to add my experience of my, actually right hand, not left foot,
I was blanking out some 1.5in dia by 1/8th in bronze discs with the
10 ton fly press, One pulls the handle towards oneself. This big
beastie has a 5ft arm on top with a 100lb lb cast iron ball on each
end of the arm. It was quite hard work getting the energy into the
handle. I slipped, just as i pulled it, the handle came and knocked
me down. i had a bad pain in my chest for several weeks after.
A few yrs later I had a routine chest x-ray. the radiologist was
concerened about what he thought was a lump on my rib. Later that
day, I realised that the handle broke my rib. The lump was where the
rib had healed itself.
Aha Jeff! My Left Ear is the means of tracing those tiny things that
snap out of the tweezers or pliers. When the snap happens my senses
go straight to the ear. Sometimes the direction is observed out the
corner of the eye. If the last ricochet or bounce can be heard then
the finding may be easy. If no ricochet or bounce is detected then
it’s a recreation of the act. Angle of tweezers, likely velocity,
trajectory, and landing place, likely direction of subsequent
bounces…and what did it land on to make no sound? This will narrow
it down to a sector of the floor including little cracks, ledges,
and spiderwebs.
After spending more time than the value of the lost item trying to
find it, I have a mission, an obsession…I reeeally don’t want to do
it all again. And when doing it again the precious little thing snaps
out the tweezers…in another profession this is called ‘The Angel’s
Share’.
Painful learning on how to work those tweezers better. Let the
angels go elsewhere.
Now here’s a case of somebody else not finding it: During a class my
neighbor was taking apart an old ring and dropped a tiny diamond on
the floor, which immediately decided to hide from everybody. I got
down on all fours and miraculously found it. She very generously told
me to keep it and even gave me the other matching diamond, which
became part of a ring I was making.
Aprons or dresses catch most everything whether you want to catch it
or not.
The day a platinum ring flew out of the tweezers and landed on my
lap burning a small hole in the front of my favorite cotton sundress,
then burned my thigh, then set the back of the dress unfire as I
stood up and into yes into the chair as I sat back down to put out my
dress fire. When I walked down stairs to tell my husband I set my
favorite dress unfire he looked at me and said really till I turned
around and he laugh so hard and asked if I was OK and since then no
matter how warm the weather is I wear a leather apron when working
with Platinum! Lesson learned. Always wear cotton or natural in the
studio as they do not melt into your skin!
Now if I could learn to wear shoes in the summer in the studio I
would not have to pull those saw blades out of my feet
Love this thread - I do the thigh grab as well, have not mastered
‘ketchup foot’ yet. I do have a slightly different subconscious
‘tic’ - I have trained myself to stretch out my hands before I fall
asleep, to prevent the tool-handling ‘crab claw’ from becoming
permanent, so now juuuuust as I slip under, my hands jerk into a
starfish shape pressed against the pillow or sheet. It would be
amusing to watch, I’m sure, but I’m asleep.
AWESOME!!! LOVE David’s 1-2-3 punch story - laugh out loud funny!
Reminded me of working late at night, doorbell rang, in my haste to
answer it I leaped out of my chair, whereupon the tools in my lap
fell - the bent-nose pliers beat my left foot to the same spot on
the floor by milliseconds - and had to land nose-up. I had to
really YANK the pliers out - they were embedded 2" into the sole of
my bare foot. I spent 4 days on the couch with a pizza, too sore to
crawl. It was the longest Thanksgiving/birthday weekend I’ve ever
had.
My fabrication teacher told me about the time that he worked in a
large shop with several goldsmiths. He painfully explained how was
always coming into the shop to see all the goldsmiths with their
noses to the ground and rump in the air searching for a dropped
diamonds and sapphires. “Hey,” I told him, that’s nothing. I work
with SuperSculpy Firm, and I scramble around on the floor looking
for pieces of dropped plastic." My flubs are more embarrassing than
your flubs. Neener, neener, neener.
Not being as dexterous of foot as some in this forum, but still able
to see the advantages of using my feet, I have cobbled together the
following solution for myself which I now wear whenever I am in the
studio.
So you think that was embarrassing, I have one of those memorable
moments. I use a chair with a fabric cover for coolness. One day as
I flopped down in my chair I discovered a broken saw blade in the
fabric of the seat pointed vertically. Naturally it penetrated the
seat of my pants as well as my gletues maximus. To add insult to
injury the teeth of the blade were pointed back acting like a fish
hook. Needless to say the removal of same was a penetrating
experience. A pair of hemostats and a sharp yank, followed by a
piercing yell and a flow of red bodily fluid. Every since I check my
chair seat on a regular basis for lurking saw blades. A small scar
but a very lasting memory.
after dropping something from the work top i take a little time to
decide just how important that thingie really is to the overall
rotational stability of the earth at that particular moment - if it
seems crucial and there’s nothing else needing attention, or i see a
slight fuzziness in the landscape, i stop, step off of my stool and
stoop - if it’s a small item - stone, etc - i use a lint roller from
the dollar store to clean around the area (that method often
embarrasses me a bit to see the gathering of dust bunnies, metal
snips, crumbs on the stickum - but i work alone so no observers.) if
the item is not critical to polar positions, i wait until two more
thingies escape the work top before getting down to look.
best regards to everyone’s left foot -
ive
think more now, regret less later.
I went to a heavy leather welders apron long ago, when a mans ring I
was annealing rolled off into my lap, and the cotton jewelers apron
barely slowed it down long enough to get my knees out of the way!
Lesson learned.
To add insult to injury the teeth of the blade were pointed back
acting like a fish hook. Needless to say the removal of same was a
penetrating experience.
I had a similar incident. A bit of sawblade must have attached
itself to my clothing at some point in the day, because it hitched a
ride home and managed to get lost in my carpet. I later found it with
my bare foot.
My first pull broke it off somewhere inside, so I had a fun little
visit at the prompt care center while a doctor cut it out.
Another technique that works remarkably well for finding tiny items
dropped on a smooth floor is the use of a flashlight.
Place the flashlight right ON the floor ~ so that the beam of light
runs parallel to the surface. This is called a “raking light”. Then
slowly “sweep” the area with this long light beam, advancing the
moving light, making sure you cover every bit.
You will find that even the smallest baubles reveal themselves in
this light, partly because they cast a long and moving shadow (the
shadow moves as the light is “swept” slowly from side to side.
I have a multi-unit LED light above my bench for just such hunts.
(By the way, this technique is also used by drywall installers to
make sure the plastered joints are sanded extremely smoothly. So, if
you’re doing any drywalling, take a flashlight along… it will show
you all the bumps and hollows in your work…)
I took a knife workshop making pattern welded steel from a knife
artist couple who live in Wyoming a couple summers ago. I was pulling
my billet out of the forge, and just as Audra was telling the class
to run the billet against the blade they have set up to remove built
up burnt flux, a huge piece of it, bright orange from the forge, flew
right upwards from the squirrel cage fan and went over the top of my
leather apron & settled itself down against my skin inside my bra.
I had NO IDEA I could remove my shirt so fast! I have no idea who
grabbed my billet. I just knew where the bucket was & that’s where I
headed to soak myself! It was excruciatingly painful and left a very
angry and large burn inside my cleavage on both breasts. I was more
concerned with getting my fried clothing off of my body than I ever
was with my modesty, that is for certain.
I am a bit older than my recent college classmates, and we went as a
group. Having been a nurse 20 years, and then after birthing children
too, you lose all modesty. My classmates were amazed that I could
remove clothing with men in the studio, (who I am told did turn
away), I disrobed so fast! It was HOT, I was on fire, and it had to
go AWAY. That burn was nasty for the rest of the summer, and I have
the scars to prove how invaluable an apron is when it goes up high
enough to protect you. My new apron sits up against my collar bone!
Great thread! I’ve laughed all week. The knee clamp auto reflex…yep
I do that, the phantom optivisor…yep that too. The flashlight is my
best friend and the sticky roller is a great trick except that the
desired object which eluded my flashlight to begin with continues to
do so because the roller instead becomes coated with a fine layer of
short brown dog hair which insures there is no sticky left in the
sticky roller. As I too succumb to the guilty pleasure of working
with bare feet in the studio, I’ve no doubt I would set off the metal
detector at any airport!..hmmm… better keep that in mind next
time I consider air travel…
Hi Leslie – also bear in mind that your body may not be the best
candidate for an MRI – that goes for most jewelers. It can cause the
metal to migrate - resulting perhaps in blindness or some such worse
condition than it is now. Barbara - on a little island that is 92F on
the 22 of March! Unbelievable!
Not being as dexterous of foot as some in this forum, but still
able to see the advantages of using my feet, I have cobbled
together the following solution for myself which I now wear
whenever I am in the studio.
ROFL!
I like that, does it come in a women’s 8 1/2? You might have a side
business here.
