re: Are you stronger than a hydraulic lathe?

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People sure are stupid around machinery.

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Yep. I once spaced and left a t-handle in the chuck of a lathe when I was about to turn aluminum at a few thousand rpm. That thing fricking LAUNCHED when I turned the lathe on and ended up embedded in a wall. It easily could have ended up in my chest had I been standing in line with the chuck when I flipped the switch.

The kicker is that all of our t-handles had springs on the ends to push them out of the chuck if you weren't holding them there, but the spring on mine had just broken. I had one or two more cuts to make before I was going home, so I just used the t-handle as it was instead of getting another one and spaced on that one cut.