Keep Seeing

[Jim C Bradley]

As an eyeball man I get to spend many Sundays a year taking five hour stretches of continuing education. That is just my lead-in to the subject of eye injuries and tools. Did you know that, by far, the leading tool injury that puts a person into “Emergency” is hammering? I hate to admit it, but I didn’t.

Part of yesterday’s continuing education was on tool use that put a person in the Emergency Clinic at the hospital because of their eyes. Well I tell you---after seeing a bazillion photos, scans, etc. of nails, pieces of metal, cement, glass, broken drill bits, wood splinters, pieces of chisel, etc. stuck into and through eyeballs I am ready to attach a pair of safety glasses to every hammer I own.

Many of these delightful projectiles not only went through the eyeballs, but on into the orbit and perhaps on through the bone into that mess of soft stuff, including the brain.

Regular eyewear, including polycarbonate lenses, offers only a very minor amount of protection from the flying missals. Legally and for all practical purposes, NO LENS IS A SAFETY LENS UNTIL IT IS MOUNTED INTO A SAFETY FRAME.

To be a safety frame, the frame must meet a whole bunch of criteria (fire, acid, how hard you can hit it, etc.). One of the main factors is that the lens in a safety frame must take a brutal blow before it comes out of the frame. This is because a dislodged lens makes a heck of an eyeball scoop (think ice cream scoop).

Because of exposure caused by head position, ricochet, etc. side shields are a “Must.”

I wrote this in this unorthodox manner hoping that it will stick in your mind and make you a much better, safer hammerer.

Enjoy
And keep wearing those safety glasses.
...........I want you to be able to keep reading my posts.

Jim

Moderator: I also posted this on FWW. Jim

[phil harold]

thanks for the reminder

[curtis rosche]

so just glasses wont protect me on the lathe?

[Brian Brown]

Thank you! I'm going to print this on a billboard and take it to our wood turning club meetings. We have a few older guys that think nothing will ever hit them in the eye, and that their fashion eye glasses are sufficient. They actually sometimes make fun of those of us that wear eye protection.

[Paul Atkins]

I was splitting a cherry log with a steel wedge and sledge hammer when my wife over 10 feet away said "Hey!". A piece of the wedge had broken off and hit her arm. There was a small cut less than a quarter of an inch and it was bleeding a bit, but there was no metal in sight, so we cleaned it up and forgot about it for a couple of days when she said it ached. I got out a super magnet and she yelled out when I passed it over the now sealed wound. After a bit of home-shop surgery we got a very sharp piece of metal out. A curious thing was that her dad said upon hearing this " Oh yeah, that happened to me too." Face shield for me now when splitting and no one in the area.

[curtis rosche]

my wrestling coach cuts peices of metal out of his chest all the time. he is a mason and his chisels chip a lot

[Belinda Barfield]

Jim, thanks for posting the reminder. I was an ophthalmic tech for a number of years. We saw countless foreign bodies - mostly pieces of metal and pieces of wood, and yes one nail that I can remember. We also saw lots of welder's burns. One really tough guy came in one day, he was a "repeat customer" with yet another pice of metal embedded in his cornea. His vision was less than 20/400 in that eye. After checking his acuity I asked him to cover one eye, I covered the other and asked him "What do you see?". He said, "Nothing. " I replied, "Exactly, and that is what you are going to see for the rest of your life if you don't start wearing your safety glasses!" It's so easy to take good vision for granted. We should all heed your advice.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Now that I know my glasses are useless I'll stop wearing them and go back to squinting.

Squinting~!! The technology that has served Japanese Sword Smiths and blacksmiths for centuries.

Actually the SwordSmiths had an apprentice waving a bundle of straw in front of their faces for protection.