Taking steel tips to the extreme,
I used to
play catch with 155mm, 95# high explosive rounds that would give you a good bruse if they fell on your
foot from the side, but sever a toe if they fell on you from the rear end. We played catch with them in a way kind of like playing with a medicine ball but much more difficult to catch. I used to weigh about 135# at the time but could
sling em with the best of them.
They issued us at one
point steel tipped combat boots but or wearing them was not enforced. You would just get a dark letter in your file if you were injured while not wearing them. Problem with them besides the weight was that if you were in +120 degree temperatures, them things really started to cook, and when it was -20 them things really became ice boxes especially since they did not breathe thus I'm not a fan of DocMartins. Leather breaths, steel plates keep the moisture in unlss they have suddenly become vented.
I was around for a lot of accidents with and without them however, to both me and others. I once dropped a round on my
foot while wearing artic Mickie
Mouse boots. Those things were already hard enough to
walk in or climb up into a truck with much less having a crushed
foot and still doing it. Seems like injurys were just as bad no matter what boot you had most of the time if you feet just did not get out of the way.
Than there was the shells that hit the steel tip on the ankle
edge of the boot plate even if the the shell hit you from it's side. At that
point, it was likely that it would crush the plate and the plate would cut into the
foot and require some special work to extract the
foot from the boot. In other words, I gave mine away and learned the levitation dance when shells were on the way to the
deck. Time freezes, you hear the sound and feel the wind move in some kind of matrix type of deal, than it hits with a thud and the
ground shakes a
bit.
It's a 95 to 106# round and not exactly easy to carry already so they did tend to hit the
deck a lot especially after the 200 yard cross country sprint in full combat gear between guns when you ran out. Anyone want to take bets that the platoon sgt. had it in for me and planned on running me and my crew out of shells often to get even for some slight I did to him? We seemed to do it a lot. I would say it was decent assumption even if he was incompitent and I was the first to post a symbol of Texas up in the truck window with a big red x
thru it...
Speaking of shells on the way to the
deck, we used to have the new kids unload the ammo trucks. After all, everyone has to serve their time and the younger the better. Anyway, it was always fun to watch the new kid on the gun crew jump back with fear the first time a shell was dumped over the side of a truck at about a 8' height. Ya goof, the shell is plugged. No
fuse - no explosion.
Now if you
drop one with a
fuse on it... been there, seen that about 3 times, nice show of sparks and I never want to see it happen again especially during a
pitch dark night. Your life does not pass before your eyes, but in those few moments when you assume, "I'm going to die, this is not good, perhaps I should fall over this log I'm sitting on to offer me up at least some protection." It does seem like you have some extra time to think about and consider things. Lots of things like debating falling over the log you are sitting on and getting your back all full of mud verses just sitting there, while being too lazy to "run".
Anyway, I have also dropped
stage weights, Expensive
HMI lamps, and many other things. Even if you are being careful, at times them things do
drop and were I working a fly
rail I would hopefully invest in at least some steel booties and good gloves. Than again, I don't wear the
apron or long sleeves when changing
Xenon lamp/gernades so I'm not perfect. Answer, nobody is too cool for
safety gear, and dropping stuff is common to all even if careful.
Safety gear is good but a pair of
safety glasses on the forehead is only protecting the forehead. What's the best effort to put into
safety, it's a personal choice we all decieve ourselves about. I'm too quick to get my feet out of the way are famous last words.
Fly
system questions, oh' oh' ask me... Anyway, daily questions will hopefully become of such a format that we can all add as many as we want. Liability is a good question for a tutorial. I prefer to just recommend "The
stage rigging handbook" or other books on the subject.