed my forehead. What I first thought was sweat turned out to be a rather large amount of blood streaming from the wound. There is still a small scar.
Click to expand...

Uh... Sorry about that Bruce! If it is any consolation, that bucking bar still has a dent in it, too. :)

I've done most of what has been mentioned (drilled fingers, squeezed by the side Cleco clamps, etc.). However, my favorite stories are the ones where the person is sitting there thinking "this probably isn't too smart" about a nano-second before the accident happens. I did this after punching a hole in the firewall with a hole punch. I started unscrewing the slug from the punch (stainless steel) with my bare hand and thought "I should be careful; stainless can cut you". Duh! Less than a second later, blood everywhere!
 
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