Beware of magnets!

[Larry Edgerton]

Funny story....... Well,, now its funny.

Someone gave me this magnet that was used in a printing operation to pull metal out of the paper. Its about 3' long, 2 1/2" wide and consists of a 1/8" stainless sheet with a bunch of some kind of magnets bonded to it that are parallelograms spaced about 1/4" apart the whole length. EXTREMELY STRONG!!!! its so strong my buddy and I picked up my DJ20 jointer with it easily. Easy for the magnet, not us. There is a warning on it to stay ten feet away if you have a pacemaker. Ironically you had to be one foot away to be able to read it?

I had it screwed to the wall to hold shaper bushings and decided that I was going to make a magnetic fixture out of it, so I took it down and cut it in half. I was putting handles on it, coming from the drill press heading back to the bench when WHAM!

As I walked by the other half sitting on the saw magnet side up the one on the saw jumped up and bit me. No, really, that is what happened! You always hear of trees jumping out and biting cars so I know this stuff can happen.

SO...... Here I am in my shop working alone with my finger caught between two magnets that are capable of lifting a jointer. This hurts a little bit. You know that instant when you hit your finger with a hammer? Well, just keep that going. I don't suggest that you keep hitting yourself with a hammer to get an idea what it felt like, just take my word for it. To give you a clue, I have broken both legs at the same time, and this hurt worse. Or, maybe I an just getting to be a wimp in my old age?

So in screaming pain I am trying to get this off my finger. Can't pull it out, probably a good thing in retrospect and I only have one hand to work with, the other one having a couple of foot and a half magnets clamped on it. Plus my vision was little blurry, probably had something to do with the magnets making my eyes water. I didn't know magnets could do that? Who knew?

I'm hoping I can figure out a way to get it off because I am not sure I can drive the ten miles to town with the magnets making my eyes water. I can't pull two magnets apart with one hand, something I had never thought about before. Its true, you can't do it! I was almost ready to head for town when I spied the rail on my slide saw. I slipped the open end that was fighting its hardest to mate with its sibling over the rail, grabbed the saw wrench that hangs there and jambed it in between, prying enough that I could slip my finger out.

The pain then got worse, and I thought I was going to have to visit the porcelain goddess. My finger was no more than a 1/4" thick. Didn't know exactly how much bone was in my finger, and now I do, about 1/4 inch. It took a half hour for it to regain is somewhat normal shape, and as it did the pain subsided with it.

Its ok to laugh, I do now......

Oh yeah, I screwed the two halves back on the wall and that is where those little buggers are going to stay.....

[Van Huskey]

Crazy, glad you are OK! Magnets are no joke and they look so innocuous.

Be glad you got it off quickly, compartment syndrome is no joke. Plus a life long pro wood worker that lost a finger to a magnet just seems all kinds of wrong, Mag-Stop maybe?

[Matt Day]

Wow! Quite a story! Hope that the finger recovers. Adding to the pain must have been the pulsing thought of "WT# do I do now!" Thanks for sharing.

[Barry McFadden]

OUCH!!!!....I've pinched the skin of a finger between 2 quarter size rare earth magnets and that hurts enough.... can't imagine what you went through!!

[Ben Rivel]

Wow. Truthfully, I did not laugh. Thats just scary. I have played with some stronger than normal magnets, but nothing anywhere near that strength. To be honest the power of strong magnets like that has always scared me as I could imagine them flying across the room going for the nearest large metal object with me in the path! That was one reason I really liked the MagSwitch products since you can turn off their magnetic power!

[John K Jordan]

Oh my, I might seek medical attention if it swells and reddens significantly in the next day. I have some huge rare earth magnets that are supposed to be capable of breaking fingers. I haven't tested that.

If they are thin, the magnet segments you describe sound close to those used in computer disk drives for head positioning and I know even one of those is strong. I'm having trouble visualizing the total force from an array 3' long.

What in the world are you going to use these for? A piece of that might be good for dragging a pond or river for salvage! BTW, another possible use for a strong magnet in the shop that I hope I never have to try: I've been told it may be possible to pull a steel shaving from an eye.

JKJ

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Now you understand how accidents happen with regards to the magnetic fields on MRI scanners.......buffers pulled into the bore.........hospital beds stuck to the front of the magnet...........oxygen bottles pulled into the bore........anesthesia carts stuck to the front......

[Larry Edgerton]

Its a funny story, LAUGH!

I was hoping to make some of you get a chuckle for the day with the tale of my misadventure, but you guys take life way too seriously. It was a coupe of moths ago, I'm just dandy.

[Steve Demuth]

Magnets can exert scary force. Where I work, we teach magnet safety as a matter of necessity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg. Our experimental imaging group uses magnets 2-3X as big as the one in the safety video, so we really could pin a car to the machine.

[Ryan Mooney]

Well I'm glad you got your finger out and that was all that got caught hehe. I do not envy you the experience, I've gotten plenty of blood blisters from little magnets and that's plenty of excitement.

It would be interesting to know how they cleaned the magnet from metallic junk in the paper plant, they must have had some sort of cover over it that you could pull off to drop the dross..

Now you understand how accidents happen with regards to the magnetic fields on MRI scanners.......

Hah, so the one place I worked had (what was at the time..) one of the worlds two largest NMRs (which are just really large MRI machines with a really small bore). Think an MRI many times more powerful than the hospital ones with a bore about 1" across where all the force is concentrated (they had a large tank of liquid nitrogen to cool the liquid helium that cooled the magnet). You can literally image protein structures or individual cells in a mouses heart with this machine.

Anyway.. this rig had a 20+' circle taped off around it that went well out into the adjacent hallway where you weren't allowed to go if you had a pacemaker and a somewhat smaller circle also into the hallway) that was the no-metal zone. So you'd see folks going down the hall kind of adjust location and sidle away from the big scary magnet on the other side of the wall. There were a few stories of rogue screwdrivers and the like but in general the risk was high enough that folks were pretty careful around it.

Big magnets are no joke... The huge electromagnets used for lifting cars in junk yards have always held a certain amount of fascination as well.. a magnet that can pick up a truck.

[Ole Anderson]

Next time, be sure to pull out your cell phone with your good hand and take some pics so we know it really happened!

[Craig Shewmake]

I'll admit it. I laughed. Not at the severity of the situation or the obvious pain you endured but in the way you told the story. Well done and I am glad you are ok.

[Van Huskey]

Next time, be sure to pull out your cell phone with your good hand and take some pics so we know it really happened!

HMMM, pictures or it didn't happen.... I'm laughing, Larry, I'm laughing!

[Malcolm McLeod]

HMMM, pictures or it didn't happen.... I'm laughing, Larry, I'm laughing!

Sorry Larry, you're going to have to do a repeat for the videographer. (Maybe it won't hurt so bad this time?)

...that which does not kill us, goes viral.

[peter gagliardi]

Larry, I was definitely laughing! There must be something wrong with the way my brain works, because I find a LOT of humor in someone getting hurt. I always have. Not cut your hand off kind of hurt, but whack your finger kind of hurt, most definitely.
Glad you escaped and told the story.