Eye Protection

JTknives

JTknives

Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
8,650
I thought I would start this thread because i have learned first hand. Well to start off with i haven gotten into a bad habbit no using eye protection. this started from a young age when the onley glasses i had where my fathers that he used when he was using the weed wacker. these glasses where badley scratched and i could not see through them. from then on i never used any glasses. well my luck did run out the other day when i was working on one of my customers Valor II knives. i was grinding and something shot into my eye, this happens guite abit when i make knives but most of the time my eye gets rid of it with a fue blinks. well this time it did not seam to go away after blinking. I wend into the bathroom and used some eye drops but to no aveil, i looked into the miror and could not see anything in my eye at all. So i just thought it was a scratch on my eye and delt with the pain. every day the pain got less and less but my eye was deap red and my eye lid was falf closed. after a week the pait was allmost gone but no improvements in redness or puffyness. then after 2 more days it started to hear agen but not like befor where i could feal a spot of pain on my eye but it seamed my whole eye was in pain. also i was loseing my sight in that eye, everything was getting fuzzy. This started to scare the shit out of me but it was the weekend and no place was open. on monday i wend to the eye doctor and he checked my eye. what was going on was that i had a chunk of steel loged in my cornea but icould not see it in the miror because it was right in the center where it was black where it blended in. well the doctor put a fue numbing eye drops in and the pain went away. he then got out this tool that looked like a sewing needle on a scaple handle. he told me not to moove at all and he would remove it. he was able to get it out and i did not even feal it because my eye was numb. i asked why my vission was going and he told me it was because the metal was starting to rust and turn the area around it white so it was blocking my vision. He told me i would be ok but to keep an eye on it and to come back if i have more problems with it. I no longer have any pain and my eye looks good. I now do nothing with out eye protection and i find thay im able to do bettor work using eye protection the when i did not because i dont have to constantley be avoiding the grinder dust and i can realy focus on making a quality blade. I wanted to share this story with you to let you know you MUST ALLWAYS WHERE YOU EYE PROTECTION. you never relize how much your eye mean to you till one is not working and is in pain.
 
Glad your sight is coming back and that they got the chunk out without too much trouble. This is the tough way to learn, but many of us go that route. Very good reminder. Steven
 
Even safety glasses aren't enough in some cases. Safety glasses protect mostly directly in line with the eye. Splashes or grinding splatter coming from an angle can get under them. I have two cysts from an eyefull of grinder crap on my left eyelids that prove that. I got a blast of dust grinding wood, wearing glasses, and instintively rubbed it off my eye. Apparently a couple slivers got imbedded in the lid. Cysts formed.

A lot of makers wear full face shields over safety glasses. I finally learned that lesson, too. :(
 
i use a good pair of safty glasses from my chemistry classes. thay compleetley seal all the way around my eyes so nothing can get in at all.
 
Yeah, goggles are excellent. Smart choice, better than open glasses. Some folks have fogging problems with 'em. If that doesn't happen for you, that's great!

Make sure they say Z87 on 'em somewhere so you know they are impact rated and not just splash goggles.

I saw a foto one time depicting what a knifemaker would look like if he wore all the safety equipment OSHA would require for the tasks we perform. The person wouldn't have been able to move. It was comical. :)
 
well these gogles have vents but thay go htrough a bunch of chanels formed in a block of plastic on the side on the side that the onley you could get somthing in side would be to pour it straight in to the vent and roal the glasses around to get it inside. there nice.
 
They do sound very nice. Much better than the crap we had when I started chemistry.

What I was actually getting at was the rating on the lens itself. "ANSI Z87" is the industry standard for impact glasses. Not all goggles are impact rated. Meaning, if you're grinding something metal that gets away from you and flies into the lens, does it have enough strength to deflect the impact?

Lenses that meet the OSHA standard for impact are required to have "Z87" on them somewhere. It is simply an indicator that the lenses meet a certain set of impact specifications you can count on.

Not all goggles are Z87. Get the wrong ones that catch a piece of flying metal and you have not only the metal, but glass shards to contend with, too.

By no means am I telling you what to wear. I was just sharing stuff I learned in the 5 years I was safety officer for my chemistry department at work. I hope you enjoyed chemistry; it made me a decent living and I loved it.
 
ya love it.

if you look at the frount of the goggles at the top in the center it says.

SE cert. mod.
Z78+


is this whati want
 
I use goggles now. Still I've had stuff get through and don't know how.

Once I was using by belt-surface grinder. I had safety glasses, respirator and ear muffs all under a sandblasting hood (that's the type that goes past your shoulders and there's a little window you look through.)
So I'm grinding away and POW! a big hot curl right in my eye! How the heck that happened, I can't possibly guess, but those darned things sometimes sneak past everything. All you can do is always wear the goggles and hope for the best.
 
I'm an optometrist and I can't tell you how many foreign bodies I remove each year. From grinders to weed whackers, they're all bad. Glad it's only superficial.
 
I too, get complacent sometimes. I don't get a ton of time in the shop, so I occasionally will take shortcuts on the safety gear. I guess I better wise up and do it right every time! Thanks for sharing your painful experiences. I'm glad you are ok now. -Matt-
 
That right there is what I am afraid of. Well, not that exactly what happened (the rust in the eye is definately creepy), but any sort of eye injury. I always wear eye protection any time I fire up the dremel, grinder, or anything powered. I use shooting glasses with replaceable lenses, so the whole too many scratches thing is no excuse. Glad to see you are healing up.
 
JTKnives, Z78.1 is an "impact standard" that applies, also. That should give you some good protection.
Z87, IIRC, is a set of industrial standards that applies to protective wear in a more general sense and eyewear is one part.
Perhaps Barker could elaborate if he sees this request? It's been 16 years since I left that area and some of my memories are bound to be fuzzy.

Good luck with the healing. I'm glad it wasn't worse for you than it was.
 
:eek: I am getting an MRI tomarrow and I have to get an orbital (eye) series of x-rays before hand because I grind and hammer steel. I guess it is better to find a steel shard that is imbeded before the MRI magnet pulls it out.
 
ya that would suck. nu pun intended. i had an mri on my knee years and i was woried about the same thing but i was ok.
 
I went through a long MRI a few years back and the danged fake hips started getting warm on the inside from the radiofrequency energy. Creepy feeling. Had a few moments panic as I worried I'd cook from the inside. :eek: They discontinued the test and it was ok. Nowadays I just get CAT scans.

If you need more than one MRI, they'll want to do the orbital xray again if you have so much as worked in the shop even once since the last time. Better safe than sorry.
 
I have always worn eye/face protection when grinding, but now I have taken to wearing safety glasses at all times in my work areas. I started doing that because one day I was traming my mill and got glass in my eye. The mill was obviously turned off, so I was not wearing my safety glasses. I set a plate of glass on my mill table to get a flat surface when I'm traming. To prevent the glass from sliding, I had a spring clamp holding it to the table. The clamp slipped off the table and sprung shut on the glass. The glass shattered, and a piece flew into my eye. Fortunately I had no permanent injury, but now I wear safety glasses at all time.
 
The November or December issue of "Fine Woodworking", that is on the newstands now, has an article on page 74 showing various safety glasses, goggles and face masks with sources. It can be found at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart and other magazine/book stores.

Phil
 
ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS,ALWAYS, wear eye protection. Hearing protection also!
 
I always use a full face shield. It is $15.00 and covers your whole face. The face shield is like a seat belt, once you start using it you feel uneasy without it.

I also use ear plugs when it is noisy. Ear plugs are about 50 cents each and do a much better job than ear muffs.

I also wear the Resp-O-Rator for dust. It is under $50.00 and works great with the face shield or even a welding helmet. www.duxterity.com

For $65.50 you have total protection. Cheap for your health or even a doctors visit.


Some don't use any of the above--That's called natural selection.
 
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