Near Miss

Hi all,
This post is for turners who are becoming complacent and a reminder that woodturning can be a very dangerous hobby. Those new to turning might also benefit from the words contained within.

Let me say up front that I'm not a reckless or fool hardy kind of guy. In fact, I am probably on the boring side of cautious, but that didn't prevent me from almost coming to a sticky end. The reason I have always been cautious is because I don't like the thoughts of getting caught up with machinery that is revolving at high speed and I don't like the thoughts of anything coming off my lathe at speed.

So, you may be asking how did I come to be in a near death situation? Well here is how.

I wanted to make a vase and colour it like I'd seen another woodturner do it on Youtube. To get the piece of wood that I would need meant that I would have to take it from a 3 inch square piece of sycamore that was 24 inches long. This was twice as long as anything I'd tackled before, but at the time it didn't seem too daunting. So I mounted on the lathe with a view to rounding it off with my roughing gouge.

I say I wasn't concerned about the task in hand, well not to begin with, but as soon as I started the lathe  the big whirling piece of wood became very menacing as it spun around between centres.

Anyway, I decide that taking my time and taking light cuts was the order of the day and I made sure that my gouge was good and sharp. Despite, being aware of the dangers and proceeding with caution, I was still surprised to find myself, a few moments later, recovering from the floor with pains in my wrist and chest.

I had been literally stunned and knocked to the floor as the piece of timber had left the lathe and tried to club me to death. I know it must have hit me in the face shield first because that was damaged and was why I was knocked to the floor. but while it was spinning around it must have also hit me in the chest and arms because those were both very painful. I was most concerned about the chest pains because I have suffered a heart attack in the past and had 2 stents fitted.

Needless to say, I was a bit shook up and staggered to the kitchen where my wife administered her soothing touch and made sure I wasn't seriously injured. Thankfully, I escaped with just bruises and a dent in my confidence. I am also thankful for the quality of the JSP power cap that managed to take the brunt oh the impact. I only got this helmet for my birthday in April and it was purchased mostly with dust avoidance in mind. Little did I know then that it might be responsible for saving my life.

So, what went wrong?
There were two issues. Firstly a catch. I must have had a momentary lack in concentration and I allowed the tool to dig in. You can also see on the photo that there is a small knot at the place where the catch occurred, This may have had a bearing on the situation but I'm not sure.

The other issue was the poor security that was afforded by the tail stock. I should have made sure the revolving centre went further into the wood so that if I had a catch it would be less likely to leave the lathe.

You can see by the photo that the depth of hole where the revolving centre went into the wood just wasn't big enough for the size of wood I was turning.

You will be pleased to know that I did put the lump of wood back on the lathe again after drilling a hole over a quarter of an inch deep to take the revolving centre. And I did complete my project. However, If I was nervous about big lumps of wood coming off the lathe before the incident I was now even worse, so I have made a deal with myself. Stay small and stay safe is my new mantra so don't expect to see any massive bowls on this blog anytime soon.

Anyway, I thought you might like to see the finished vase that almost cost me big style.

It was meant to look like a ceramic vase and I think it does just that. The colours are stains made by Chestnut, which were dabbed on with kitchen towel. I am quite happy with it although I hadn't done a very good job of the sanding and that left a few tooling marks. I should have paid more attention but it is easy to miss them until the stains are applied, then they stick out like a soar thumb.

By the way here is a link to the brilliant Gary Lowe's video on youtube