Am I the only one annoyed by the Discovery Channel??

[TheBanjoman]

Am I the only one incredibly annoyed by the Discovery Channel??

Guess Safety goes out the window for the sake of reality television.

I constantly see shows like "American Hot Rod", "American Chopper" and the "Great Biker Buildoff" And you constantly see the 'so called experts' using unsafe shop practices all the time.

Tack welding without a helmet, No safety goggles at the drill press or other equipment or even something as simple as people lifting with their backs.

I guess it wouldn't make for good television if you can't see their faces during fabrication.

But then again you can always edit out the guy going to the hospital to remove the shard from his eye or when the ambulance comes to put the guy on the stretcher after he slips a disc.

Are these things happening in shops all over the country and we don't see it??

As one who learned the hard way ( I was able to keep my sight in my left eye after an accident doing something stupid over 20 years ago)

I guess it takes an accident for some people to learn.

I know these people are adults and can choose their level of exposure to harmful situations. I just wonder how many high school shop teachers now have to put up with their students saying... "Paulie doesn't wear safety goggles, why should I have to??"

To me they should be accepting the responsibilty to know that there are many kids and others learning who want to emulate them and by doing so could wind up hurt because of "Monkey see... Monkey do".

I guess the older I get the more of a 'curmudgeon' I become.

[glfredrick]

No, you are not alone...


I have a lot of "nits to pick" with the Discovery Channel - from their unsafe shop shows which are otherwise fairly acceptable - except for their use of violent family relations to "sell" shows - we have too much of that already, and feeding it with steroid induced fits of rage for nothing doesn't help!

My other "nit" is their purported "expert status." When they do a show, they present themselves as the final authority on the subject, be it religious, historical, or otherwise. Informative, yes... Subjective, hell yes... Authoritative, hell no... just another opinion in the world on most things.

[stingers]

I don't remember which program it was on the other night, but one of the guys had a bad flash burn to his eyes and wasn't able to weld. He was wearing some very dark glasses as normal light was even painful. I agree that those programs set some really bad (maybe I should say "good") examples of unsafe practices. Most commercial businesses wouldn't tolerate it-they would be fired. Between OSHA and the insurance companies a business couldn't stay in business.

Risking loss of sight is bad enough. Not wearing protection against radiation is equally bad. Going blind is quicker but getting cancer isn't something to ignore either.

[Brainfarth]

I'm guilty of quite a few things when it comes to safety. As we all are to some degree.
When I grind, I wear glasses and a shield even, when things get rough. I know, when things get to a hurry, safety gets thrown to the side to a degree and progress progresses. But you'll never catch me grinding something without some sort of shield to thwart me from the flying element.
But as for tacking without a hood.. Don't be an idiot. Use some common sence and close your eyes.
-Brainfarth

[AZCoyote]

Actually the guy with the flash burns was wearing a helmet while tigging a gas tank. I think they said he caught some flash from the others around him if i'm not mistaken. Although, that same episode one of the guys was grinding with no glasses while sparks were hitting him in the face. What a genius.

[Brainfarth]

I noticed that last night when I was watching Liberty 2 and Paul Jr was grinding something without glasses while yelling at his dad. I'm a little paranoid about getting crap in my eyes.

[lotechman]

I am wondering if any eager OSHA inspectors have picked up on these behaviors. You can see there is a world of a difference between these hot rod and bike shops compared to proper factory settings. Although some of the bikes are interesting one can see that skill with filler and paint far exceeds any welding and fitting abilities I have seen. I find the shows interesting but not impressive.

[TheBanjoman]

I've watched and learned and found them interesting as well but the skill level is of a caliber that I probably have now. Especially when you see how much of a project is farmed out. You'd impress me more if you could handle all aspects of your project, Including building everything inhouse and from scratch. Some things aren't cost effective to do like chroming or powdercoating but surely you can build your own frames and motors.

To me the discovery channel is supposed to be educational. But I guess it has gotten to be more "Sensational" than Educational.

I guess I do learn some things as well. Some I'd like to try, and others I sure won't.

Our society seems to be hooked on "reality shows" and apparently "yelling and screaming" is a lot of peoples realitys.
And the fact that you can be a lowlife and have lots of money but still be a lowlife.

Jesse James.
Its true that you can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the boy.. He has the fame and fortune but all he seems to do is bitc* about it. He chose his own fate, nobody made him follow the path he is on so he should just shut up and stop whining about it.

I too wonder if any OSHA inspectors have shown up during filming and seen what goes on. Not knowing fully what OSHA rules are I think that they are breaking a lot of them each day.

[yzerman19c]

I have seen these shows and while they are interesting the "sheen" has worn off for me. I work in construction and all of mentioning of OSHA is so correct. If an OSHA rep walked in there he/she would get writers cramp from the tickets they would be handing out.

[kirbdog]

I am sure OSHA inspectors watch TV and have visited the shops in question. The inspectors probably left with a bunch of T-Shirts and autographs and misc. junk from the shows and the producers. They have enough video documentation to shut down OCC for ever.

[NTOLERANSE]

What no one remembers Mikey from American Chopper wearing sandals and shaorts in the shop? Yepp he got burned on his foot. Or the young (Cody) kid sanding down metal tabs on the disc sander with no eyeglasses? Or Billy Lanes helper on Biker Build Off filling the gas tank of the chopper while smoking a cigarette? (Yes, the camera focused in on it, I would have backed away)

Wait till the media picks up on some story of a guy who was inspired my American Chopper and built a bike, and glues it together with a 110V (insert cheapy welder brand here, pruchased from home depot) Gassless wire feed welder. Which promptly broke and injured/killed the builder and or passenger. (the passenger will inevitably be his 4 year old son riding on the gas tank). Wonder of Discovery will get sued. Its interesting TV but its gotten old for me quick. But, OCC, Jesse, and Discovery are smart to strike while the iron is hot. Make it while you can.

I was guilty of tacking with the helmet up, but I pay a higher price for it than just flash eye. I burn really easily and if I have done alot of mig work, and I am not 100% covered, it will look like i spent the day at the beach.

I asked for a auto helmet for Christmas, I wonder if it will enything through to burn my skin.

[stingercustoms]

There was one episode of O.C.C. where rick got his glove caught in the drill press and lost a little meat, but i've thought the same thing about these shows since i started watching them. In my shop my guys DO wear safety glasses,they DO wear helmuts when welding,and they DO know better,unsafe practices DO call for imediate dismissal.OSHA and my insurance are not my main concerns here either,i have the absoloute best group of guys and i would hate to see any of them get hurt.

[Robby T.]

I too am guilty of some safety shortcuts. I don't promote unsafe practices. I always wear eye protection when grinding or sawing aluminum with a circular saw. I even sometimes wear glasses under my face shield. As far as tacking with out a hood, I do. When tacking out 80' of floor the hood lifts and nods become crazy redundant. You can just go alot faster tacking without the hood. That said even though I don't drop my hood for the tack I never see the arc I close my eyes tightly. I do go home with a red face often. This bad habit has lessened with the auto shading hood I have now but old habits are very hard to break. I think that sometimes you do what you have to do to feed your family. In some shops you do the unsafe thing or quit.

[Brainfarth]

During the summer when I first started welding for a production oriented outfit, I wore a half jacket and a t-shirt. As the day progressed my sweat would sag my shirt down far enough that the rays would get by my hood... For years I thought that was my big bad burn(blistered and scared(to this day even)) until a few months ago.. I was tacking some big metal together running a mix, .045 on a miller XMT 350 set at 30 volts and 600 for wire. I closed my eyes during tacking and I had alot of tacking to do. Not once did I get blind sided.... I woke up around 2 in the morning to find that I could no open my eyes, so I felt my way to the bathroom sink and forced my eyes open... Talk about a restless night.
What have I learned from that experience? Don't take things for granted. Even though I've been around the block once or twice, every so often, things have a way of sneaking up on you.

[12,000 Doors]

How about the episode where senior takes the tank chain off the mig welder and it falls when moved. Those guys are a dasaster waiting to happen but on the other hand I see osha and companies going overboard in the other direction to dangerous extremes. At the company I work osha forced them to adopt this policy a few years back where everyone has to wear safety glasses all damn day every day. I complained from the start that wearing glasses when you weren't operating machines or near someone doing so compromised your periferal vision and made you more likely to bump your head. Nobody listened and a lot of people (me included) have been bumping there head on things they would have seen had the bridge of their glasses not been in the way (15 stitches for one supervisor last week). Osha is gonna get sued for that one of these days.

[smithboy]

I don't think OSHA can be sued by an individual for damages. Because it is a government agency it has what is called sovereign immunity in areas relating to its job, just like the president, or congressmen cant be sued for getting someone killed in a war and a juryman cannot be sued for rendering a bad verdict.

I know when I used to work in a plant I had some of the same opinions...safety glasses in the breakroom...because the twinkies might explode?...what's with that? But, I have also seen where a simple inspection probably saved lives in our facility, so I feel I have to defend OSHA, to some degree (but not too much). I have read a lot about working conditions around the turn of the century (last century). Workers were pretty much on their own and had no effective recourse when they were asked/forced to work in REALLY bad working conditions, except to quit. I don't know about everyone else, but I have a hard time with the idea of quitting a job that feeds my family, without some backup plans. That you are able to complain at all about working conditions to anyone outside of the job who has enforcement powers is mainly due to workplace reforms that happened because of the existence of OSHA. Most of my family worked in thread mills (and the like) here in the south. My father-in law used to talk about the working conditions and how many people he knew that died/was killed on the job before OSHA made its appearance in GA. It took a while after OSHA was instituted to get even the slightest bit of cooperation here. Now it's very different. You get to find out whether you are working in a hazardous environment and make informed choices about it, before you weren't even told what might happen to you or what the chemicals might cause and if you got sick, had an accident or died, you and your family were just out of luck. Not that dangerous jobs don't exist today, it's just that now you have a better opportunity to find out how dangerous it might be first...however, nothing protects us from our own bad choices or from dangerous individuals, not OSHA, not nobody...and we shouldn't expect anything to.

There are lots of things OSHA does that is annoying, but that is because a) its the government, and b) they are now concentrating their efforts in areas that are not as dramatic and may even seem trivial. I am not an OSHA cheerleader. It's likely the peak of its usefulness has long passed, but I think it remains a useful agency.

Just one of many opinions, so take it for what it's worth.

[jerrymat]

You guys that talk about tacking with your hood up really ought to think about the long term effects of that. I know the guy at the local fab shop here is only in his early forties and already has to have a magnifying lens in his helmet to see the puddle. I know I have seen him tack stuff with his hood up quite often. Think about all of those projects you'd like to do when you retire. Think about critiquing your grandkid's first welds. Wouldn't you hate to give all of that up 'cause you didn't have the eyesight for it?

As far as OSHA goes, yeah they are a pain in the butt, but think about where we'd be without them. I'm sure the life expectancy of us blue-collar guys would be about half of what it is now. The one bad thing I see about OSHA today is people seem to use it more for retaliation against their employer than they do to keep themselves safe. The small factory I used to work at was nearly shut down for good over some very trivial stuff just because some people had a grudge against the owner.

[12,000 Doors]

Something to think about while I'm sitting on the toilet in my safety glasses in case my butt explodes.

[hatchy]

You'll be glad you did if the guy next to you had bad mexican food.

[Pentawelder]

Wondered about this closing eyes thing, exactly what is the shade factor of eyelids. They keep visible light out but welding generates IR and UV.

[Mitch Kelly]

In the labs where I work, safety equipment and safe practice are rammed down your throat. I've thrown people out of the lab before now for failing to comply. It costs me time because their work has to be done by someone else, but compared to the time, effort and grief associated with having them patched up, and the crap I get from the safety people after an accident, it's cheap. And never, not even once, has any senior manager ever picked me up for doing that. So to us, safe practice is a culture, and everyone coming in learns the right way to do it.

*ALL* of these shows (American Chopper, Southern Chopper, American Hot Rod) all send a very poor message when it comes to safety: quite apart from the blind tacking (not only the name of the process, but what you end up having to do as a result!) NO ONE seems to wear eye protection when grinding / cutting / drilling / machining, people weld / grind / flame cut in shorts, for heavens' sake no one even wears ear protection when they use helve hammers! Over here in the UK we have a guy called Rico Daniels, who builds stuff out of salvaged material. Now I love his show, but again the safety examples are pretty ropey - uses a scarf as a mask, mig welds with gas goggles... His view, often expounded, is that if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it, but there are far too many people who think they *DO* know because they've seen it on the television. They aren't taught the right way because the teacher (the TV) doesn't do it the right way. Maybe the TV people think this makes the people on the shows look "cool", because they "live on the edge". I have other opinions...

Probably TV's saving grace is Norm Abram - "There is no more important safety rule that to wear these, safety glasses." Maybe the difference is that Norm's programme is actually setting out to teach something or show you how, not just show you what. Not that that's an excuse.

M

[triffid_98]

Originally Posted by Mitch Kelly

....
Probably TV's saving grace is Norm Abram - "There is no more important safety rule that to wear these, safety glasses." Maybe the difference is that Norm's programme is actually setting out to teach something or show you how, not just show you what. Not that that's an excuse.

M

After a few hours of watching Crocodile Hunter for wildlife safety tips it's all in good fun.

Norm's program is nice in that he actually walks you through how to make a project. Unfortunately he shows you how to make a project using 30 grand worth of equipment you don't have.

[Dirt]

We do get some of that in our School Shop class...

people will tack somthing without a mask or use the drill press or griders while wearing welding gloves or no glasses.. alot of kids get in trouble for it, its a no tolerance rule.

I on the other hand am legaly blind in one eye, so im pretty cautious about saving my last good one..

[blownnova]

All very good points guys, some of the lack of safety equipment on these shows drives me nuts too.

What really drives me nuts is on OCC the fact that they never compensate for the powdercoat/chrome when they do the raw fabrication. Time and time again i see them beating on a newly chromed or powdercoated piece with a hammer, or grinding material away to make it fit. How many bikes do you have to build to figure this out??? Granted we all make mistakes but ive seen it so much. I really wanna pay 100,000 dollars for a bike that was put together with a hammer!! Guess its just a pet peeve i have.

I agree that most of the stuff is just brought in and assembled too. The first biker show i watched on discovery was motorcycle mania featuring Jesse James, I think. He made every single piece on the motorcycle in house and when they notched all the tubing and made the frame in a jig i thought it was so cool.

One plus i think, is these shows make me want to get out and start a project if i havent done anythin for a while.

[Dirt]

Originally Posted by blownnova

One plus i think, is these shows make me want to get out and start a project if i havent done anythin for a while.

QFT they do make you want to get out there and make somthing.