A buddy of mine just gave me his old .61 airplane engine to put on a air-boat I am building. Got it home secured it to a vise that is mounted on my work bench to try a needle I have. Started it up ran it for a couple seconds, reset the needle, ran it for another couple seconds and stop it. Reset the needle crank it up ran it for a few seconds, and just as I went to shut it down, the engine come off the vise, the prop worked its way across the top of my hand. Two hours later I am returning home from the hospital with 10 stitches. It was a deep nasty cut, could see the mussels in my hand move in the cut. My advise is don't trust a vise to hold down a engine with the prop on it, to do any settings. I will be building a stand that the engine can be bolted to.
Dad did one time tell me, Just because you get away with it a time or 2, don't mean it will not later come back to get you.
I have always preached safety.

Yup, it sure was! I have yet to hear anyone in the ER say that they did something really smart before they got in there and I've been in the ER plenty of times myself! I was in there recently (again) myself whe I was using a table saw at my sister's business cutting some foam for some sponsons. I was well aware of where the blade was but stuck my right thumb into it anyway! Luckily I just tore off a chunk off the tip but I'm still recovering.
See if Tatone is still making an engine testing stand. I used to have one years ago. Clamp or nail it to something heavy and solid so that nothing like this happens again. You now have a "reminder" but we'll still do something else stoopid. We can't help it, we're guys!

I have only used a test stand a couple times, but fearing the worst, I bolted that baby to the bech with a couple 1/4 " bolts

I had it in a vice, that is secure. Just after starting it 4 or 5 times the vice got lose from the vibration and pushing on it with the starter. At least the best part, on the last start up, I had gotten the needle where I wanted it. Now I just have to get the wife, to stop being mad about my hobby....LOL
Talking about the table saws, my sister thought for sure that my table saw got me. I have a lot of respect for the table saw, even though I removed the guard.
Ron what type of foam are you using in your sponsons? I have not been using any, just been fitting the wood, and it gets to be a pain doing this way, trying to keep the twist out of it.
Thanks guys

On the bright side, it could've been much worse.

Thats one lesson I'll learn from by others example.

Believe me I understand what happened to you. I mounted a fox 52cc gas engine to a 4x4 post in the ground to test run the engine, It had a 20x10 mejzlik prop on it, after some adjusting & priming I got it running, I started throttling up until it was just about peaked & three of the screws holding the engine to the post pulled out. the engine swung really fast away from me & broke the last screw, it fell to the ground killing the engine. Luckily it swung away from where I was standing & I didn't get hurt, as a matter of fact neither did the engine or prop. I guess I was very lucky. After that I drilled some holes completely through the post & used some long bolts with washers & double nuts to test the engine. I wish you would have been as lucky as I was.

Gil

I was using some 2" pink foam for the sponsons. It works pretty good but the next time I'm going to get some blue. BTW, I'm going to invest in a hot wire cutter so that I can just burn myself instead.
In our kit, we're using 1/8" balsa attached to the foam with double-sided tape on the sides then use a thin layer of epoxy to 1/32" lite ply skins all around.