Injured Scrapper?

No Permenant injuries.... but recomendations from me would be:

when cutting, grinding, hammering, chizling... always wear safety glasses... preferably with a face shield too... yes - glasses and shield

Ear plugs or ear muffs

if grinding, a dust mask or mask with filters


if you are going to insist on breaking an environmental law - please note, I am discouraging this - but if you insist on cutting 'charged' freon lines in a/c units and fridges.... wear safety glasses and resperator, do not look at lines when cutting... and cut and run............. please don't cut the line tho... besides being very bad for environment and against the law.... freon both old and new kinds can instantly damage your body.... the owner of the scrap yard said one of his customers went blind in one eye because he got sprayed directly in the face and froze his eye instantly... one of the yard guys told me that another of their customers had a lung frozen... could die instantly... on the low end, you could get frostbite...

Wearing steel toed boots, long sleaves, thick pants such as carharts or ****ies.....

I have had the odd thing in my eye, small cuts, slivers, etc..... but nothing serious to take me out of the game.... and take care of your back too... only got one


Sorry for rambling... i am definitly not a safety freak. lol

I get plenty of cuts & odd bruises, nothing serious yet.
I hate the tiny pin pricks from stripping the insulation of wiring, you don't see them, just a tiny bead of blood.

I keep cutting my right finger on the side of the knuckle closest to me while removing copper wire off things.
Once it just wouldn't heal properly & a few months later I felt a bump & picked it out, it turned out to be a small cube of plastic insulation of a transformer I remember, for some reason very clearly, amongst all of the transformers I have scrapped.

Weirdly, many months later I noticed a bleed in between my top front teeth, looking closer I relied there was a bit of food in there under the gum, so I picked it out.
It turned out to be the same size & sort of insulation I found in my finger, how it got there I dunno, traveled around my body I expect.
Someone else has had a similar thing happen to them, with glass.

A long time later, picking at the healed scab, it just slid off, size of my fingernail, just slid off... Smooth as underneath & didn't notice the difference after a few minutes. Weird. Sorta like picking a big flake of dead skin off my heel.

Worst was > Inside a car on my back on the front seats, car was part crushed, I moved forward a bit & caught my arm on a rip in the roof.
I thought 'Hmm, didn't sound like cloth ripping....'. 'Wonder if that was my arm?'

I lift my arm & instantly I see blood dripping under it. 'Uh oh'. 'Better do something about that'
So I got out, look at the cut, real deep & about 2 inchs long, can see red & purple muscles & yellow fat, no bone'.

So I look around & within arms reach theres a rag tied to the side of a car, I get it, unwind it, its actually really clean, months in the sun & rain.
Bloods dripping outta my arm still, I wind the rag around it, tie it up & get my tools together, its 1/2 hour walk home.

Bleedings stopped, 'Ah sweet'.
Back to work again, Several hours later I finish, walk home, check the cut, clean it, get some medical tape & pull it closed & tape it up. It probably needed 6 or more stitches.
So I'm happy with that & make sure it dosn't get bumped for a week, take it off, healing very well, replace tape.
Carefull for another week, healing well, replace tape, carefull for another week, remove tape, air out, clean & dry.
Cover again, week later remove tape & see a tiny white line where the cut is, its got a thin scab thru it, with hairs in it.

I grab the end of the scab & lift it off slowly, feels like a zipper 'rip', very freaky but also, well, erotic, for the lack of a better word.
Now I have the tinyest thin 'Nike swoosh' line on my arm.

I don't have tattoos, I have scars.
They tell a story....

Oh, my gosh! I always wear jeans to scrap even in the summer but I still get covered with bruises, cuts and gashes and I don't even know where they came from. My hands and fingers sustain cuts even with wearing gloves and I have had a small screw driver go through the palm of my hand twice. Can't remember what I was trying to do with it but it slipped and went through like nothing, thank god it was a new and clean screwdriver. The tip of my right hand pointy finger was smashed with a sledge hammer and the tip ''slipped'' off, was literally held on by a thread and my nail never quite grew back in the correct position and the tip is numb now. My hand knuckles are almost twice the size they used to be and hurt like heck as does my back which was bad to begin with but feels like a mack truck hit it every day. One knee now gives out sometimes after a long day or days in a row of scrapping and I never had knee problems before. So, to summarize: Arthritis, cuts and bruises and bad back.

when cutting, grinding, hammering, chizling... always wear safety glasses... preferably with a face shield too... yes - glasses and shield

Last year i was using a grinder with one of those wafer thin cutting discs to cut open a few cats.

I was wearing gloves, a face mask, saftey goggles and ear muffs.

I saw someone approaching from my left and glanced over.
Even with my muffs on, there was a loud bang and and it felt as if someone had punched me in the face, enough to knock me onto my arse.
When i took my face mask off, there was a hole in it and also a deep scratch on the left lens of my goggles.
Turns out that when i glanced left, i must have skewed the cutting disc too much which shattered and the fragments hit a fence panel next to me and one of them richoceted into my face.
I laughed at the time but the next day it hit home just how lucky i had been. I've never been able to use that grinder for cutting since. I now use a plasma cutter.

I agree with Destructo_d and always use goggles under a face mask or shield.

ive messed up some of my hearing but then again it could also be to loud noises at work.
currently ive been working alot with my hands and it feels like ive over worked them or fatigued them because my hand keeps going numb.

Originally Posted by Ballymoss

Last year i was using a grinder with one of those wafer thin cutting discs to cut open a few cats.

I was wearing gloves, a face mask, saftey goggles and ear muffs.

I saw someone approaching from my left and glanced over.
Even with my muffs on, there was a loud bang and and it felt as if someone had punched me in the face, enough to knock me onto my arse.
When i took my face mask off, there was a hole in it and also a deep scratch on the left lens of my goggles.
Turns out that when i glanced left, i must have skewed the cutting disc too much which shattered and the fragments hit a fence panel next to me and one of them richoceted into my face.
I laughed at the time but the next day it hit home just how lucky i had been. I've never been able to use that grinder for cutting since. I now use a plasma cutter.

I agree with Destructo_d and always use goggles under a face mask or shield.

I always had worn gloves but never any kind of face mask until I got my angle grinder, I wear a welders helmet or face plate because of all the posts I've read on here how the discs can shatter. Knock on wood it's never happened to me but I do take care when using it after reading some not so good stories about those things, i'd never have thought they would or could shatter like that. Glad you were ok Bally

When I spend days at a time scrapping I wind up with a lotta cuts on my hands. They heal up, but it sucks to do dishes. I hate gloves and safety glasses. If I go to the junkyard I wear jeans. In the middle of summer I scrap my electronics in shorts and sandals. I am one of the most unsafe scrappers there is.

Speaking of freon...I used to work in a junkyard, and when cars came in we had to test them for freon, then they had to be pumped (obviously) before put in the yard. When we prepped them for the crusher we ripped out the rad and condensor (among other things). One time a co-worker went to cut a condensor line and freon shot out of it, got my arm pretty good but just missed my face. Our boss tore our asses apart, even though neither one of us were freon removal certified.

I was replacing the started on my old Bronco...one of the bolts snapped off so I busted out the air drill and went to town...got a scratchy eye...figured it was dust...rubbed it alot...tried to sleep..couldn't...eye crusted shut over night...went to the ER...they pulled a nice shaving out of my eyeball and drilled out the rust ring...nothing compars to watching a drillbit poke into your eye and move around...

Not me, but a friend of mine was using a circular saw about 2 months ago and the saw kicked and cut the bottom of his stomach skin right above his groin and his stomach and intestines fell out. He's doing fine now, everything went well. Me, I cut my hands a lot. Cut the tip of my pointer finger off, in front of the nail. Then about a month later I cut my ring finger on the inside down to the bone about 2 inches long. Both on my right hand. Needless to say I now wear safety gloves. West Chester's that are for people who work with windows and a lot of glass. They were about $20 and worth it. Mechanix Gloves don't hold up like I thought they would.