Hey everyone, I thought it could be useful and fun to share safety tips or lessons learned. Maybe some stuff which we otherwise wouldn't think of but would be glad to learn by exchanging stories rather than finding out the hard way. I'll get things started with a close call which happened at my place of work last week:

My boss and the apprentice were carrying new argon bottles (50 liter, 200 bar) out of the back of our van. They had the bottle horizontal with the boss standing in the van, holding it by the screw-on cap and the apprentice standing in the drive way holding the base of it. The cap came off the bottle and the valve end fell straight down onto the concrete floor. The valve took the impact and and plastic grip shattered but the valve itself didn't break off, which was a relief for the apprentice who was still holding the other end of the bottle at groin height. I guess if the valve had broken off he would have just got launched through the air. We looked at the bottle later and the threads for the cap were completely wrecked, which explains why I just fell off all of a sudden.
So the lesson I learned is that even if the bottle is new and the cap is screwed on and taped over, I will definitely be checking it's secure every time before transporting the bottle.

Take care!

Bottle threads can be a danger.....I saw a guy try to pick a bottle up squeezing it by the cap and it came off and hit him in the mouth!

Hooooly cow that was a close one!

May be me but I never hold cutting wheels...well pretty much any wheel you can put on a grinder such that my face is on the same plane as the spin. Even little die grinders. I will never look straight down the wheel to get an accurate cut...No matter how much PPE I've got on my face. Maybe I've had enough close calls, maybe I'm over estimating the power and ability for spinny thing to get around barriers and find eyeballs, or maybe I'm giving my tools the cautious respect they deserve. My safety-My responsibility.
"Respect the spinny things"

Oh yeah!!!! When you shut down an oxy-fuel outfit: LET THE PRESSURE OUT FROM BEHIND THE REGULATOR BEFORE BACKING IT OFF!
(sorry, someone at work is trying to splode the next guys face)

It's definitely all about "line of fire" and to stay out of that line..... respect the spin!

Agreed... a friend of mine likes to just half flip the switch on his angle grinder such that the wheel spins but the switch doesn't click into place, so if he drops it it turns off right away. Makes sense but not always doable depending on the task.

Worn out casters on tables can be a safety hazard in my opinion. I flipped a table a while ago which had a lot of sheet metal on top of it. Checked the casters afterwards and one was split right through to the axle which is why it stopped rolling and tipped whilst I was pushing it. Amazingly none of the sheets were damaged and they landed just shy of the water cooler lines on my TIG machine (and also didn't land on me)