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Accident At Work - Lesson to Everyone
toolaa:
It's Been a while since posting a message to the board. I have been working hard growing my new countertop business. After a few rough months in the beginning we have had three consecutive excellent months. Next week we were going to begin tooling up to make Granite tops. I have been building a loyal team and working hard to focus on safety and efficiency. By all accounts things were going as planned.
Well yesterday I was cutting a radius slot using a template bit. I was about 2" into the cut when I could smell the wood burning somewhat. I had taken my left hand off the router to re-adjust me positron to back ff the cut. I am not exactly sure what occurred next. I believe I must have slightly tilted the router causing it to jump right out of the cutting slot, on top of the work piece. The spinning blade had some traction along the top of the wood and skidded from right to left and crashed into my left hand.
I kept my cool but it was tough. I could see that me pointer finger was almost severed, and blood was squirting out like a scene in a bad "B" movie. I and one of me employees had just taken First aid and CPR training last month as conditions to bid on a govt project. That training kicked in!
Almost instinctively we knew what to do.
I was flown to the Hand trauma center in Baltimore where at first things looked good. I had blood flow to my finger and could still feel the tips. I was told that I would need 4hr surgery.
When I awoke the doctor informed me that when they began to operate they discovered that the bone in my finger was shattered into at least 20 small pieces. There was no way to save it! I will have a cast with bone pins to secure my middle finger for 6 weeks. Then I can look forward to 3-5 months of painful physical therapy. I will get through this however.
Last night I began to reflect on what happened and I am the kind of person that believes that most if not all accidents can be prevented. I was really embarrassed that I'm the guy who gets mad when I see someone not wearing safety glasses, or taking the guard off a saw, and here
I just set a lasting and costly example carelessness.
This post is a reminder to anyone who works with power tools how easy it is to get complacent and forget how dangerous these tools and operations can be.
In the end the contributing factors to my accident where:
1) Using a blade which was not sharp
2) Rushing to make a cut because someone else did not follow the plan properly. I was angry about the oversight before I picked up the router.
3) Never take a hand from the router while the bit is in the work piece.
If this post can help keep someone else from having an accident, I'll feel good that someone can learn from my mistake.
Best Regards,
John
mccoy178:
Sorry to hear about that man. My prayers will be with you and I hope that everything will be okay. Thanks for the heads up and it is good to get a reminder once in awhile, as it is far to easy to become complacent in this hobby.
danny_galaga:
ouch! and kudos to you for admitting that you ballsed up. a lot of people never accept that they stuffed up. get well soon and just be thankful it wasn't your 'fire' button finger (",)
missioncontrol:
I hope for a speedy recovery for you
Nannuu:
Holy crap that's a lot of typing less a hand there. I've always been afraid of doing something like that. I've had incidents similar but never an actual accident. Good luck on the healing. I hope your finger recovers well.
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