Hey thanks guys for the comments.
On the 'mud thread there are a few professional welders and I guess the guard is absolutely 100% OSHA required and they are saying 'if it can't fit with the guard, use a different tool' which 100% makes sense... This is going to be my technique, keep it one unless it needs to come off. The Dewalt is a quick release...
RE the grinder catching and flying 15', basically an extreme example of what happened here. The grinder and cut off wheel is sort of my tool of choice, I use it for a lot of fab related stuff so I know the tool well. One thing was this was a brand new version of the old Forney disks that was slightly heavier duty and didn't cut as well. The old disk would have cut crumbled, not had the velocity this one did. I assumed they beefed them up for a perceived safety. I heard of a broken cut off wheel disk flying into the throat of someone before (scary again).
RE the photo and blood, it's a pretty good story... It happened but I didn't actually know where I was hit, all I could tell was I was. So I got up and started looking around and sure enough there it was and it was only there. It took a good minute or so before any blood showed up at all, I wish I'd taken a shot then because it was quite white inside with the tendons, etc. The nastiest part was I could move my wrist and watch the tendons slide back and forth through the hole. I was really really lucky it didn't hit anything deeper as well. (Coincientally I went and bought long arm thin leather welding gloves for this as well yesterday). It then started filling so I dumped the blood out in the driveway and broke out the first aid kit. Luckily there was an abdominal pad (reminding me how glad I was it didn't hit my torso) designed to grab blood. It really didn't bleed too bad. My truck is stick so it was a slightly complicated drive to the hospital. I was in all my dirty dusty fab clothing so I was a walking ball of dust, I left a path anywhere I sat in the hospital.. They were really good and had me in and out of there quickly. I couldn't believe how many stitches it took, two layers of about 12 (one on the deep part of the skin and one on the surface) and about 6 on the tendon where it broke the protective sheath. I went for holistic PT type healing through a local holistic chiropractor (so she doesn't take insurance, such is life) and she has been really good about breaking down the scar tissue and keeping the wound from sticking to the tendons and other things as it's healed. I'll post up pics, it actually looks like it's healed just great... This is already 4-5 weeks ago
I'm at the shop a lot by myself (and at all crazy hours) so it never occurred to me what I would do in a major accident if I had one. I've had two little accidents before, and engine started falling over once and I ran over and grabbed it and it put a pretty deep hole in my inner right wrist. This was deep but I actually just cleaned it up and didn't even get stitches and it was fine. The other was a speck of metal that fell out of a '85 4-Runner into my eye when I was changing a timing chain, this one required the drill at the eye doctor, scary!
