This warning seems to have been repeated many times over the years. It was a stated reason not to play around in shop classes in schools. In college it was mentioned as an example of government mandated product safety in economics classes (I.e. a modification to prevent eye removal, but which reduced efficiency). At many a Home Depot it is a stated selling point of the contractor grade models..."So powerful it will suck your eye out"... It is even a warning I repeat to my old children to get them to not play near or with the Shop Vac.

As it becomes time to purchase a new one, I find myself thinking back on that warning. Is it actually true?

Only one way to find out.



















Have Mythbusters run some tests !

I thought you were gonna...........nevermind.

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James L. "Jim" Rhiner

You say that jokingly, but they probably could test that myth using one of their favorites, a pig carcass. Might actually be worth contacting them... Really....

A friend who retired from San Diego PD said a good friend of his responded to a call about a guy who went into a store and tried to pleasure himself with a shop vac and it took off a testicle. He tried to sue by saying there was no warning on the shop vac to not use it as a...umm....adult toy. He lost but I'm surprised, being in CA.

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Cheers, Charles
SWCA #2442

Well, my shop vac won't pick up flattened .177 pellets from the floor. Occasionally they will bounce out of my pellet trap and when it comes time to clean up they have to be "picked up". I vote for more suction.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Can a Shop Vac really pull an eye out of its socket?

Go ask the last guy who tried to date my Daughter.

It don't take much to get an eye out of its socket. Had one guy at a lunch tent at one of the sites I worked at had it happen while he was laughing. I didn't want to hear the joke......

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Even older, even crankier....

I guess that it depends on the shop vac and it depends on the eye.

Fact is often more humorous than fiction!

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gone

I'm sure Bobby Munson would have preferred the Shop Vac method.

The worst part of this is the Goober who tries and looses the eye.
He will now have to hunt for it in the debris (with only one eye) and you know when he finds it, there will be a bunch of sawdust and other waste stuck to it

Nah.
The type of idiot that's stupid enough to suck out his eye with a shop-vac (just to see if it works) isn't bright enough to be doing anything useful enough to create sawdust.

Let's nominate someone to try it out. All those in favor....wait for it....


.....say "EYE"!

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paws for friendship

Eye Carumba!

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AKA: "Strange Tamer"

I'll keep an eye out for you.

My "shop vac" can easily take the chrome off a trailer hitch, suck a bowling ball thru a I.V. tube....Oh wait, you are talking about that kind of 'shop vac"...

aye aye, sir!





I do remember a little from my time in the navy!

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

Go to JAIL. Go directly to JAIL. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

By the way, you forgot the ancient rule: he who suggests an action invariably is picked to do it.

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Oh well, what the hell.

It didn't work for him but the shop vac got a nut.

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“Look life in its iron face”

Ahhhh, you guys are hurting me with your stories...It's enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.


WuzzFuzz

All in favor of closing this post, say EYE...Those opposed..


WuzzFuzz

The ayes have it.
I don't know about eyes, but back a few years ago I was deer hunting on a warm day and a couple of deer ticks embedded themselves in my hide. My Craftsman shop vac couldn't remove them, but the guy in the white coat at the ER was able to dig them out with his scalpel.

I remember long, long ago in a small traveling circus tent they had a fellow who could just push real hard and both of his would come out

Cost me a whole nickel to see this feat.

And that was a lot of money back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzk_vOlFr4w

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Keep on Chooglin'

With all due respect to the OP, this is one of those questions where ya gotta ask why the question? A table saw will cut off your finger. A cast iron frying pan may kill someone if used in a manner to do harm. A shop vac may or may not pull out your eye. A tool is designed for a purpose. Use anything other than for the purpose for which it's designed and you're on your own.
P.S. I'm waiting for the guy who lost an eye to a shop vac to weigh in. =)

A grand jury really will indict a ham sandwich.

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How God has blessed us!

I must confess that I have never in 58 years heard that a shop vac can suck out an eyeball.

Just goes to show, you can learn something new every day.

But seems to me, if it were such common knowledge, we would have certainly seen it in a gangster movie at some point. You know, from somebody like the unfortunate cabinetmaker who's behind on his protection-money payments, and Vinnie and Sal pay him a little visit to make a point about the need to get squared-up with the boss....and then Sal switches on the guy's shop vac, and Vinnie holds him down, and then the screen fades to black while the guy screams, and you can hear this sort of squishy sound.....

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Hope no one tries it. When I was a teen, I worked in a gas station where another worker slightly older but much dumber was asking out load if we thought he could stop the grease from coming out of the hydraulic overhead grease gun by putting his finger tightly over the end and pulling the trigger.
Yep, he tried it and I don't know if he had a cut there or what but he shot grease under the skin on two fingers, his thumb and part of his hand. We heard that he almost lost his hand.
He's probably a politician today.

Well, obviously we need to register and restrict shop vacs

and evidently guess grease guns too.

Yep, once you've had your palm greased once, it gets easier and easier.

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

I just sent an email to Adrian Peterson. I will have an answer soon.


PS. I used a 13 gallon shop vac today. I am going to vote no way. Maybe a prosthetic eye??

Y'all 'fess up. How many tied a ping pong ball to a hand held fish scale and fired up their shop-vac? Let me know. I don't have a scale and only a 1 gal. vac.

I heard time and time again from Mom, "Don't run through the house with scissors in your hand, you could poke your eye out!" (When I got my first apartment that's the first thing I did...)

She never said ANYTHING about a Shop Vac! I think I'll call her...

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RIP Shipmate

You better believe it the first time it happened I did not but after it got my other eye ball well I do believe !
Mark

You type pretty well for a double shop-vac-accident victim, Mark. Good on you.

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Sounds like "A Christmas Story 2"

"You'll suck your eye out!"

OK, now I can just see it. Guy sticks the shop vac up to his eye and sucks it out. In horror, he quickly looks down the hose to see if his eye is there and gets a little too close and OOPS, there goes the other one. Did this start in College Station? I think Forrest Gump had a saying about this type of behavior.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

A lifetime ago, I lived/worked aboard a large (150+ft) sailboat. There was a cleanup vac that was able to reach both ends of the ship with enough hose extensions.

That monster used THREE motors to power it, and would suck up a t-shirt without flinching.

One day, somebody thought it a good idea to roust a late sleeper from their bunk by applying the business end of the hose to their thigh.

The result was a purple-green, fist-sized, raised hickey that actually oozed blood from the surface of the skin. Captain was NOT pleased, nor was the slumbering slacker.

I have NO doubt that this particular vacuum could take an eye, or any other appendage for that matter.

If it'll suck up a bowling ball, I'd say an eyeball don't stand a chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsLS4U1pljQ

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Keep on Chooglin'

Well, I know a guy that lost a nut to a telephone when his now ex-wife smacked him with it.

You put your eye out running with scissors?!?

Shoulda listened to your mom!!

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James L. "Jim" Rhiner

What's he going to do with it when he finds it? Not like they're going to plug it back in...

Low IQ combined with too much time on your hands = disaster. I still laugh my *** off when the guy sticks a bottle rocket up his *** and lets his friend light it. Ribs are still hurting...

Sounds like it went in quite a ways!

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

Do we have a volunteer yet?

Maybe we should seek one in the sweet wine thread currently running???

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

There are not too many things funny about losing an eye, and youse guys found most of them.

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wanna do right-- not right now

Pop lost an eye as a kid and every now and then,when we were kids,he'd show up at the breakfast table with his glass eye in crooked.All you could see was a white eye Mom would glare at us to shut up

About 15 years ago my nephew(19 at that time) lost a eye due to a boating accident. The rest of his family nicked named him Cyclops. He has handled that well.

To get even with then he will sometimes pull his glass eye out at the table and put it in their faces.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

I used to have a senior master sgt that had a glass eye, I don't know how he was allowed to remain on active duty but he did... every time we were deployed and would have a few drinks, when he got up to use the latrine he would drop his glass eye in his beer glass to "keep an eye on us while he was gone...


Sorry SMSgt Spencer I know what happens when deployed stays deployed but it has been 35 years. (truth be told he lost it in Viet Nam
Bar fight with 2 drunken pilots.)
Bob

A shop vac taking out an eye? I can see that happening.

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I'm with the banned ...