When welding, use a helmet that works like its supposed to!

I did some welding on my sons El Camino yesterday, we swapped the bench seat out for some custom bucket seats, and had to fab up and weld in some new seat mounts. I used an auto darkening helmet I got from Harbor Freight and the darn thing quit working on me so I did the old "squeeze the trigger and look away" trick, but i got nailed, It started hitting me at 2am so I woke the wife up and had her take me to the emergency room.

Major pain!

They numbed both eyes and looked at em with the UV light and said yep, you burned em pretty good! I also told them that i have done this before and please dont give me a pain pill, but give me a shot instead. They didnt care and went ahead and gave me a lortab and some eye gel stuff and shuffled me out the door, I didnt get two blocks fromt he hospital and up it came. so we went back asking for the shot again, and the doc was a major Biotch and thought we were drug seeking or something. I was in major pain but they didnt care. I didnt want the pill in the first place, just a shot.

ended up getting back home at 6am, and finally passed out, woke up alittle bit ago and I can see again, both eyes are still extremely red and irritated but the pain is gone and I should be able to go back to work tomorrow even though the Doc said dont go back till Thursday!

Moral of the story...Im a dumba$$

 

Glad you are better at least. Gotta watch them kind of things they will always get you. That is one of them things where cheap ain't always best.

 

I HAD one of those helmets once!!!! It worked better for a frisbie and threw it across the shop then made sure it would nt get used again!!!!!
Mark

 

Been there done that lol, and it SUCKS. My dad told me to shred a potato like hash browns, put it in a dishrag and get it wet, then let it sit over your eyes for awile, did it once and it seemed to work really well.

Duane
Southeast Kansas Coordinator

 

When I was welding, I was tempted by the auto darkening lens but I went ahead and used the old syle and what's neat about them is that they always worked. I've never had welder burned eyes and I've heard enough stories that I don't want to.

Hope you get healed up and see the world.

 

I've burnt them a little a couple of times. Not much fun. You only get one set so take care of them. My uncle had a dog years ago that went blind from watching welders put up a steel building on his place. I don't want to be like that dog and run into stuff all the time because I can't see. I've got an auto darkening lens helmet, but also keep a regular for backup if the auto one goes.

 

Most of the high end ones like Jackson are designed so that when the battery goes dead it will stay dark, but I'm not real sure if you have a malfunction what they would do, i suppose if the sensor went bad it would keep it clear.

Duane
Southeast Kansas Coordinator

 

Sounds like the doc needed slapped also.