Back in May, I made a meat cleaver from a worn out 10″ saw blade and did a video showing the build details. The video was one of my “all action, no talk” types and I mentioned it in this blog entry.
From the day it was posted, it plodded along, getting the typical number of daily views on YouTube. Then, on Sunday (the fourth of this month), the views started to increase. I was getting an inordinate amount of new subscriber and comment emails from YouTube, with the comments coming from this video. By the end of the day, I had received nearly 800 of these emails, with still more coming! I was astounded to see that the video had amassed more than 44,000 views that day.
The next day they kept coming, although at a much slower rate. Still, nearly 18,000 for Monday, giving it a two day total of 62,000. Incredible, for a video that is nearly seven minutes long.
Also, over those two days my channel on YouTube picked up more than 500 new subscribers, and my other videos got a lot more views as well. Two day total, channel wide, was over 100,000 views:

Stunning.
It seems to be over now, with my view number coming back down to normal. I really haven’t looked to see what triggered it, but I’ll take it! It’s nice to see something that I created get that kind of attention, even if for a brief period.

During this stampede, there were nearly 200 comments posted. Most of these were complimentary, people saying they like the video. Quite a few were critical, mostly of my lack of protective equipment while doing the work; in particular how I wasn’t wearing gloves. Some were even belligerent and insulting, that I would do this without “protecting” my hands.
Aside from the very brief welding I did in the video, there wasn’t any operation that I did that required the use of gloves. Indeed, wearing gloves for some of these machining steps is incredibly risky – the injury that results from getting a glove caught in a rotating machine totally eclipses any slight nick or cut you might get without them.
Now, I realize that many of the people commenting probably don’t have five minutes experience with any of the tools I used, so their comments need to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it’s a bit alarming when so many don’t know a very basic piece of safety information: not to wear gloves when operating machines.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times, when so many people have never used their hands for anything resembling the traditional definition of work.
Thanks goes out to the few that answered some of these comments with the correct advice.