So You've Drilled Through Your Own Hand

I let my wife read this. It made her day. And she added a few more to my list of interesting injuries....

DanielCut wrote: Can't you just reverse the drill?

Back in the days of long hair, a young mechanic was removing transmission bell housing bolts with a long extension and 1/2 inch impact gun. The air from the gun blew his hair into the rotating extension and had it wrapped tight with his head pulled close to the extension. Foreman heard him yelling, approached, surveyed the situation and suggested he reverse the gun. He did, pulled the trigger and ripped out hair and scalp about the size of 50 cent coin. Dumb and dumber!!

Love that first post/article.

Toyman01 wrote: That damn 4" grinder on the other hand...

Dropped a 9" one spinning full tilt right into the meat of my thigh. Thank god my finger was off the trigger and my pants/flesh slowed it down before it got bone-deep.

Everytime I read the title of this thread I cringe. It I making me remember some very painful things.

dean1484 wrote: Everytime I read the title of this thread I cringe. It I making me remember some very painful things.

If the title makes you cringe don't read any of the posts.

Jee-zus. Some of you people...

And I thought I was a fool for welding in Crocs.

Many years ago, I was drilling something with a small, cordless Dremel tool. I dropped it. My first instinct was to grab it.

With lightning quick reflexes, I grabbed the falling Dremel. By the spinning drill bit.

Explaining what happened next takes longer than the actual process did. After a few revolutions, the drill bit had chewed into my hand enough to stop its rotation. Equal and opposite reactions and whatnot meant now the body of the dremel started spinning. I had to grab that with the other hand, and stopping it caused the drill bit to start spinning again.

That was a bad day.

dean1484 wrote: Everytime I read the title of this thread I cringe. It I making me remember some very painful things.

Every time I read it, I hear Troy McLure's voice in my head.

JG Pasterjak wrote:

dean1484 wrote: Everytime I read the title of this thread I cringe. It I making me remember some very painful things.

If the title makes you cringe don't read any of the posts. Jee-zus. Some of you people... And I thought I was a fool for welding in Crocs.

Read some skimmed others. You work on stuff long enough and you get scars.

The funny part is some of the most painful ones are the least damaging while some of the more serious ones really did not hurt. Well they did not hurt immediately. Later on they hurt and did so for months or even years.

My hands are solid scar material, my scars have scars.

45+ years of abuse - stupidity.

My latest was a close encounter with a nail gun, the nail turned and nicked my thumb that was holding the piece in place. I was very lucky, the selector switch was on rock and roll and the next two nails were unintentionally delivered when the gun bucked, missed my hand. Nee Ner Nee Ner

Building my new yard shed provided additional entertainment when the 2' x 8' plywood I was ripping fell on my boot on edge, yes my foot was inside and the top of my foot is still black.

I always say "If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself!"

Scars in my eyes, I even have a scar inside my ear, overhead welding a snolly when into my ear and sizzled away.

I once was teasing death when I assumed that the spring brakes applied when I dumped the air out of the air tank on a loaded dump truck I just towed, I realized there was another air tank holding the brakes released when the truck rolled off the blocks I had set it on and crushed me between it and the tow truck. Not my best day..... Rib damage and my foot turned black when blood from a minor leg hemorrhage settled there.

JG Pasterjak wrote:

dean1484 wrote: Everytime I read the title of this thread I cringe. It I making me remember some very painful things.

If the title makes you cringe don't read any of the posts. Jee-zus. Some of you people... And I thought I was a fool for welding in Crocs.

I can't imagine welding in crocks. That's just dangerous. Those things burn.

Always wear leather when welding.

In reply to Furious_E :

I was helping a contractor build our fence and when he went to pull the hose off his nail gun it shot him in the hip. He very calmly set down the gun and asked me to get his pliers. I handed them to him and he handed them right back and asked me to pull it out. Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

The last time I ever operated a chainsaw without at least 1 beer in me, the chain stopped just breaking the skin of my left shin. Twice in the same day. It's been 11 years now, and I won't even start a chainsaw sober.

When trying to teach myself to stick weld, I turned the thin sticks into sparklers. That was fun, and my arms were covered in little blisters for what felt like ever.

I've come very close to drilling/screwing/nailing myself to things, but that hasn't happened. Yet. Although I did shatter the top knuckle of my left index finger building a greenhouse. That was fun. Took almost a year for the nail to get normal colored and thickness again, I still can't bend the joint the whole way.

I've fortunately never had the pleasure of getting trapped behind a tool, but have freed several people from such situations. Please ya'll, do not remove the object. That'll just piss us medics off and make our reports longer be you'll be bleeding more and then the cranky ER charge nurse will yell at us and say "why did you remove the object?!!!??" And that'll make our day worse. Just leave the thing there. Please.

Hey, JG. Sorry to hear about this. Have you found a good hand surgeon? I can send you a few recommendations by PM

(Yes, I'm a surgeon. And, yes, I once chopped off my own finger.)

I haven't pierced myself or anything. Worst that happened to me is probably when super glue exploded into my eye. I probably did come close to cutting a finger off once when I tried to slot an uncut U-shaped bushing with a bigass knife and the knife slipped.

Oh also came close to stabbing myself in the hand with a bigass knife when cutting a hose from an engine.

Had a brand new dremel wheel explode in my face once, I was wearing safety glasses at least.

Standing under a car, I was tightening a nut with a 1/2" ratchet rapidly to get past the loose threads when the socket slipped off of the nut. Unfortunately it was on a towards the face swing so I took a self inflicted full speed whack to the for head with a heavy blunt object. When the lights came back on I was half way to the floor. As I stood my friend who was watching just stared and said that I should go look in the mirror. Eventually I did to see what looked like a golf ball shoved under the skin of my forehead. Just a mild concussion and a black eye, no biggie.

LanEvo wrote: Hey, JG. Sorry to hear about this. Have you found a good hand surgeon? I can send you a few recommendations by PM (Yes, I'm a surgeon. And, yes, I once chopped off my own finger.)

I hope that didn't happen in the operating room. Or, maybe that would be better? For you, anyway.

But, no, I've never actually drilled through my hand. Although one time I was pulling my socks on and my hand slipped off and I punched myself in the nuts.

JG Pasterjak wrote: I hope that didn't happen in the operating room. Or, maybe that would be better? For you, anyway.

Better for me (worker's comp?) but definitely worse for the patient. I've been poked, stabbed, and cut in the OR more than once by young residents I was training. But my finger-chopping happened in the kitchen.

JG Pasterjak wrote: But, no, I've never actually drilled through my hand.

Wow. Looks like my comedy detector needs a rebuild. Glad to hear you're ok!

JG Pasterjak wrote: Although one time I was pulling my socks on and my hand slipped off and I punched myself in the nuts.

Thanks... reaching for paper towel to clean up coffee spewed from nose.

Can't resist a thread which should be titled, "I'm stupider than you."

When I was a teenager I had a chemistry set and one day I was twisting a glass tube into a rubber cork (to plug into a flask). When I heard it snap I instantly knew it was trouble. Right into my finger at the joint and to this day I can't feel anything in one area of my middle finger.

Was using a fly cutter to cut a big round hole in a piece of sheet metal. I don't remember the exact setup but it wasn't right and that fly cutter came around right across my hand. Yeah there was a lot of blood but I got off really lucky, as that could have been Much worse.

When I was a kid, I figured out how to sharpen knives using the handheld sharpener a lot of kitchens have, the one with intermixed hardened washers. I was going to town sharpening a knife when something happened that taught me to not extend my thumb along the base of the sharpener. Still have the scar from that and no, I didn't quite remove the upper quarter inch of my thumb.

Anyone feeling a bit faint yet?

I completely flattened my left index finger while driving a stake in the ground with a 20# sledge hammer. Squashed it like a grape. Finger still works fine, no corrective action needed.

Was wearing a full-face mask while cutting metal on the band saw. You know how your brain can see things far faster than you know you can react? I watched a cut-off bit of metal come straight at my eye really fast before going "TICK!" off the mask. It was an awesome safety lesson because I received the education without the high tuition.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Although one time I was pulling my socks on and my hand slipped off and I punched myself in the nuts.

Would it be fair to call that a Code-Blue to go along with your Code-Brown system?