[Closed] Moments when you've had a lucky escape from your own stupidity.

I had the guard off of a circular saw bench last week. I was not concentrating and nail brushed the tips, I felt a buzz and quickly pulled away. I now have a grove on one of my nails but thankfully I still have 10 fingers!

25 miles into a 30 mile road ride today, that included a descent that touched 40, while taking a minute to sit in the sun I noticed I'd completely forgotten to put the bolt that holds the non-driveside crank onto the square taper nibbin back in while cleaning and greasing last week. Somehow it managed not to fall off Cue a very gingerly pedalled last 5 miles..
Any other tales of close calls due to your own idiocy?

Why had you removed it? How did you install it if you had taken crank off?

10 fingers, +2 thumbs?
Somerset? 😀

uselesshippy - Member
10 fingers, +2 thumbs?
Somerset?

Yeah it why I'm so cearly, I know I've got some spare!

Sloshed a bike chain in a petrol filled bowl to clean it, forgetting about the paraffin heater at the end of the garage. Even though I was outside the flame still got me! Got away with burnt hands and no eyebrows.

When to change the blade on my circular saw whilst (I have no idea why) resting he blade on the jumper I was wearing, and without unplugging it. I accidentally started the saw and by a miracle of luck the thick jumper jammed the blade and stalled the motor.

Re-wiring house, cut wrong lighting circuit in loft, the live one! Installation on cutters grips saved me.

All in my younger days I'm happy to say.

I drilled through a live cable while putting some shelves up in my old house. Came round sitting in the dark (it had blown the power completely) over the other side of the kitchen. Where the drill hole was there was now about an inch diameter hole, but oddly, no fragments of brick or plaster to be found, must have been atomised! And the drill bit had a sublimated copper tip.

[Minor compared to any bit of DIY WCA has ever attempted though........]

Using a router to enlarge cavity on an old bass to fit new gubbins. Hooded sweatshirt. When I'd nearly finished i noticed the draw strings from the hood were dangling in the cavity right near the bit spinning merrily away.

Worst one (and still makes me feel sick thinking about it) was on holiday in LA, staying with family friends. I was 14/15, they had guns. Was playing (yep - dick move straight away) with an old colt navy revolver they had on display, cocked it but couldn't release the hammer. So pointed it at my sister and pulled the trigger. It took 0.000000001 seconds for the realisation that it could have actually been loaded to hit me. Urgh.

25 miles into a 30 mile road ride today, that included a descent that touched 40, while taking a minute to sit in the sun I noticed I'd completely forgotten to put the bolt that holds the non-driveside crank onto the square taper nibbin back in while cleaning and greasing last week. Somehow it managed not to fall off Cue a very gingerly pedalled last 5 miles..
Any other tales of close calls due to your own idiocy?

Why had you removed it? How did you install it if you had taken crank off?

The crank wasn't actually removed when cleaning, I just took the bolt out to de-grit the treads and clean it as it was a little loose and completely forgot to put it back on. It's now time to hunt through the spare bits box to try and find it. 🙄

Cutting wood with circular saw and now ppe. Felt something in eye, looked in mirror to see a large wood chip pocking out. So very very close to pupil.

Nearly got married once

On a trail today came across an unexpected 5 foot drop off after a steep roller. The landing was on on to an upward sloped transition.

Actually I didn't get away with that - bloody hell I'm sore!

Almost did the 'finger in brake rotor and spin the wheel' special the other day while fettling in the garage! Luckily pulled it out quickly enough to just brush the tip of my finger... Doh!

Mentioned this here before, almost blew myself up... Working on the motorbike and booted a plastic can of petrol out of the way- right in front of my electric fan heater. Noticed a high-pitched keening noise a few minutes later and discovered the can had gone soft and the petrol and gas expansion had blown it up like a balloon. Pretty sure it wasn't far from splitting, and then hot petrol and a load of pressurised petrol fumes would have burst out at the ceramic heater... Lucky one.

on the road bike cycling along quite happily doing about 20 down a little hill when i noticed one of the bar caps had popped out a little. obviously i decided to bash it back in. i just managed to control the wobble without falling off.

I was following a mate up a route when I relalised I wasn't tied in properly (at all) managed to retie the rope 1 handed and reverse to the floor.
[img] [/img]
I was there

Another climbing one, end of a very long day on El Cap, we decided we needed to ab off the route as I had a bus to catch that evening. Set belay device up on the tail of the joined ropes...

Said yes to the father in law when he suggested sitting in the bucket of the tractor with a chainsaw to clear some trees while driving down the river bed. Few others on that theme too!

As a pissed up student back in 1989 I dropped a jumper on an electric fire and fell asleep. Woke up with a room full of smoke. Luckily the jumper charred/melted. If it had caught fire I would have killed myself and 4 mates.

Still have the odd nightmare about that one.

As a pissed up student back in 1989 I dropped a jumper on an electric fire and fell asleep. Woke up with a room full of smoke. Luckily the jumper charred/melted. If it had caught fire I would have killed myself and 4 mates.
Still have the odd nightmare about that one.

First or 2nd year?

Worked in a cafe, the large aerosol of oil for the egg fryer got knocked off the side and bounced across the open chip fryer and landed in the second one. Luckily the basket was still in the second fryer so I could get it out. Cafe was opposite a bank of about 30 Tesco checkouts and I don't think 20 litres of chip oil being detonated across the money making end of the supermarket would have gone down too well... 😯

Early twenties, following two mates on our motorbikes.(here we go 🙄 )
A45 near Coventry, dual carriageway. The two lanes were closing to one in roadworks, mates were ahead, I decided to go for it too.
The lanes were narrowing, I passed one, two, three cars, came alongside the last car as the lane was about 1.5 lanes wide, and this car inexplicably veered over towards me. Left me nowhere to go.

I was doing probably 80mph, and my right hand clipped a sandbagged roadsign, I felt an almighty smack to my body. I weaved and pulled over to the side of the road about 100 yards further down, the car carried on, it's driver still oblivious to my presence.

I had massive pain in my right arm, and then I noticed some blood on my hand. Looking down, I had lost my right finger just above the knuckle. I later worked out that the sign had hit my brake lever, the lever had sheared and the sharp end had cut my finger off.

I hadn't noticed it due to the pain of a compound fracture to my right arm. My glove was on the road, with my bit of finger still in it being run over by cars.

All of this was stupid but, the lucky escape part was, that on later inspection of my bike, I had a massive vertical dent in the side of the petrol tank. This means that at 80mph, my front wheel had turned past full sidewards lock and then back again. By rights, I should have been under that line of cars... 😯

I had the guard off of a circular saw bench last week. I was not concentrating and nail brushed the tips, I felt a buzz and quickly pulled away. I now have a grove on one of my nails but thankfully I still have 10 fingers!

Working tired with an Arbourtec

one of these spinning at 10,000 rpm

[img] [/img]

Put the tool down and after switching off the blade keeps spinning sown for a while. Unthinkingly I just decided to grab the blade to stop it, the same way as you'd grab a wheel that you're giving it a test spin. I grabbed it. It stopped. I was fine.

Won't try it again though

First or 2nd year?

2nd - The Yew's Mount shithole house. You were in the room on the other side of the landing.

Sorry.

Keeping tabs on fuel economy,I always zero the milage on the clock whenever I fill up with fuel. Noticing you've forgotten when driving away from the filling station is not a good time to press the zero button on impulse, especially if it involves putting your hand through the wheel whilst negotiating a roundabout. Skid marks (both on the road, and in the undies), 3 point turns, and odd looks from other drivers are still in my memory about 15 yrs later

This was a couple of weeks ago... Refitting the kitchen, I needed to connect the extractor to existing wiring. Turned off the downstairs power and lighting rings (just in case it had been bodged from the lights...). Grabbed the cable to sort and flash/bang...black finger. Turns out it was spurred off the oven power (not turned off). RCD's do work 🙂

There are a few climbing ones, the most memorable being a decent of the Ben after winter climbing. We'd finished our route without incident then stuffed the decent in a white out. 'Missed' number 4 gulley and ended up abbing off a loose peg placed in frozen shale from where we ended up.... Not a navigational finest hour and [i]very[/i] memorable...

Noticing you've forgotten when driving away from the filling station is not a good time to press the zero button on impulse, especially if it involves putting your hand through the wheel whilst negotiating a roundabout.

I've done that. The only casualty (fortunately) was a snapped indicator stem, the force of the straightening wheel using my arm as leverage sheared it clean off.

Climbing one, first climb of the year so not route fit. decide to work out on a 7c+ at Kilnsey. Grunt my way up to about 2/3 height, slap into the big hold before the crux moves. Eventually decide not to go for the final moves and grab the quickdraw, just as the rope (that I had forgot to tie into) falls out of my harness. Potential 50 foot ground fall luckily averted 😯 but I still get flashbacks 20 odd years later.

Riding at Tigne summer before last (with my son 7), went up on the final lift before it closed for lunch. Weather was looking dodgy but seemed like it would be OK for one last run. Que biblical thunder and lightening as soon as we got off the gondola and it stopped. The descent back to the village was pretty intense. It was definitely character forming for my son 😥

Did the finger in the rotor thing quite recently as well, luckily it just took off a layer of skin and a few mm of nail.

Manouvering the angle grinder up under the Landy to grind off a rusty bolt. I was lying underneath it on my back with the blade facing downwards, just above my chest. Because I was wearing gloves I didn't realise my finger was on the trigger and the angle grinder powered up. I juggled and fumbled with it until the disc stopped, ending up with the blade cupped in my hand, well on its way through the glove and beginning to score a nice gouge in my skin. That smarted!

I nearly got struck by lightening once. It hit a car about 2 metres away. I felt the hairs on my neck tingle before it happended.

2nd - The Yew's Mount shithole house. You were in the room on the other side of the landing.

Sorry.

We could have climbed out of the windows onto the roof. Like we used to when we were sunbathing.

😯

The stupid things that we did! Lad I went to school with broke his back after drunkenly falling off a roof whilst trying to steal a Sky dish for a dare.

Used petrol to start a BBQ like this one:

[img] [/img]

I got the fuel air mixture spot on in the 'barrel' under the dish and turned it into an improvised mortar that showered the garden and nearby roofs with charcoal.

when me and my friends were younger, every bonfire night we would make a massive bonfire at the side of a disused factory near to where we lived..every now and then we would play some dumbassed games, one which included throwing an aerosol can into the fire and watching them explode...on one occasion the can never exploded in the fire but shot out and hit a neighbours car...cue another idea...find a cast iron drain pipe in a skip...shove one end into the fire and prop the other end up into the air using some wood....then drop aerosol cans down the pipe into the fire and watch them shoot out across the river onto the busy bypass....luckily no cars were passing when cans were fired out but there were some near misses...
once the fire had started to die down we would then play a bit of fire jumping which involved running at the fire to see if you could clear the fire....was funny when one of my mates set his crotch on fire...

Aged about 9/10, sledging down steepest hill we could find, which was the driveway of nearest big house (think it was actually Russell Johnston's house, in Inverness.

Exit from this was onto the road out of Inverness, not main one luckily but still traffic'ed -- as a sop, we had a mate standing on point duty at bottom of hill, still nearly went under a bus 🙁

Tried to extract burning toast from new ish toaster, with nearest implement - shiny metal bladed and handled kitchen knife, came to on other side of the kitchen..

I caught the tip of my finger in a rotor a few weeks ago. It really bloody hurt and bled like crazy.

I had a lucky escape last night at Cannock, pushing too hard in the failing light on teh second to last descent on the Monkey trail. Not sure what happened but I was riding way too fast on the top bit and got a bit squirrely and nearly went over the bars. Gievn how hard the ground was and the close trees, I think I would have been in a world of pain.

A few years ago, we turned my study into snug which took longer than I though it would. I was shattered after a week of hard graft and was making up an extension lead to reach where the TV / hi fi would be. Wired up the plug, tacked the cord to the wall then worked out the exact length of cable, grabbed the wire cutters cut it and bang. Turned out I'd left the plug in the socket which was switched on. Amazingly I was fine despite teh surprise of the noise. The fuse blew and there was a large chunk of metal missing from the wire cutters.

The stupid things that we did! Lad I went to school with broke his back after drunkenly falling off a roof whilst trying to steal a Sky dish for a dare.

I was sat on my roof in my bare feet last Saturday afternoon sealing up a leaky skylight with a bathroom sealant gun. I did mention it to a few people who looked at me funny.

Hmm.

Was there a crowd of kids shouting "go on white boy, jump!"?

grubbing round in a mates shed looking for something (cant remember what), I dropped a match in a petrol can to see inside, match went out so tried again and pow!, not much skin left on my face, or hair, my eyelashes melted together and couldnt open my eyes until I broke the singed lashes off.
not a good look when youre still at school.

I love walking around on the roof in bare feet - my dad doesn't do heights so I always get called on for any roof-related shenangans.

A friend was found unconscious by his parents on his bathroom floor after a light bulb blew whilst he was in the bath. In the dark, he stood up in water up to his shins and decided he'd just whip the blown bulb out whilst he was there. 🙂

When I was a kid, I was changing a light bulb and my mother turned on the light so I could see what I was doing...

But that's not my own stupidity. My own stupidity: I've set fire to my hair several times while brazing.

And now I have a TIG welder I keep burning myself. With gas, stuff is cold, gets hotter, goes red, then orange, then yellow, then cools down again. I've been doing it for so long, my brain knows that if something has been red hot recently, it's probably still hot.

But with TIG, it doesn't do that - so I keep trying to pick up stuff that I've just welded.

Does it count as me being stupid for joining the TA, I nearly got killed multiple times on the ranges for people accidentally discharging their weapon.

Another climbing one from me. On the third abseil off something in spain and I didn't look as I threaded the ropes and then lent back. Just as I reached balance point I saw that I'd only clipped one of the two ropes. Cue me rocking on my heels and trying not to breathe. Caught my balance, rethreaded the ropes and when I got to the ground I sat under a bush crying.

My older brother was so competitive when we were growing up. Once we went "conkering" and we were hunting round on the ground for fallen conkers as youdo but this wasn't good enough for our kid. He spotted some nice big husks in the tree and found half a house brick to throw up to dislodge them.after two or three attempts he managed it and went rushing up to get them before anyone else.

And before the brick had started on its downward trajectory.

Every time I see him, the scar on his head makes me smile.