Abstract: On October 13, 1997, Employee #1 and another employee were assisting the foreman of the manufacture equipment in bleeding air out of the cylinder shaft hydraulic system controlling the sluice gate. Before extracting the air out of the system through a process known as stroking, the shaft of the sluice gate is stuck in place. This shaft pulls up the sluice gate to open or push down to close slurry pathway below. Employee #1 was holding up the shaft with a pipe wrench while the air was extracted from the hydraulic system. As the air is bled, the shaft is freed. As the shaft and gate assembly came loose it was too heavy to manually hold and dropped down catching the employee's finger between the pipe wrench and the concrete floor amputating his finger.