Day 3101 Ouch!

10th February 2026

If ever there is an accident waiting to happen it was today.

I was with John at his barn, and was roughing out the new leg for my lounge furniture. I had cut them on a band saw and was then sanding them flat on his vertical belt sander. It was taking a while to do this, and I mentioned to him that the belt was worn out, he then came over with an orange block in his hand. “ I use this to clean the disc and the belt sander. The equipment in question was a combined machine, which in my opinion is a dangerous one. However he then started to rub this block on the disc, and it certainly cleaned it up. Now this disc runs anti-clockwise and he held the block on the left hand side, then, for some apparent reason, he moved it to the right hand side, just as I said the words,” no John..” as the words left my lips the block shot straight from his hand and hit me on the cheek. 

Luckily, it was a hard rubber block so no injury was sustained, but had it been a block of wood, it would have been a different story.

Now he should have known that, and I can see how he had to be supervised to do even the simple things.

I got him to sand the side panels whilst I continued on the legs, he was happy doing that and made a good job of them.

I on the other hand, took a long time to sand the legs with the worn out sanding belt. I decided to take them home to hand finish them.