scratches on safety glasses are just the price of doing business i guess, maybe someone needs to come up with some kind of a tear away like the racers use

 

I am in the same boat, yes you and your truck need those precious eyes as we all do. Got to keep those old Fords rolling!

 

At 5.00 or less a pair safety glasses are the cheapest insurance you can buy! Before she started wearing perscription glasses I bought my wife's safety glasses at our local welding supply store. Since they had adjustable length and angle ear pieces and came in tinted lenses as well as clear and cool frame colors they looked so cool and modern that she took to wearing a pair of mirrored lens ones as her favorite sunglasses!
Now for the lesson learned the hard way: My middle brother was helping my yougest brother power wirebrush the under metal before installing a new vinyl poolliner. He ran home to get something and left his safety glasses laying on the bench in his garage. Rather than going back for them he decided to continue without them, the biggest mistake of his life!!! a few minutes later a wire flew out of the wheel and made a perfect bullseye in the center of the cornea. The hospital's eye surgeon remove the wire, but the next day his eye had a total cataract as the doctor told him it would. Three cataract surguries and 6 months of being off work and missing a full season of dragracing the best they could give him was 20-60 corrected to 20-40. They don't expect it to ever get any better. I also know a guy who lost all vision in one eye from his hunting partner letting a tree brance snap back into his face shattering the cornea.
My livelyhood as well as all my outside interests depends on my eyesight so I wear a full lexan face shield ($14.00) over my glasses when doing any kind of sanding or grinding. 3M also now makes abrasive impregnated plastic bristle brushes in different grits that do as good a job and are much safer than wire wheels, USE THEM!

 

Sounds great, what is the cost and durablity of the plastic brushes?

 

A 6" Diameter x 1/2" wide wheel in either 36, 50, or 80 grit is around $30. That includes an adapter for most size bench motor arbors.

3M claims they last "up to 10 time longer than conventional wire wheels". AX, any experience on how long they last?

 

Hope your eye recovers well. There's always time to learn from your mistakes or someone elses. As a fireman we go to many calls where people fail to use safety precautions. Boy there's nothing better than safety equipment whether in your truck or on your face. 99% of the time I wear safety glasses and gloves. It is the time I don't I pay for it. Good luck with your eye.

 

I've just started using the 3" ones that are designed to replace cup style brushes on my angle grinder. The green ones take off paint and rust better than a wire brush and seem to hardly wear at all. They don't shed or disintegrate like a wire wheel. We have been using miniature versions in our jewelry studio in grits from 100 to pumice for about a year now and they last and work better than anything else we have ever tried.
Just let the grit do the work, pushing hard on them doesn't make them work any faster.
I have found some bargains on them on ebay, < 1/2 price compared to places like Grainger or my local body shop supply store if you buy them in pkgs of 10 or 25.

 

"I was porting a head without goggles when I took a flake in the eye."

Me too Randy, and then the second time it happened to me I was grinding on the differential. They had to drill it out that time. I'm a little slower than most. I try my hardest not to forget anymore.

 

well i hope you eye i healing well, ive had a few close calls myself... now i pretty much have somthing to cover my eyes, even sunglasses will do the job!

 

Don't go to home depot and buy a pair of safety glasses!

If you do (just buy one), I'll guarantee that when you need them, you won't be able to find them. . . . My experience - I had a daughter in the garage showing her how to paint with an air brush - and made her wear my safety glasses while she was working there. She liked them so much - she took them with her when she left - and I didn't know where they were for weeks. Next time I'm working in the garage and can't find them - well you know, after looking for five minutes you decide you don't need them anyway.

Salt a pair of safety glasses next to the saw, next to the air tools etc so you don't have to look for them all the time. If its worth buying one pair, its gotta be worth buying 2 or three pairs - just to save the aggravation of looking for them. Specially if you have kids helping you - they're not going to want to wear glasses if you're not going to also.

Been lucky - still got all my fingers and eyes - but I've shot a few pieces of wood out of a radial arm saw, including one that actually went into the drywall across the room. Its pretty easy to look backwards afterwards and think, boy was I stupid to do that! Like the time I used my router to route a groove in a piece of marble, for instance (was wearing safety glasses that time - like it would have mattered when the bit self-destructed).

 

nuther horror story: Family friend in the heating & AC business was cutting some heavy sheet metal with an old style abrasive wheel mounted to a table saw. A little twitch twisted the blade slighty and it exploded! Luckily he was wearing a pair of safety glasses, they saved his eyesight, but a full face shield might have saved him some of the 90 some stitches it took to put his face back together...
I use safety glasses AND a face shield when using a cut off wheel or grinding.

 

I was drilling a broken bolt out of the upper shock mount on a 75 buick skylark, laying on my back drilling directly over my face no safety glasses. when a burning hot piece of metal came right at me. Somehow I was able to close my eye and only burned my eyelid pretty bad. When I next saw my girlfriend she said "you have something on your eye" and tried to wipe the scabbed over blister off. Man that really hurt. But still that was years ago and I still think about how fortuneate I was. I always wear them now. In fact, I have two pair.

 

I also have a pair of motorcycle goggles that I use for overhead work, they seal to the face so nothing can get behind them. My hands and my eyes are my livelyhood so I protect them every way possible.

 

Doing some grinding the other night I apparantly managed to throw enough sparks at myself that I realized just in time that the buring sensation I was feeling was the crotch of my jeans starting to smoke

Had to readjust my grinding angle after that one.

 

Great reminder! I have 4 pair of glasses and a shield placed strategically all over my garage. That way they are always within easy reach and I don't have an excuse for not using them. Jag