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Lessons Learned the Hard Way: Keep Your Safety Glasses On!

by on Aug 29, 2012

A man fitting a safety glass.
…Or, why Murphy’s Law also applies to your peepers, people.

The Project: Cutting out old gas lines in the Curbly House, to make way for new electrical wiring and structural reinforcements (yes, these old houses were lit gas lamps!).

The Story: It was late in the day, almost time to wrap things up, but there was one lingering steel pipe up in the ceiling that I wanted to cut out. “Five minutes,” I thought, then I’ll go home. So I pulled out my awesome reciprocating saw, put a metal blade on it, and went to work.

After a minute of holding the saw up over my head, my safety goggles (which hadn’t left my face all day) we’re getting kind of foggy, and the dim late-afternoon light made it hard to see). So, I took them off. “Just for a minute,” I thought. 

The Moment Of Truth: Of course, ten seconds after I removed my eye-protection … BAM! A tiny sliver of metal went flying into my left eyeball. Having anything stuck in your eyes hurts, but galvanized steel is particularly grating.

A person is holding a pair of 3M goggles in the package.

You what’s smart? Wearing safety goggles. You know what’s smarter? Not taking them off!

The Lessons Learned:

– Wearing safety glasses or eye goggles is useless if you take them off … ever. It might seem like ‘just a few seconds’, but those are the exact seconds during which a metallic particle will come flying ‘atcha. 

– Careful when looking up. On this (and many other projects) I realized (duh) that anytime you’re looking up at your working surface, you have to be extra careful. Thanks for nothin’, gravity.

Aaaaaaand just for fun, I thought I’d throw in this:

A cartoon character wearing safety goggles.

Sigh. Remember when The Simpsons was funny? 

Content and/or other value provided by our partner, 3M DIY. To enter to win free samples for your next DIY project, visit 3MDIY.com

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