Injury in luthiery

table saws, jointers, routers, bandsaws, all potentially dangerous equipment. No matter how careful you are, sometimes accidents happen.

i think this is gonna make for some interesting stories, what (if any) injuries have you sustained while building?

looking forward to these responses! kinda like the shop teacher with the token missing finger

although I'm not a luthier, I've never had anything major thank God, but my tools are limited. I do tend to sand off my knuckles on occasion with the dremel, cut my finger with the razor blade, or pinch my fingers with pliers when I'm squeezing real hard and it pops loose.

Don't know about you, but every new knife has either stabbed me or cut me. It's like a ritual thing. After the first initial cut, nothing. Other than that, no major accident. Never had a problem with power tools - but I'm extra careful... because of the knives..... Guess I'll knock on wood.

Dose this count, wood joiner/planer

wfwhitson said:

Dose this count, wood joiner/planer

Click to expand...

If this was a contest, I think you'd win...

All I can add is that I now officially have more holes in my left hand that aren't supposed to be there than I have on the rest of my body that are supposed to be there. X-acto damage. They heal quick, though. Trying to teach myself inlay. I'll get it in the next decade or two, I'm sure... Just keep practicing.

i wish I had never clicked on this thread.....

You definately are an artist, Chuck, and not only with ukulele's! Love the pumpkins. Brilliant.

Definitely wf!

Thumb on my right hand is 3mm shorter than left - 4 table saw accidents to it over 30 years. Three nicks requiring minor attention and one major trauma in 2004 requiring reconstructive surgery done at The Morrisons down the road in Swansea. A month off work. Morrisons is the UK's leading plastic surgery hospital and because of some strategic planning on my part I was seen immediately - that means within 24 hours in the UK!

It was an incredible experience watching the surgeon using nothing more than a medical 'spokeshave' - a two handled dermatome, to slice some skin off the side of my hand to stitch onto the end of my thumd - a lot of the end of my thumb! And yes, bone is white. I've googled this tool and can only come up with the elctric type. The one used was manual and the surgeon took a good deal of time setting it up so the right depth of cut could be achieved - you only get one shot at this stuff - no "Oops, where's the superglue"!

There were 2 disconcerting moments:

• being pushed around in a wheelchair - that really is a weird experience.
• Having an open wound scrubbed hard with nothing more than carbolic soap and a nylon nail brush... it was numbed up of course - now that was painful to watch!

If you want know how wound cleaning was done before the days of anaesthetic, read about it in the early chapters of Akenfield by Ronald Blythe...

Now I have no feeling in that thumb and cannot pick up small screws or fiddly bits of inlay with that hand. My thumb bleeds after a prolonged day of hand sanding as the nail bed slowly stretches away from the nail and separates due to pressure - it is an entirely different type of skin below the tip of the thumb.... It is sore a lot of the time and a constant reminder of the need to take a rest when I get tired and not use machines late in the day.

My table saw is now permanently converted into a fretting saw - I have no table saw nor ever will have. I don't cut myself with chisels, have accidents with any other tool except the occassional burn from my bending iron, though I have stabbed myself just once with the edge of a lip and spur bit...

When I was teaching back in 1977 I met a joiner who had most of the fingers on his hands diced and sliced. He made rowing boat paddles and other stuff. He did very silly things like ganging up blades in huge radial arm saws for trenching and stuff like that - he could never play the violin... or ukulele for that matter. Though I did meet a three fingered guitar player in Texas who worked for Bell Helicopters. He lost his digit in the most obvious way to a rotor blade...

just realized i havent replied in my own thread.

been hit by kickback on the table saw 3 times, luckily they were all minor. enough to get me shaken up but no major injuries, just a few knicks.

now paul on the other hand, is missing a piece of his thumb from his table saw, but hopefully he'll share that story with you guys himself. pops is also missing a piece of his pinky from an accident with the jointer.

I dropped a railway sleeper on both my middle and ringfinger. Both nails turned blue instantly, and throbbing pain. I just wanted to shake my hand to get rid of the pain. Went to outpatients, where a doctor saw me. He requested the nurse to bring him a paperclip, erazer, and a methylated spirit flame. He straightened out the paperclip, pushed it through the erazer, and heated the paperclip red hot, which he pushed through the nail. The blood welled up through the hole, and the throbbing pain was gone. Instant relief.

All those thousands of dollars training and they get to straighten a paper clip and use it as a hot micro poker... yes, it's the old low tech paper clip surgerery i did my 7 years training for!

Moore Bettah Ukuleles said:

i wish I had never clicked on this thread.....

Click to expand...

And there's this one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwPvt96wt2w

Pete Howlett said:

All those thousands of dollars training and they get to straighten a paper clip and use it as a hot micro poker... yes, it's the old low tech paper clip surgerery i did my 7 years training for!

Click to expand...

it almost sounds like McGuyver...

My worse injury to date was when a zombie ate my brain, but we're talking about shop injuries.

I severed about a 1/4 of my left thumb in 98', I think. Maybe 97'. In any case, I was trying a new all purpose blade on my tablesaw, cutting neck billets. I was awake and clear headed, but my safety protocol was bad. My thumb was in the direct path of the blade and I pushed straight through. Funny thing is, I didn't realize that I had been hurt for a while. I heard the bone snap, which I thought was a knot in the wood, so I reached down to turn off the saw and inspect the table. Holy crap! My thumb tip was hanging by a shred of skin. I literally could have cut it off with a pair of scissors. I immediately wrapped my shirt around it and walked over to my brother, who then drove me to the emergency room.

Once I got there, I had to wait with a bloody hand wrapped in my shirt and a rag for about 30 minutes, before they could see me. In the prep room, the nurse gave me some local anesthetic and proceeded to inspect and clean the injury. Once the drugs kicked in, the pain became a lot more bearable and I watched intently as she cleaned up the wound. It was kind of funny. The nurse told me that she's never had a person smile and ask questions as they have their partially severed limb cleaned.

Then, I waited for a surgeon to arrive for 4 hours. Turns out that there's only a handful of reconstructive surgeons on Oahu and it was a busy day. Unfortunately, the tip couldn't be saved. Normally what they would do is shorten the digit and pull the skin over, but the thumb is special. Since it's already shorter than the other fingers, he decided to graft skin from my belly over the tip. My brother and I thought he was joking, so we added to the mix and asked if my hand could be stitched to my ass. We had a good laugh, then saw that the doctor was not joking. I opted for the belly. It was a full skin graft, so my thumb had to be sewn to by stomach for two weeks, until the capillaries connected.

I got bored as hell staying at home. The only thing I could do was watch tv. By the third day, I ignored my doctor's orders and headed back to work. Technically I wasn't supposed to be there, but I'm family, so bleh. I was able to use the surface sander and do other one handed operations, which was much better than rotting away at home.

While I wouldn't choose to cut off any more of my body, it all turned out okay. Since the tip is missing, I can't pick up small or flat objects easily with my left hand, but it's otherwise 90% functional. I can still play my uke, thank God, and do pretty much everything normally. When I got the worker's comp insurance check, I bought my first computer and went to Japan. I still had a sum of money saved, which I used a few years later to buy my wife's engagement ring.

Ha.

Be careful out there, people, is all I can say.

I don't build ukes, but I carpentered for a dozen years. I proudly display the fact that all of my digits are intact. Those 1950s saw safety films, for as much as we laughed at them in shop class, had a lot of good advice.

I've taken too many people to the ER. The tools'll kill you, given the chance. That's the way to look at it. It's not your cool acquisition, not your stylin' gizmo; it's got your name on it, like something out of a Stephen King story. Know that!

And respect it.

Paul - I too have that with my right thumb. It's a perfect bummer because I am right handed.

There is a new comedy show on British TV. I've posted the link but it is regional specific. It satirises TV shows. There is a priceless moment in one sketch where a guy is looking directly at a jammed nail gun and shaking it as the voiceover talks about the accident prone population of the area and how this puts strain on the local accident and emergency unit. The camera pans away and off shot you hear the gun go off and screams... it's a dumb set-up but had me in stitches because I am sure this happens on a regular basis with those tools.

A radio program called 'Knuckleheads in the news' used to be staturory listening on Thursday mornings when I lived and worked in Akron. I'd say Zombie's are pretty active brain eaters in all walks of life, not just those operating machines in the musical instrument making trade...

Wow......I was going to try a stewart macdonald kit......... but after reading these posts I think I'll try making one from Play Dough.

A required project here at school was reading an article entitled, "keeping all ten fingers". And you guys have all scared the heck out of me. I stop and think everytime I'm on the jointer. And the bandsaw. And the table saw. And the drill press. And the router. I sliced my hand wide open removing a bridge with a pallet knife. No stitches, but close. And I had a shop teacher in high school we called uno. He was short one testicle from a table saw kick back. Quite the cautionary tale. this thread is scary, but necessary. Good job. Hope I don't have to come back and post anything. Luckyd

The one lesson I've learned here is never buy a table saw. Or a joint planer.
(Who needs to plane their joints, any way? Smoke them buggers and be done with it.)