Missing fingers incident.

[gcol]

Just thought I'd share this with you all.....
A guy that goes in pub was absent on Friday because he has removed the end joints of a couple of fingers with a circular saw. Apparently he was trimming the end of a door and decided to reposition it on the saw horses (while the saw was still spinning). Well he won't be picking his nose for a bit anyway.
I believe the cut was square though - so at least standards haven't slipped even though health and safetly has.
Cheers,
Gcol

 

[petewood]

Someone I used to work with was holding a piece of wood with his left hand while planing it with a power planer! He planed the side off his thumb. Someone else was using a jigsaw for the first time and managed to cut into his fingers underneath the board. Someone who works for me, a few weeks ago, was using a laminate trimmer for the first time and put his finger in the cutter.
I always think that accidents like this are generally caused but stupidity but I must admit I have had a couple of close calls myself. My thumb once brushed the flat bit of a 300mm blade on a big bench saw. It got quite cut up by the expansion slots in the side of the blade and it still makes me shudder to think how close it was to the teeth.

 

[Bylough]

A case of 'Think Twice'- 'Look both ways, and steer straight'

 

[carpenter les]

ive still got all my fingers after 23 years of joinery , but i know plenty of joiners who have a top of a finger/thumb missing ( maybe i just dont work fast enough??)

 

[AdamW]

I might only work in an office, but I managed to nip myself with a pair of scissors once. And I occasionally burn my tongue if I drink my coffee too quickly...

OK, so the circular saw/fingers story wins

Good to keep the stories coming, I am generally very careful with power tools and these stories will help to keep me that way!

 

[David E]

I still remember my aunt, a 65 yr old tough old bird who lives alone on a farm in NZ. I don't know why she did it, but was cutting ply with a circular saw and some how put her hand underneath the ply whilst cutting and took off 2 1/2 fingers, but more than this picked them up went back to the house from the shearing shed, put them in a bowl and then DROVE (OK it was an Holden automatic!!! so no gear changes) to the next farm for help!!!

 

[bab]

The guy who works 4 me had 5 weeks off while he tried (AT HOME I MIGHT ADD) to cut 3mm off the length of a 16mm quadrant while not using push sticks on a bench saw . it looked on the floor before looking at his dripping fingers. he's still with me plumbing & still has them all but a few are not quite regular fingers in shape.

 

[Hengist]

Our butcher has half-a-finger missing, so it is not just chippies and D-I-Y-ers... and he wears a chain-mail glove...

 

[blu3tang]

last october i cut my wee right finger very deeply, severed the nerves at the tip.

The cut was about 5cms long .

How did i do this?

By cutting a coconut...

Now not actually cutting open the coconut, but i was scooping the coconut out of the shell with a new knife, and it slipped...

my boss' attitude was, why dont you eat a bounty coconut bar like the rest of us!

The only good thing was, im left handed so my right wee finger is a weak hand, feelings are coming back (but at the very very tip its still a bit numb)

 

[dg123]

I used to work at a sawmill, I'm missing a fingertip as it was trapped under a falling piece of wood - luckily the surface the wood met was not continuous otherwise the fingers either side would have been trimmed too! Also chained sawed my little finger due to overhead kickback and no chain brake on the saw.

 

[David P]

a good friend of mine, a blacksmith, was working with my wife - he was showing her how his power hammer worked. suddenly he dropped the peice of steel, put his hands in his overall pockets, said sh*t and then went very quiet. she asked what he'd done and he said "I dont believe i just did that" and produced his hand.

He had put his thumb under the steel swage and completely flattened it to the first joint. she said it looked just like a large spoon. he was in denial.
eventualy she talked him into going to a&e. she drove, he held his, by now painful, thumb up in the air. neither of them could bare to look at it. by the time they got to hospital it had become a sphere the size of a tennis ball and was dripping blood.
amazingly he still has the thumb, although the nail is a new shape. seems he broke the bone at the end of his thumb in half a dozen places, not bad considering its less than an inch long.

 

[Aiken]

The index finger on my left hand wont straighten completely.
The reason for this is because I was morticing a door style and decided to move the timber along to do the middle rail and pulled the chisel down on to it.
Severed the nerves and broke the bone. Still it was a talking point down the pub explaining why I had a metal rod sticking out of the end of my finger for 6 weeks while the bone was resetting
And such an interesting scar as well, square!!!

 

[Scrit]

And such an interesting scar as well, square!!!

....and to think that I have difficulties explaining how I can drill square holes!

My own was a dozen plus stitches in my left thumb from an industrial pin router. We counted the lacerations, 22, and worked out that my thumb was in contact with the cutter for about 1/30 sec (@ 20,000rpm). Daftest thing was that I was more concerned about not getting blood on the workpiece than the copious amounts of the claret the thumb was producing. Tourniqued my arm and drove to hospital, after making myself a strong sweet cup of tea. The missus was more shocked than me when she saw it.......

Scrit

 

[Shaunoffshotgun]

I lost most of an index finger and middle finger on my right hand at school. Accident with a guillotine . 3 of us were messing around trying to cut pencils and the next thing i knew i was sitting in an ambulance with my hand bandaged up feeling very light headed.

To this day nobody could work out how it happened and we never got to the bottom of it. The other 2 said when they turned round i was laying on the floor with blood everywhere and my fingers on the workbench. One of them was sick at the sight of this.

I remember going to school that day and arriving at school at about 9am. Dont remember anything between then and the time that the accident happened at about 3pm.

 

[Scrit]

We did have a lad at school who walked into an open vice in the woodworking shop and had to go to hospital in an ambulance - he suffered a twisted testicle. Ouch! Ever since I've been really careful not to leave vice jaws open.....

Scrit