Many of us are budding car mechanics or interested in restoring and customizing cars.
How many of us have watched the presenters of TV programes happily cutting a section of the bodywork out with
a grinder with the guard removed. Then there was a TIG welding a section of their car body wearing just a short sleeved
Tee shirt and sometimes without any gloves either!
Cutting Disc Speeds
The modern cutting disc that measures around 125mm in diameter rotates at speeds of 12200 revolutions per minute or 80 metres per second which in my book is really fast.
I personally know of 2 friends who have had an accident using just such a grinder. One of them had to have a piece of shattered cutting disc measuring around 20mm wide removed from his forehead. Luckily he was wearing safety glasses, the guard was fitted to the grinder and it hit him in the hardest part of his head.
Inspect the disc
Nobody really knows when they pick up and use a grinder if the disc is perfect without any flaws or if the grinder has been knocked off a workbench and just picked up without checking the disc.
Imagine what a mess your face would look like if you removed the safety guard and used a grinder that shattered its disc letting bits fly all over the place?
“Wife Beaters”
Now onto the welding in “wife beaters”
Statistics are allready showing an increase in numbers of people that are developing skin cancers or Melanomas due to the gaping hole in the Ozone layer that is allowing the harmfull radiation of the sun to penetrate our earths atmosphere and burn our delicate skins.
If you didn’t know already welding anything gives off very strong Ultraviolet light which is the king of light that causes our skin to burn. Just a couple of minutes is enough time to really give someone bad sunburn on unprotected skin.
Welding such as TIG, MIG-MAG and arc welding are all equally bad so welding in a short sleeved Tee shirt and without some kind of suitable gloves is just asking for trouble.
We might be thinking you are getting away with it in our youth but it will probably come back to bite us when we are in our 50 -60’s with a nasty episode of skin cancer just when we are looking forward to grandchildren.
Please heed my warnings.
Wear gloves and cover your arms when you are welding and DON’T remove the guards on the grinders……