What's The Silliest Shop Injury You've Had?

[Black wallnut]

I was drilling mounting holes for an early shop made acc. table for my BT3K, by hand. Drilled through all the way into a finger. An 1/8" bit hurts when it starts cutting skin. Lukily was not going fast or pushing very hard.

[cgallery]

I was drilling mounting holes for an early shop made acc. table for my BT3K, by hand. Drilled through all the way into a finger. An 1/8" bit hurts when it starts cutting skin. Lukily was not going fast or pushing very hard.

What kind of bit do you recommend for skin drilling, braid-point or split-point?

[scmhogg]

In an earlier post I wrote about narrowing my pinkie on the BT3000.

When I was in Jr. High, I was trying to put a glass tube in a rubber stopper in science class. I didn't know the trick about using water as a lube. The glass tube broke and I drove it into my palm, just below my thumb.

By the time I got to the front of the class, both hands were full of blood. I cupped my hands to avoid spilling. The teacher took one look and had to sit down , as he felt faint.

Steve

[dbhost]

I used to manage a full service gas station in the early 90s. I had just drilled a new employee on the importance of keeping the shop floor clean, and making sure there was plenty of absorbent blah blah blah on the floor so no one would slip, when I lost my footing, managed to rake my hand across a license plate of a car on the lift, and gash my hand pretty badly. I needed 6 stitches to close it back up...

Me and my big mouth...

[BobSch]

I used to manage a full service gas station in the early 90s. I had just drilled a new employee on the importance of keeping the shop floor clean, and making sure there was plenty of absorbent blah blah blah on the floor so no one would slip, when I lost my footing, managed to rake my hand across a license plate of a car on the lift, and gash my hand pretty badly. I needed 6 stitches to close it back up...

Me and my big mouth...

I'll bet the rookie got the idea.

[Hellrazor]

Silliest?

Welding while wearing untied sneakers and a blob of molten metal fell in my sneaker. No damage done, just wasn't a good thing..

[Gary Lange]

When I was building the shop I managed to drop a 4'X8'X1/2" sheet of Sheetrock onto my right big toe. It slipped off the other sheet and I saw it hit the far corner and crunch it. I though darn I broke the corner of this piece and about 1/100th of a second later the other end hit my foot and I just forgot all about the crunched corner. That was about a year ago and I am still waiting for the toenail to grow out again. It hurt to say the least.

[gsmittle]

Back in 1977 when I was in college and young and stupid and built scenery for a living, I let a drill with a sharp new 3/8" spade bit slide to the floor by the cord. (I had just found out we weren't working the next day and I dropped the drill prior to celebrating.) I felt it hit my right food and it hurt quite a bit, but I didn't think much of it until I felt something squishy in my shoe. I looked down and saw a HUGE (seemed huge at the time) pool of blood around my feet. Seems the nice sharp point of the bit hit the exact center of the vein on the top of my foot, opening a nice neat hole.

Anyway, I couldn't get anybody's attention amidst the general celebrating until Christy Miller (I still remember her name) looked over. You know how in the cartoons the color drains from the top of the character's head toward the feet, leaving the character white? Well, that's exactly what she did, then started swaying and said, "Oh, my God, look!" then she fainted.

By that time the other shop rats had picked me up and carried me to the office, leaving poor Christy passed out in the middle of the stage. I asked one guy to get me a piece of muslin off the bolt (96" wide, used to cover flats) so I could pressure-bandage my foot and go to the clinic. From 40 feet away I heard this continuous ripping noise, and he reappeared with the end of a two-inch-wide piece of muslin torn off the edge of the bolt, not the end. Behind him is a 40 foot long, two-inch-wide strip of muslin.

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I hobbled off to the campus clinic, the other rats started cleaning up the blood, Christy came to, looked at the bloody muslin and fainted again, and instead of partying the next day, I spent the day with my foot up, stone cold sober.

g.

[3thumbs]

I recently needed a stapler, and knowing that the wife had bought one from Sears, I pulled it from the shelf, rested it in my right palm, and squeezed off a staple to make sure it had staples in it. It was at that moment that I discovered that this particular stapler issues staples from the other end. I had a 3/8" staple buried in the heel of my hand!

[ironhat]

I was using a gouge to carve a notch across the grain in a small piece of wood. Naturally, the gouge slipped and stopped half way across but also under my fingernail. I super-glued that nail for months until the flap grew out.

[mdutch]

Ripping long pieces of 3/16 luan ply, I finished my cut and was bringing the piece back across the table when I managed to run a small splinter under my thumb. Threw the piece down reflexively and it hit the still-at-power BT3K, shooting that 4" wide strip back into me with the sound like my H&K 9mm. That 8oz piece of wood hit me so fast, hard and loud I honestly thought I had been shot. Switched the power off and cautiously checked to make sure I hadn't killed myself. A small skinned but sore spot on my gut, and a welt that grew 1/2" tall and 1x6 across my belly, with a black & blue background the size of a dinner plate. Over the next month that bruise wandered around my belly (to the constant amusement of my wife), turning different colors that seemed to match the changing leaves.

*(Hadn't done a bone-header like that in 20 years, and realized I had been rushing, as well as skipping the re-installation of my kickback rollers, and not wearing my deerskin work gloves I use for handling rough-sawn lumber. Had I not been standing to the right of the blade it would have come straight back when I dropped it instead of glancing off my side. That's probably the only smart thing I did all day.)