Wear Safety Glasses While Working

Wear safety glasses while working in the garage folks. Always.
I was working on a bumper for my Jeep, swing-out tire carrier, hitch, the whole works.  Welding going on, slag flying, UV light flashing, hammering off the slag and…wait for it….nothing bad happened. I was wearing welding glasses, and later, safety glasses. 

Then I was grinding the welds. Sparks flying, metal bits and grinding wheel fragments flying and….wait for it…nothing bad happened. See, I was wearing safety glasses.

Then I was running a wire wheel over the welds, doing final clean up. More metal fragments flying, little wire wheel pieces flying all over the place and…wait for it…nothing bad happened. I’m a smart guy; I was wearing safety glasses. 

Time to prime it. I give it a wipe down, then a bath with brake clean. I grab compressed air to dry it because I want to hurry up, go inside, and shower all this crap off me. So I’m blowing the whole thing off so I can paint and…wait for it…I get a blast of brake clean DIRECTLY IN MY EYES!!! See, I’m NOT wearing safety glasses at this point because I’m a dope.

Good lord does it hurt. My wife sees me bolt out of the garage, bounce off the minivan, run into the house, and dunk my head under running water. She’s trying to figure out what’s happening, but I don’t answer her because my Bluetooth earbuds are blasting Ozzy – Crazy Train in my ears and I can’t hear her. She called EMS because she thinks I’m blind and deaf, probably hoping mute too.  

Anyway, after much flushing all is well. My eyes are kinda irritated today, but I can see.

I kissed my wife, thanked her for her help and concern, and promised to be more diligent with safety equipment in the garage. 

So, wear safety glasses, use jack stands, get a proper welding helmet, etc.

ACK! You got hit at the EXACT moment I would have. Danger spinny death tools down? Must be safe to take off these hot, foggy, annoying safety goggles. Dang, just one more task to do real quick and I can get cold beer and a shower.....GAAAAAHHHAH MY EYES!!! I do that all the time using my leaf blower and end up hitting a corner that somehow is a perfect place for the gale force wind to do a U-turn back in my face.

I bet there is some sort of catchy OSHA approved saying about wearing safety gear for the whole job, but I don't know it.

been there, done that. Glad you only caught the easiest to remedy part, Boost.

One experience in digging metal shards from the eyes will convince you to wear safety glasses for life. 

And after turning 50, I learned that bifocal safety glasses are awesome.

I've done that a few times, it burns pretty bad but it's fine if you can get it flushed out quickly. I've heard that if you get carb cleaner in your eyes, you'll wish it was brake cleaner instead.

Super glue was much, much worse:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/getting-super-glue-in-your-eye-easier-than-you-thi/80245/page1/

Ugg... that doesn't sound fun. I have a few pairs of glasses - one old, one backup, then my every day glasses and sunglasses. All of them have either Trivex or Polycarbonate leneses. No, the frames are not safety frames, but I figure that the lens is the important part. And I still wear real safety glasses when doing real work, but this way I'm basically always protected - at least against things like this, or when I had a similar moment and thought "ah, I'll just spray the EGR clean with Carb Cleaner" only to have it come back out of the valve and hit me straight in my glasses lens. Had I been wearing contacts, there is no way I would have had my safety glasses on for that. 

slefain said:

ACK! You got hit at the EXACT moment I would have. Danger spinny death tools down? Must be safe to take off these hot, foggy, annoying safety goggles. Dang, just one more task to do real quick and I can get cold beer and a shower.....GAAAAAHHHAH MY EYES!!! 

Had a very similar thing happen a few months ago while rehabbing my home office. Lot of running back and forth between the office and garage, one last thing to do, drill out a plastic job box I'd just mounted so I could push some coax through it. Grabbed the cordless drill without a care in the world... and the moment the bit touched plastic it fired a sizeable chunk directly at the center of my eye. YEOUCH. Was blurry for ten minutes, I iced it for the next hour, and ended up setting up a optometry appointment that night when I noticed that every point of light as seen by that eye was a diagonal smear. 1mm slice/abrasion to the cornea. Fun times. 

Glad you're ok! There are about 47,553 pairs of safety glasses all over the shop just so no one has an excuse to not wear them. 

That's one of the reasons I'll probably never have my vision corrected. I order all my glasses with poly lenses. I wear them all the time. I haven't gotten anyting in my eyes since I started wearing them. 

Probably the worst I have had in my eyes was battery acid. I'm pretty sure it feels just like setting your eyeball on fire. 

Glad it wasn't too serious. 

AAZCD said:

And after turning 50, I learned that bifocal safety glasses are awesome.

Those, and the non-bifocal reader safety glasses!

And don't forget the hearing protection along with safety glasses when you are running the weed wacker.  

Those little 2-cycles are crazy loud and really close to your ears.

Same goes for shooting guns.  Ear and eye protection needed.  Even a little  .22 can do bad things to your ears.

jharry3 said:

And don't forget the hearing protection along with safety glasses when you are running the weed wacker.  

Those little 2-cycles are crazy loud and really close to your ears.

Same goes for shooting guns.  Ear and eye protection needed.  Even a little  .22 can do bad things to your ears.

I've got a pair of ear muffs hanging on my Honda pressure washer so there is no excuse, that thing is loud after a while.

I did that recently. With fresh HCl acid for a battery. Frankensteined my way through everything in my way to get to the sink to dunk my head in. 

Yes. 

I generally wear glasses when I know I'm going to be wrenching or working outside, but if I do have contacts in, the safety glasses go on. I need to investigate prescription safety glasses. Unfortunately, my usual go-to place (Zenni) doesn't seem to have them.

I'll always remember the moment I realized safety glasses weren't optional.

I was reattaching the elevator of a J-3 Cub I retrieved from a soccer field earlier that day and cut part of the tail off the cotter pin. Stupid thing hit me right below the eye hard enough to embed itself and draw blood. I'm way more careful these days.

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

I get my prescription safety glasses from RX-Safety.com. I have been happy with their service and pricing. 

I wear safety glasses, but the common ones are a bit too BBQ Becky for my taste. I found a solution and they've been working really well.

https://www.kcprofessional.com/en-us/products/personal-protection/eye-protection/49309

Appleseed said:

I did that recently. With fresh HCl acid for a battery.

Been there, done that.  Battery acid in the eye stings a little.  

I get it beat into my head at work to wear them but I realized while under my caprice with chunks of rust falling in my face that I keep all my good safety glasses locked in my tool box at work. Guess I need to grab a couple pairs for the home box soon.

slefain said:

ACK! 

I bet there is some sort of catchy OSHA approved saying about wearing safety gear for the whole job, but I don't know it.

The adventure touring site has it down: ATGATT...All The Gear All The Time. We've all been lucky.

Great reminder, glad to hear that it worked out OK. I was installing a hitch on my FIL's 7 year old Toyota Tacoma about a month ago and caught some PB Blaster Runoff in my eye. Was able to get water on it within a few seconds and it burned for a little bit, but ended up OK.

I need a good option that doesn't fog and I can wear for extended periods of time. I like the ones white_fly linked to, I'll have to check them out. I usually use safety googles, flip them up when I'm done with the task at hand, and then flip them back down to discover they're completely fogged since my hair was sweaty. At that point, I'm not as consistent at wearing them. I think I'd be better off in most cases with slightly less coverage, but better comfort so I'll be more likely to wear them all the time.

I've worn glasses for more than 30 years, and I've always equipped them with polycarbontate lenses to mitigate the need for safety glasses when doing shop stuff. But over the last few years, as my near vision has started changing to be better when uncorrected, i find myself getting into the dangerous habit of looking over or under my glasses when doing close-up work, including drilling and grinding.

Needless to say, that's dumb AF. So my solution has just been to litter the shop with safety glasses. Every time I go to Harbor Freight, I throw a $2 pair in the basket, then just bring them home and put the somewhere. I've found that more and more I just take off my prescription glasses and grab some of the safety specs as soon as I start working. 

TL;DR: Wear safety glasses

Friend of mine recently was looking over his safety glasses when the drill bit exploded sending a chunk straight through his cornea, through his lens, and burying itself in the bottom of his retina.   

Several microsurgeries and a polycarbonate lens later he car still see out of that eye but the image is a bit distorted.   He got incredibly lucky to have been near a pretty amazing doctor and hospital when it went down.   Something like 90% of the places in the US would simply have melon balled that one and fitted him with a spiffy glass eye.

Wear your safety glasses!

I like to keep the glasses littered through my life in both tinted and clear.  For most things, though, I'm starting to really prefer the face shield.