I gave up on DIY...
...before even starting

I had a bad experience in D&T lessons at school. To fully appreciate this one though you have to consider firstly that my dad was a technology teacher, and very adept at carpentry, engineering, plumbing, metalwork, and DIY in general. You should also appreciate that he was *my* D&T teacher. So you could say there was alevel of expectation in lessons.

This expectation was not necessarily well met. In fact, beairing in mind that at the time my best friend sat next to me was organising a '50p to drop your trousers in Pete's dad's lesson' with the guy sat next to him it was a miracle any of us managed to pass our GCSE's.

So cue a morning of making some kind of thing out of wood. I have no recollection what it was, just that I had to use a variety of bench-mounted power tools. The big bench drill was used without incident, the milling machine and lathe were willing accomplices in my masterpiece. The belt sander, however, was somewhat less willing to behave itself.

The briefest summary of the incident might be that I was sanding one side of the object, pressing down on to the belt as it span round. Next thing I know, 2 things have happened;

1. The object in question had flown off at great speed into the girl-I-fancied's direction* and
2. there was a deep red streak going around the sanding belt as it span.

To this day I have a slightly flattened bone in my index finger. Sadly, my fingerprint grew back, as I initially thought my opportunity for some bond-villain-esque life of crime had arrived.

*now my memory of this is somewhat more specific than I think is reasonable, considering my otherwise shite memory. There was either pretty lady with a very atttractive bottom involved, or my imagination got carried away with itself (possibly due to bloodloss) and decided it liked what it had come up with more than the reality.
(OP, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:41, Reply)