Note truly dangerous accidents can always arise from some seemingly benign things just with some probability. I was just cutting some pieces from that ubiquitous 1/10 inch golden pin headers on a board at work with wire cutters and that damn thing landed just right in the center of my eye pupil! I visited an ophthalmologist promptly, fortunately healed quickly, no long time scarring here.
Absolutely. I have soldered for years with tin/lead solder. With the lessened availability of that stuff at professional suppliers, i now am starting to try out lead free types of solder. I found a really nice Felder solder made to a Fuji patent with trace amounts of germanium in it. For hand soldering, it is close enough to tin/lead to be completely useful. The 250g stock of leaded solder is gonna stay at work, for repairs on vintage scientific equipment that sometimes needs it.
All was well until i was working on some tiny component with my face pretty close to the work piece. The solder spat a droplet of boiling hot flux at my face! And again! Somehow, this type of solder tends to have bubbles of solder shooting from the flux core once in a while. It would suck BAD if a >250 degree C droplet of flux got into my eye and solidified on there. I NEVER expected to be hit in the face with a flux bubble when soldering.
Because i might unconciously bend over and get closer to the joint, i now wear safety glasses while soldering with that specific type of solder. You should wear those anyway if you do PCB Assembly because in the same vein, once in a while if you cut off the component legs on the solder side, a leg sometimes shoots across the room unpredictably (i might just close my eyes for that one though... I am not holier than the Pope even though i take workplace safety much more serious than most of my coworkers).
Make safety convenient.
I have more pairs of safety glasses than i need. They always sit out somewhere right in view. Get some sun shades style glasses and you forget about wearing them (i've been spotted at work with one pair on my eyes and one on my head because i forgot i had them on my head...)
I am careful enough with mains that i don't randomly get shocked. Literally never touched live mains wiring. But put your isolation transformer in a permanent place and put non-grounded outlets hooked op to the transformer onto your workbench. Or get a smaller portable one. Mine is 5kg or so, i use it for AC/DC radios if i gotta measure voltages in those while they are turned on.
Make it easier to hold workpieces by buying 'nice' vices and clamps. Just putting that nut in a vice would already have solved this issue, and doing it like that is easier too. But the best way to clean up threads is to just get the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB - a tap and die set, and chase the threads with the die.
Still get a vice to put that bolt into though. Holding everything with your hands sucks.
At work i have nice clamps for use on a big drill press. At home i don't. At work i've never had a work piece spin around on the drill press. At home i've had strips of aluminium being flung around because the drill got stuck in the chewy aluminium. Never got hurt from that because aluminium typically isn't that sharp, but if that happens with a strip of steel it would do its best impression of a lawn mower blade.
My grandpa died from lung emphysema (and heart issues) after a life time's exposure to nasty paint fumes and cigarette smoke. I don't want my last year to be like his last year. I solder a lot, it's part of my job, though not full 8hr days of exposure. But i make sure that i have a solder fume filter on the bench pulling away the fumes, so i don't breathe them all the time. My system is not ideal (not a HEPA filter) but it is better to at least dilute the particulates rather than literally having the flux vapor waft into my face at every joint i solder.
When i use the lathe at work, i make sure that i leave the work shop door open if no one else is in the shop. That way someone might be able to hear my screams if the lathe is particularly hungry that day, and turn it off before i'm completely eaten by it. It has a foot actuated emergency switch added to it, but god knows if i'll be able to hit that if something goes truly wrong. Lathes are no joke.
Watch safety videos on youtube. I knew table saws were dangerous but i did not know the different ways kickback could happen. A guy at work who always is telling tall stories told about it happening at the shop at work - i though 'eh, just another tall story' until i saw the actual hole in the wall left by a chunk of wood being shot at the wall by the table saw.
