> Wear goggles when grinding steel and even if you do, take care when washing your face afterwards.

Go one further: Goggles and a face shield, minimum. Why?

Have you ever had a right-angle grinder wheel explode? I have (it was actually a cut-off wheel). At the time I wasn't wearing even goggles, just my eye glasses. Amazingly, nothing hit me in the face, but I do remember hearing the part ricochet around my friend's shop (fortunately, I was the only one in it at the time).

Unfortunately, a piece hit my knuckle - extremely hard; I thought I had lost my finger, but amazingly not (oh, I wasn't wearing gloves, either).

I should've got stitches, but my friend took care of it; we washed it out, wrapped it up, then he gave me a percocet to take the edge off the pain. I remember at one point we looked at it after it had been a few hours, to see if I could still move it; I started to flex it, and had a small Monty Python flesh-wound moment (seriously, it made me laugh it was so cliche looking - though completely real); but I could move it. All's good today, still typing with it!

Basically me doing everything wrong (it really was all my fault, I shouldn't have been handling that equipment - I think I was also wearing shorts, a t-shirt and open-toe sandals at the time - a total DERP moment, but that's all it took), I knew better even then, but I was stupid that day. Faster than you can blink, bam, and there it was.

I take a lot more precautions now before I handle spinning cutting/grinding shit moving at 20k RPM (though I am still not a fan of my friend's open-guard 9 inch grinder - the thing will grind anything off anything, but holy hell is it dangerous to use - if that thing let loose, no amount of safety equipment will save you).

Oh - and if you are arc welding, don't wear a white shirt; reflection of the arc can bounce off inside your helmet, and still cause "welder's blindness" - which is basically a nice sunburn to the cornea; generally not a permanent thing, but hurts like hell for a long while.

Also, use a guard on angle grinders! And keep it in between you and the work! A man was killed by an exploding cutting disk at a company I used to work at. Shrapnel lodged in his chest, he took the guard off to get at something more easily.

Yes. It's a tradesman hack to buy a 115mm grinder (it's cheap), take off the guard and fit 125mm disks. People have been killed here recently by broken bits firing out. Cutting disks are so thin that a minor course correction can easily break them. Someone I know had a labourer use a grinder with a broken on off switch. One day the guy put it under his arm and plugged it in, and it cut through artery, vein and nerve. A year later and he is just starting part time work.