Learning Shop Safety

I watch “The New Yankee Workshop” with Norm Abrahms (sp?). He opens his show with “Before we get started… Read and follow all safety precautions… and the most important is these (as he points to his face) safety glasses.”

I am not sure that is true. Yes they are important, but “Before we get started” is pretty important and “Read and follow all safety precautions” is probably at the top.

I think I actually have more tools than Norm. My dad loves tools and he knows I love them too. So, it makes sense that almost every time I see him, for my birthdays, for Christmas, or even summer visits he gives me tools.

Sometimes my father escaped to the workshop downstairs to avoid the “brotherly love” Greg and I showed each other. He was working on a project which involved a wooden pointed oval shape (much like a football if sliced down the middle lengthwise, only ¾” thick). The edges had a number of ¼” slits almost all of the way around. It was the base for a simple African style mask. The face was formed by a slit concave piece glued perpendicular to the center of the base. Everything was painted black, and two empty thread spools, painted white which became the eyes were glued on each side of “the nose”. A white thread was woven between the slits of the base, back and forth across the nose in a crisscross pattern. It made a simple, and yes, odd African style wall ornament.

It was interesting enough, and it elicited comments of “groovy,” “cool” and “neato” (depending on the era, or political alignment from which you sprang). “Neato” was pre-Cambrian Nerd language, and we all know Nerds evolved into Geeks. No one said a negative word, and most of our friends owned one. I think the original design came from Denny, dad’s good friend from high school. Denny and Janet lived near us in when we had moved to the SeaTac area.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with my father learning to use the various tools, and making the African style “masks.”

One Saturday, my brother and I were going at it upstairs while my father was “sanding” pieces for the masks in the workshop downstairs. Greg had locked himself in the upstairs bathroom as a self-defense mechanism, while I shouted “I am going to get you, you little #!@&#!.”

I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I am guessing 12 to 14. I was still quite a bit bigger than Greg, who had not yet begun wrestling or this story might have had me inside the locked bathroom.

Dad started to come up the stairs holding his hand, and I could see blood “oozing” from his hand, and I started banging on the door for my brother to “Let me in! Dad’s hurt! Hurry!”

Greg shouted back “Liar!”

By this time dad was at the top of the stairs, and maybe something in my voice – panic – caused my brother to open the door. Dad had caught his right hand ring finger in the portable belt sander while it was turned on automatic, upside down on the work bench.

From the “ring” knuckle to the end of the finger there was almost nothing but bone. While holding his hand under water, I was able to tie a gauze “tourniquet” to stem the flow of bleeding. Scouts had provided me my First-Aid training.

Dad probably still doesn’t have all of the feeling in that finger, but he did get to keep it, and all of us learned “shop safety.” I think dad also bought an upright sander, and we stopped making African mask wall hangings.

- Craig