Pratt I.D. department revolves around the shop. The shop is the headwaters of many a design torrent. Or maybe its a cesspool. Depends on who you ask. At some point you will have to ford this body of water. Juan Alvarez is the ferryman.
Juan, rife with a misanthropic fire, burns with the pure intensity of an oilrig blow-off. In this shop, Juan is the shit. Don't fuck with him. You just might die. Juan gives this safety course. Everyone has to take it before they earn the privilege to work in the shop. I used to teach it, but people complained that I yelled and made too many veiled allusions to what happens to inattentive longhaired types. Juan was much better at it anyway.
The first thing is his lecture on noise. He whips out some electronical device that gives a digital readout of the decibels each machine generates. But it doesn't matter. We don't sell earplugs. Next its the typical eye injury bloodfest story. After that everyone knows what optical fluid is. On to the table saw. Every saw has its story. Every saw has taken a big chunk out of someone's hand, fingers rent apart by carbide spinning at 6000 per. Or how about a full sheet of 3/4 ply kicking back, taking some students by complete surprise. He could go on for quite a while. But there is so much more to discuss. There's still the lathe. Its got the great ability to roll wood over a careless student's face. Drill presses always seem to have a propensity to wrap someone's hair around the quill. Sanders, planers, grinders, even the band saw. And so on, ad nauseum.
By the end of the lecture, these people are afraid to even walk too close to a machine. But Juan is not convinced they have enough respect for the tools. From under his collar he fishes out a long necklace. It is festooned with many severed fingers, a couple rings, an eyeball preserved by epoxy. 'This is the honor roll", he says with a malevolent grin, "just let me know how good of a student you want to be." The shop is usually pretty quiet. Juan likes his quiet.
