A couple of days ago I did probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done under my loosely-defined category of DIY Boat Repairs: I put a 40-tooth circular saw blade on a 5,000 rpm angle grinder to cut away some dry-rotted plywood on the boat. Upside down. At a 35-degree angle (which befits the use of the angle grinder? LOL). Without a blade guard.
The grinder doesn’t have a “dead man’s” switch, so if I had dropped it or got it stuck on something that kicked it back, it would have kept on spinning and cutting — feet, legs, arms, hands, and, of course, the deck of the boat.
It’s a good thing I was wearing eye protection, because the very first thing that happened when the makeshift saw touched the plywood was hit a staple, which was launched into the air toward my face.
Fortunately the staple didn’t scratch my safety glasses. Unfortunately it did drive itself into the end of my nose, which caused a bit of a bleed.
It took about 30 minutes for me to realize that, if I continued, the category under which I was working would be changed from DIY Repairs to Darwin Award Winners.
I decided to put the saw away and just cover the entire mess with tar paper. After all, I had a bunch of extra tar paper lying around after I used it last year to cover a still-leaking hole in the bottom of the boat.
Maybe I should have just painted it with Flex-Seal.