The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up just reading this thread. Nothing personal to report here, but I've seen a mess of them. My dad taught me at a very early age to think forward, constant vigilance, situational awareness.
I was an auto mechanic for 12 years and learned "where those knuckles will go if that wrench lets go" very early on, too. When I started in this trade, my boss would come around at the end of the night and count my fingers (jokingly) but I did wonder those first few weeks if I hadn't made a mistake. Here we were spinning razor sharp tools at very high speeds.
The first bonehead move I made in this trade was when I went looking for a resharpened endmill. You know that protective plastic they dip them in? ( I know a bunch of you are cringing now)
I had the endmill in one hand and tugged on the plastic with the other. It wouldn't come off, so what'd I do? yep, tugged harder. 'Till it gave and I felt a tug in my finger and thumb. Looked down, blood everywhere. Stupid, but I learned.
We just got a bunch of new gloves in the shop for handling chips (no pulling, just handling. Like the others, we use steel hook and pliers for pulling). They are reinforced with kevlar (don't remember the manufacturer) We work with a lot of stainless and it would slice through leather gloves as easily as skin.
Kind of a funny one: We used to wear lab coats at IBM if it was a particularly messy job. There's a guy working beside me on a BP and I hear him yelling "SHUT IT OFF! SHUT IT OFF!" I look over to see he had set the power cross feed on and the handle on the left side of the machine was wrapping him up in his lab coat. Lifted his feet right off the ground and he couldn't reach the shut off switch. We got him untangled and back on the ground.
Had another guy setting up a fly cutter in a BP. The kind that's just a 3/4" bar vertically, and a horizontal 3/4" bar running through it at the bottom. He chucks it up and doesn't check the set screws on the cross bar. Fires up the mill and BANG ZIP BANG POW, bar slips out and ricochetes through the 15 BP's all in a small area with people ducking for cover. We started leaving a hard hat hanging on the machine next to him for anyone who had to work near him
There are more, but this getting long winded (sorry)
Excellent topic to get the word out about safety and awareness. Diligence, always.
Mark