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Death at the lathe

Darryl Fective

Darryl Fective

Joined
Jan 20, 2011
Messages
713
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Location
Traverse City, MI
There can be some rather serious consequences when woodturning. I had an experience about 12 years ago when I first took up the hobby. I had a 14inch Ash log of 12 inch diameter between the centers I went in too deep with my roughing gouge and the whole log shot out and missed my head by millimetres. It landed when it hit the front doors of the shed 40ft away.
 
Eddy Lynn said:
There can be some rather serious consequences when woodturning. I had an experience about 12 years ago when I first took up the hobby. I had a 14inch Ash log of 12 inch diameter between the centers I went in too deep with my roughing gouge and the whole log shot out and missed my head by millimetres. It landed when it hit the front doors of the shed 40ft away.
Click to expand...

Probably a lot of us woodturners can relate to that. When I was learning to turn, I can remember a chunk of wood hitting the ceiling, leaving a deep and dangerous looking impression there. Glad I wasn't in the way of that one. I also have a nice dent in the lamp used at my lathe. That one was caused by the handle of my scraper tool slapping it.....hard.

The general advice is to stay out of the line of fire. That's good advice, but it isn't always adhered to.

Be acutely aware of imperfections that could become a problem, and take precautions accordingly.

Don't turn wood that you know better that you shouldn't...... :)

Listen to that little voice in your head telling you not to turn this one....:)

-o-
 
My first attempt at inside out turning resulted in a glue joint failure. As a result, a piece of the blank went sailing by my face shield. Since it was my first attempt at this procedure, I was using small blanks. However, the incident reminded me of the need for absolute safety at the lathe (and make sure any glued up piece is secure).
 
As a newbie I’ve had my share of unintended blank flights. Taught me to make my tenons and mortises better. But now I know what the line of fire is. Being left handed I often stand on the right side of the lathe and that’s farther from that line of fire than you right handers. Sad story. Too many of these.
 
Like many of us I had a near miss in the very early days and promptly learnt how to turn and stay out of the line of fire. Also decided speed was an issue as well these days I often drop the speed on suspect blanks
 
So the first time I mounted a baseball bat blank on my $180 lathe,……. I had it going at the fastest speed possible because you have to open up a door and manually adjust the belts. And I didn’t know that. It was on the fastest possible setting when I got it. I didn’t have a center finder either, just figured I’d eyeball it. I turned it on and the table I had it sitting on (not mounted) started shaking violently. Then the blank shot off and hit the wall on the other side of the lathe, ricocheted and hit the floor of my garage. Then it sat up vertically on its end it and started doing the Charleston with my dog. I remember thinking later that evening that I should not have dropped acid before wood turning on a $180 lathe.
 
When turning bowls, I keep the speed at or under 1,000 RPMs. Bowls that come off the lathe at those speeds, drop to the floor instead of flying past my head. Fortunately, I haven't had any come off the lathe recently.
 
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