After watching tonight’s episode of Myth Busters,I found their conclusion that striking two hammers together was dangerous and might cause eye injury was not true. I am living proof of what can happen.
Back in the 50’s I was splitting a length of wood trim using an Estwing hatchet to rive the board to a scribed line. Working down and glancing away from the grain, I managed to wedge the axe into the wood.
Without much thought, I grabbed my straight claw Estwing hammer and gave the axe’s head a whack to speed it along. ( Worked fine.) Later, I noticed a streak of dried blood on my left arm.
At the upper end of the streak, there was a small hole. I prodded the wound with a splinter of wood and managed to extract a piece of shrapnel about the size of a split BB shot.
I examined the hammer heads and sure enough, a chip matching the shrapnel was dislodged. Didn’t even feel it when it buried itself into my arm (about 1/4″) Steinmetz
In 05, I picked a carbide tooth out of my kneecap flung from a thin kerf blade while using a benchtop open front table saw.
Replies
Stein, I think you meant to say that their conclusion that striking hammer heads together was safe is not true....
They didn't conclude it was safe. They were trying to confirm a myth that the hammer head could explode. They could have been clearer that you can still take chips off that could cause injury, but the whole show starts with "don't try any of this at home".
Pete
I changed the channel before it got to that!Did they use some good USA steel that's been treated properly or some china made harbor freight grenades?!I have to look for the rerun of that one....10saw
What are you, a cheerleader? Hammers made of "good USA steel" have had warnings on them since long before the "china harbor freight grenades". I hope you aren't under the impression that every product "made in the good ol' US of A" is the best on Earth 'cause you're in for a disappointment.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
What are you, a cheerleader? Hammers made of "good USA steel" have had warnings on them since long before the "china harbor freight grenades". I hope you aren't under the impression that every product "made in the good ol' US of A" is the best on Earth 'cause you're in for a disappointment.Well if you haven't noticed metal objects vary in quality from country to country. Most good hammers here in USA are made in USA. Most bad hammers are made in china and available at HFT.I won't bore the audience with a metalurgy lecture but suffice to say I've seen the china brands shatter on a drop to the concrete. This means they will be more, much more suseptible to damage from any striking operation. Not good for a hammer.The quality USA hammers, Daluge, Estwing, Vaughn, Bluegrass etc are much better quality and last decades. They undergo an operation foreign to many of the off shore no name brands= Quality control. And lawyers! If Estwings starts having hammers explode.....Is this to suggest USA steel is un breakable..... Not by a long shot.My guess based on personal experience is if I wanted to have a pair of hammers slammed together and explode I'd run down to HFT and buy some of the cheap china made models.And am I a cheerleader? When it comes to china v. USA YUP!!!What are you? 10saw
Amen!!!
First of all, anyone who buys a striking tool from HF deserves what they get. Most of the hammers I have seen that were similar to what they sell looked like cheap castings, not forgings. When the claws break off from trying to remove an 8d nail, it looks like it's one step above white metal. I have a Vaughn ripper and all of the rest are at least 40 years old, but I would never hit one with another. I was taught that when I was about 6 y.o. and like I said, it's on a lot of hammer handles and heads for a reason. I should have been more clear when I made the cheerleader comment. I try to buy American whenever I can but there are some things I just can't afford so I try to get the most bang for my buck. I'm just careful when I buy. My dad retired from Harley Davidson and I just got really tired of the people he worked with, mindlessly chanting "Buy American" when they drove foreign cars and trucks and complained about how much things cost. It's no secret that HD made crap in the '70s and early '80s but a lot of the problem was the workers. They didn't care and the corporate side didn't care that the workers didn't care, let alone why. I'm in Milwaukee and this has been a heavily blue collar town for a long time. The sad fact that so many products sold here have to be made in China, Taiwan, Singapore, etc because they're too expensive when made here is something I have a big problem with and I have definite opinions about why this is. It's not a one-sided issue, either. Unions want their members to make more and more. The corporations need to make a profit and if labor costs increase, they're going to charge more for whatever they make or sell. Quality control isn't lacking only in China but a lot of the American companies jumped on the QC bandwagon too late.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
"Quality control isn't lacking only in China but a lot of the American companies jumped on the QC bandwagon too late."Unfortunatly I'm starting to agree with this statement. I look USA 1st but am finding my choices moving towards Germany, Swiss and even ....sigh..Taiwan/Mexico for power tools. It's well known the power tool market is universal with parts from hither and yon ( I always wanted to say hither and yon<G>)Thank goodness USA still makes fine hand tools.My "gripe" is chna made goods which still fall well short of expectations and in the nature of steel...well off the mark IMO.10saw
It's becoming hard to find things that I want, made here. Reasonably priced stereo? Small electric tools? Computer parts? Decent guitar or amp at a price that's affordable to most people? Not made here, that's for sure. I was at a music store last weekend and they had a new Ibanez 5 string bass for $198. I worked at a music store in the mid-'70s and a new bass of this quality was very hard to find and would have cost thousands of dollars, literally. A good used bass is more than $198 and I figure that the price is marked up on at least three occasions by the time it reaches the hands of the customer.The nature of steel is another story and is the main reason the scrap metals market is so screwed up now. They buy up a large % of US scrap and make things that aren't cost-effective here and sell them here for less than they can be made, with shipping of the scrap AND the final product added into the cost of materials. That is, unless they're using some other accounting method or the Chinese government is subsidizing them in order to keep the cost down and us buying their stuff.Have you ever heard about the offshore plywood manufacturing with US lumber? They load it onto ships that take it from raw material to finished product in a few days in international waters and bring it right back to sell to the US market. If you ask me, that's just a brilliant strategy.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I think you might have a point there The Chinese gov. does peg their currency at a level that makes there exports to the USA very attractive and imports to China very expensive. We could also ad that at least 10000 of 10001 software programs and movie DVDs are counterfit in China and that does not seem to be changing. It would seem to be that our gov. officials (elected and otherwise) are either getting there ***s kicked or are corrupt and incompetet when it comes to trade negotiations. That being said I have a Jet table saw and a ridged jointer so who am I to complain.Troy
I agree with most of your points. Occasionally, I like to buy a set of Taiwanese sockets though. I am 5'3 and weigh about 135. Breaking a socket makes me feel like Hulk Hogan.
Frank
Hey I dont know how this forum turned into harleys but I always wear saftey glasses everywhere for everything.
He!!, I wear safety glasses when I sleep.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
What ever happend to the campaign to get the Exploding Dust Collector/ PVC pipe Myth tested?Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
We just had a truck full of sawdust crash and the dust ignited, big time. When Schlitz was still here in MKE, there was a big grain silo about 3 miles from our house and they had a big fire/explosion from dust. Same cause, same effect.It won't happen when the humidity is high but it can happen. I had gotten zapped a few times in winter before I grounded my TS to the collector and they're both correctly electrically grounded. Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, it has happened.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I grew up on a farm in South Texas and know all about silo explosions. The truck full of saw dust crash is a little extreme. Kind of like conpairing the Oklahoma City bomb to the sack of fertilizer in the garage. I have heard that very large 6,000+ Cfm systems can blow. I too have PVC ducts and have gotten a good zap from it. But we always hear about the risk of a home/ mid sized comercial system blowing. I'd like to see the Myth Busters make that one happen. I suspect they would have to result to using accelerants. But who knows? I think Forrest Girl was trying to petition them to do it.Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
"The truck full of saw dust crash is a little extreme. Kind of like compairing the Oklahoma City bomb to the sack of fertilizer in the garage."Huh? It happened here. It was in the paper and I wasn't comparing it with anything, just saying that sawdust can ignite with bad consequences.Maybe they could soak the sawdust in white gas first.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
In support of your position: I believe that science is based on the idea that one false test disproves the theory -- even the theory that a certain risk doesn't exist. My DC is grounded.Cadiddlehopper
I hit a cold chisel once with a framing hammer. The sliver of steel that came off shows up whenever I get an x-ray. It is embedded in my rectus abdominus muscle.
Don't hit hard steel with hard steel. I don't care who says otherwise.
Frank
Frank: You got it right about hardened steel on hardened steel. I was splitting fire wood with a wedge and a sledge hammer. Piece of the wedge flew off and socked me right in the chin, blood dripping, might still be in there. My episode due to not dressing the end of the wedge more then any metallurgical transgression. My six year old was watching, if I remember correctly we were both wearing safety glasses.
Merry Christmas, Duke"... Buy the best and only cry once.........
Well put, but I would like to add ,if I may, that a theory can never be proven true. I have honors chemistry...I know some stuff :).
-Ryan C.
Yup- it's all probability. One test to prove A showing a result of B doesn't necessarily disprove anything, either, unless the number of trials is low. If the test for A shows B once in a billion times, it could just be an anomaly, as long as the test was conducted the same way every time and there were no other variables.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I believe that the issue is this: Does some action or quality or property reduce risk to zero? Several posters proclaimed that grounding plastic dust collecting ducting was absolutely unnecessary from a safety standpoint. I am a born-again skeptic on such issues. At the same time I am not a safety fanatic. The guard is off my tablesaw most of the time. I suppose that I behave this way because I have some conscious control over where I move my hands while dust and static charges are free of my control. I have no argument with science.Cadiddlehopper
Actually, there are a large number of small granular dust-like substances that can be ignited. When I was in the Navy, the coffee creamer used to be stored in the shipboard ammo locker because it could be a source of fire. I still use this fact sometimes with people that are unaware of its potential. Give a try: sprinkle a pinch or two over a small open flame like a lighter. Now, imagine a lot of it being airborne in proximity to an open flame or other ignition source.
I didn't mean that I doubted that the incident occured. I thought you were offering that example as evidence that common DC systems can explode. Which I think is unfair, after all how many gallons of fuel were involved.
And your comment about soaking it in white gas is why I want to see Myth Busters take this one on. If you watch the show you know that in the end they WILL get the explosion, one way or another. Did you see the one where they tried to make a shopvac turn into a jet engine? After being unable to recreate it under reasonable circumstances they resorted to actually making a "jet like" flame thrower using shop vac parts. I can't wait to see how they get a dust collector to blow!!
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
Here's a link that has been circulated around here for a long time. The author of the piece speaks to some of the myths involving DC systems:http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rodec/woodworking/articles/DC_myths.htmlA lot of it is pretty dense, but if you just scroll down the page on the link above, you'll pick up the essence of what he's saying.********************************************************
"It is what we learn after we think we know it all, that counts."
John Wooden 1910-
That myth turned out to be a myth.
An engineering student at MIT did research for his master's thesis on this subject a few years ago.
It was a long and winding read (pages and pages), but the conclusion was that it is nearly impossible to make wood dust explode in a PVC dust collection system in a small shop.
They tried everything, including actually making sparks in the PVC as the dust was going through. The could not make a fire, no matter what.
It turns out that it takes an incredible amount of really fine sanding dust in a really large duct, traveling at a certain rate of speed, before it can happen. It really has less to do with the static spark than it does with the dust quality and quantity. I don't remember the parts per million figure that they came up with, but basically they concluded that no small woodshop with dust collectors and small surfacing sanders can produce the dust or air to cause it. They couldn't even do it by pouring the dust into the system.
I was so glad to read this that I immediately pulled all of the grounding wires out of my pipes (those that were still in there, anyway). Now I don't get plugged pipes, either!
Hal
http://www.rivercitywoodworks.com
There is a phenomena that I have had experience with having to do with hammers exploding many years ago.
I was using a True Temper 20 oz. Rocket (the best framing and all around house carpenter hammer ever made, by the way, in the USA) to drive an axe through some gnarly firewood. I was busy hitting away with the hammer getting a singing ringing sound from the steel when one of the hammer claws just fell off. It was apparent that the vibration of the steel had caused it to come apart.
No, I wasn't hitting the axe with with the claws and it wasn't a double bit axe!
So I continued to hit the axe head and after about 6 more hits, the other claw fell off. They didn't really fly off, but the molecules just sort of let go and they fell off.
Hal
http://www.rivercitywoodworks.com
Metod,
No I spell it china in response to it's government which I wholly disagree with. You'll just have to live with my small statement as I won't change.
Now you bring up valid points!
On point c). See the problems with software patents for instance, china is unresponsive. Point is my Estwing shatters and takes out an eye by hitting a marshmellow they would most likely be responsible as I can actually find the place it's made and probably track the day and shift of manufacture. Take ladders;over 1/2 the price is for lawyer costs or do you think aluminum and fiberglass are that expensive? Same thing.
Point d) I don't know as of today, not been proven by anything I can see. It took Japan many years to over come it's junk status of the 50's. But Japan is a much more free market economy with well paid better educated workers. Does the average Chinese ( see I differentiate between people and nations) deserve as much? of course but on our nickle? There's the rub. If you feel as though your money is better spent building up the china economy and it will trickle down to the Chinese worker...have at it. Nothing I understand about china says this will be so. Abismal human rights record.
My advice: Stock up on any quality steel power tools etc you can as we are experiencing a drop in quality as a result of this shift and it will be time before china catches up. I have little faith they will and will look towards more expensive German made etc... See it's not about USA 1st it's about quality 1st.
And so far china is LAST!
my .02
Sorry to highjack the thread
10saw
A friend who works in Shanghai claims that none of the tools sold at his local (Shanghai) tool store are as low quality as many of the Chinese imports sold in the US. He doesn't think the Chinese tradesmen will accept that low quality sold at HF and the like. However enough Americans seem to be quite happy to buy the absolute cheapest tools they can find irregardless of quality to make it worthwhile to produce the low quality stuff and import it into the US. If Americans started buying only quality then the cheap, low quality stuff would disappear from the market.
If you don't think that there is any market for quality consider Lie-Nielsen. They now have 70 employees, which I estimate means they produce somewhere in the vicinity of 35,000 planes per year. That's a lot of high quality planes. And LV is obviously finding the quality plane business worthwhile. Even if I'm high in my estimate of LN production by a factor of two that's still a lot of high quality planes. I wonder how many Stanley currently sells a year.
Basis of the LN estimate is that the average employee (even in low wage Maine and assuming that some are part time) costs $30,000 per year including taxes and benefits so the cost of the employees is $2.1 million per year. Labor isn't the only expense as they have to buy materials and some of the work is sub-contracted out. Also there is advertising, cost of the buildings, production equipment, taxes, etc as well as the cost of developing new products. So an estimate of total expenses is at least $4 million a year. Since they continue to stay in business and prosper revenue must at least equal expenses, and therefore revenue must be at least $4 million a year. Planes make up the vast majority of their sales so another guess is $3.5 million of revenue comes from planes alone. Another estimate is the average revenue per plane sold is $100 (taking into account the less expensive block planes are their most popular product and they wholesale a lot of their production). So $3.5 million a year from planes would mean 35,000 planes a year.
Yeah but..........
Consumers have the final say and dictate what defines quality and what does not. As a society, Americans have taken the stance that they prefer low quality products.
Now stats will show that American consumers want high quality and low cost products.....but there is the catch 22. It is very difficult to manufacture a high quality product at a low cost. So we make low cost products in China, Mexico and Taiwan because Americans are not willing (able) to produce low cost products. Here in the USA workers want pensions, 401Ks, good medical benefits and an above average compensation. Manufactures are FORCED to go over seas to get product made and sell them to wallmart, home depot........
Most Americans buy inexpensive products and when they break or technology outdates the first product, they buy a new one. This is the key reason that Wall-mart, Lowes,Home Depot, Menards.....succeed. They are counting on us to buy repetitively. This phenomenon is true of cars, tools, clothes, electronics and countless other products.
Now the good folks here on Knots, are not your typical consumer. By way of demographics--- a majority of woodworkers are: between 45 - 70 y/o., male, married, have kids, own a home and go to church regularly. In addition they appreciate quality hand crafted products and are very frugal. On the whole pop. most Americans appreciate production made products as more than acceptable and are willing to pay for products over again even if the product is still working.
While we here at knots have one set of values and beliefs wrapped around the quality issue, most Americans do not act and think like most of the woodworkers here at knots. We can drive the quality issue into the ground......but since we woodworkers are in the minority compared to the general pop., quality is staying right where it is. And China will continue make products for us. And look for India to be the next China. We are just starting to leverage that country and their low wages.
Merry Christmas
Mark
Thank you,
Cheatah
Stein,
Haven't seen the show but it stands to reason that two objects of equal density striking each other could be dangerous, whether that's striking two hammers together or smashing two eggs together...
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