Re: Let's face it, who amongst us hasn't lost a tie to the...
I used to work in a factory which made steel hoops that we supplied to cooperages for the making of whisky barrels.
We would get 3/4 tonne hot rolled coils from Corus which would be put through a de-coiler and cut to length using a power press. From here I would manually feed the resultant length through a machine which had two rollers continuously spinning which would flatten one edge more than the other to produce a hoop of a certain angle. Basically like the mechanism of a shredder but absolutely huge (the machine itself was half the size of a family hatchback) and open to hands, fingers and arms, etc.
We had to wear boiler suits that would come apart if caught in the mech. due to the fact all the safety gizmos had been removed so we could have it continuously running since we had automated other parts of the process.
One day the inevitable happened and I caught the cuff of the boiler suit in the rollers. Initially it did come apart but then started to lift me towards the machine. Luckily I managed to reach the emergency stop but it still gives me shivers to think about the day I nearly became minced beef.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
