Shaping Injuries: Learning From Mistakes

i was in a rush to set a fin  on a board late one afternoon urgent order .it needed a little grinding  so it would sit neatly on the board, some one had placed a 44 gallon drum next to the fin foiling clamp, i put my paper suit on and got to grinding the fin…unfortunatly because of drum I was standing to close and the 8 inche sanding pad with a fresh 40 grit  caught my suit rolling the sander over in  a way I could not get my finger off the trigger .it  hit me very hard accros the stomach but was just lucky  that the sander had so much papaer suit in it stoppped turning  ,then theres me running out of the room down the hall to pull the plug from the wall socket the sander straining to turn. was like i was in  straight jacket ,lucky the plug came free …was so pissed off ripped the tattered suit off threw the sander on the floor in the showroom and left,had  preetty nasty graze accross my belly about 6 inches long  kind of like a burn at the same time…could have been worse

 

Had no idea… Guess I’m not up to speed with my Australian footwear lingo haha. 

 

No real injuries here from building boards, but a tough one from woodworking. I used to own a cheap ryobi belt sander (piece of crap; will never own their cheap tools again). It was designed with a front hand grip that was right above the front edge of the spinning belt.  you guessed it - somehow, got my index finger caught. Ripped the whole finger nail out ( including the roots). Found the nail on the ground & took it with me to the emergency room. The doc. told me I would never have a nail again, but he cleaned it up & stiched it back on temporarily (said it would protect the raw skin until it healed). BIG MISTAKE! Over the course of a few weeks it got badly infected. Finger swelled to size of a carrot.Multiple courses of antibiotics. Red Hot,; started getting red streaks up the arm. Went back to doc… Another round of antibiotics, but he said come back next week- if not better will have to amputate (gangrenous). Went home, drank some & performed my own surgery (cut stiches & pulled out old nail). I won’t describe how gross the stuff was  (or how much) that came out of my finger. Next day finger was back to normal size & red streaks were gone. Funny thing is the nail eventually grew back (it took about a year). Thankful that  I still have all body parts intact.