Abstract: Some employees were assembling wooden pallets. They arranged precut boards on top of a roller conveyor to make a pallet. They then used a drill with a 16-in.-long by 0.5-in.-diameter bit to make holes through the 8.5-in.-thick wood. The drill bit would protrudes 7.5 in. below the bottom of the trays after it passed through the wood. The workers attached the drill to a flexible drive steel cable arm, approximately 6 ft long, making it easy for an employee to drill all the holes in a pallet as it was assembled. After the holes were drilled, the workers would push the pallet toward the bolting area. (The drilling and bolting areas were 6 ft apart, without any physical separation.) At the time of the accident, the pallets had butted together in such a manner that the center holes could not be reached for bolting from a standing position. As was common practice in this situation, Employee #1 went under the conveyor table to insert the bolts. As he was putting bolts into a pallet, a drill bit penetrated the pallet from above and protruded out the bottom, striking him in the head. Employee #1 was killed.