The Murder Saw

So, in spite of this blog's title, I almost never post about my actual job here, mostly for liability reasons.  It's so much easier to deny you said something about your employer if you don't put it in writing.

But today, I have a story from work for you.  And a text conversation with my husband prompted by this which has to be shared.  And it's lighthearted and funny enough that I shouldn't get in any trouble for sharing it.  (Which is a legit concern, given that I friended my boss on on FB.  But I don't think he was my boss then, and he'll probably get a kick out this.)

So, at work I have the pleasure of running the newest lathe in the shop.  It's shiny and clean, it has live tooling, and at this point, it's only been crashed twice (not by me).  It runs great, and I have zero complaints.  I love running this thing.  But.

I have to cut all of my parts on a saw before I can run them on the lathe (aka "Baby").  And the saw I have to use is...everything the lathe is not.  It's at least as old as my father, loud enough to cause hearing damage (and getting louder as various bearings go out on it), and it won't hold tolerance for shit.  I couldn't get you an actual picture, but here's a similar one I found online:

This looks newer than the one I use.

It's about 300 times cleaner.  Imagine the base being solid instead of having legs, it being white and rust colored, and covered in gray sludge and you've got a good idea of what we're working with.  This thing is janky as hell.  You can set the stop, cut three parts, and they'll all be different lengths.  It has an oscillate setting that you can use for thicker stock--the first time I saw it, I ran for my group leader because I thought the thing was broken.  One time the blade suddenly started bouncing up and down and wouldn't go back up--the piston rod that moved it up and down had fallen off in the back.  The fine adjustment for the stop is a hammer.  A filthy, old hammer.

 

Fine adjustment.

This thing is janky as fuck.  In fact, I had been referring to it as the jankyass saw.

However, yesterday, it tried to kill me.  The blade blew apart, which is not unusual, that being the nature of abrasive cut off wheels.  However, it blew apart in such a way that it knocked the access door/guard on the side of it open and chucked a hunk of saw blade straight out the front.  It was a triangular piece, about 3-4 inches on a side. Lucky for me, the control to drop the blade down is off to the side, and where I'm left handed, I actually stand even farther over.  So I was actually a couple feet to the right when it chucked that piece out.  Which is really good, because it landed a good three or four feet away from the saw.  It scared the crap out of me.  My awesome boss documented it, and we found a way to more securely latch the door, so it shouldn't happen again, thank goodness.


But because of that, I've decided I'm going to start referring to it as the Murder Saw now.  It did try to kill me, after all.  Which brings us to the text conversation I must share.  See, I was texting the husband to tell him that I'd finally got a new time frame for when the Murder Saw's replacement is coming in.  They got approval for a new saw earlier this year, and it's been coming in six to eight weeks since February--now we're finally only two or three weeks out.  I think that near miss may help a little, since they love me and nobody wants to be responsible for resetting the no lost work day accident counter at this point (2000+ days).  But anyway, it prompted the following exchange.

 

And lest you think I was slacking, I have some downtime while the machine is running.

Management is going to love me for the next few weeks.