- Joined
- Jan 8, 2005
- Messages
- 597
I debated the title - "hair whittling sharp is bad for your fingers."
Tonight was my very first hospital trip from a knife cut. And I've been cut a lot.
Anybody out there ever hurt themselves fairly bad and done the classic call out to the wife? "Honey..."
I'm typing pretty slow right now. I was reading a post about a guy who slicked up his sebenza with a little light 600 grit action on the inner wall of the titanium and polishing the washers with some Flitz. Sounded like a fun little project. Got the work table ready, took out the screws, made a fundamental mistake - left the knife in the closed position. Seemed safer to work on that way. Boy, was I wrong.
Now, I've opened the sebenza before with no problems. Take off screws, lift off handle slab, no biggie. But this time the slab stuck a bit on the pins. I pulled. But at a slight angle, not straight up. And when it gave, my pinkie and ring fingers of my right hand slid right across the upfacing blade.
It never hurts at first. This knife is hair whittling sharp - I even posted a picture on Vasilli's thread in the sharpening section of the forum. There was some blood, of course, at first...
So I go over to the sink, and see that the tip of my ring finger, above the fingernail, is gone. And the pinkie is cut deep, about half way through the meat of the finger on the fingerprint.
I notice that there's blood everywhere. "Um... Honey? Could you come in here?" She takes one look and says "we're getting that stitched," wraps my hand in 4 paper towels and a real towel, and into the car we go.
Funny moment - at the emergency room window, the nurse says "show me." so I unwrap the towel, and all four paper towels are pure red. They look like red paper. There another ER patient next to me and she goes "oh my God wrap that back up!" Then we sit to wait for help and these other people who are waiting are like "oh you need to go in first." And I did.
After it was all cleaned out it only took three stitches to tack down my pinkie tip. The ring finger was... well, tough, there's just no tip there. So they put this special non stick gauze stuff there and put these metal tips over my fingers so I wouldn't hit them on anything. Found the tip, by the way, at home. Looked like half a bean or something like that.
Lessons? Open folder before disassembly. Keep Kaiser card handy. Treasure level headed wife. Learn to type with three fingers on right hand. Knives that sharp can cut your flesh like warm butter and it doesn't really hurt until a lot later.
Irony? This is the new knife I've been raving about.
Tonight was my very first hospital trip from a knife cut. And I've been cut a lot.
Anybody out there ever hurt themselves fairly bad and done the classic call out to the wife? "Honey..."
I'm typing pretty slow right now. I was reading a post about a guy who slicked up his sebenza with a little light 600 grit action on the inner wall of the titanium and polishing the washers with some Flitz. Sounded like a fun little project. Got the work table ready, took out the screws, made a fundamental mistake - left the knife in the closed position. Seemed safer to work on that way. Boy, was I wrong.
Now, I've opened the sebenza before with no problems. Take off screws, lift off handle slab, no biggie. But this time the slab stuck a bit on the pins. I pulled. But at a slight angle, not straight up. And when it gave, my pinkie and ring fingers of my right hand slid right across the upfacing blade.
It never hurts at first. This knife is hair whittling sharp - I even posted a picture on Vasilli's thread in the sharpening section of the forum. There was some blood, of course, at first...
So I go over to the sink, and see that the tip of my ring finger, above the fingernail, is gone. And the pinkie is cut deep, about half way through the meat of the finger on the fingerprint.
I notice that there's blood everywhere. "Um... Honey? Could you come in here?" She takes one look and says "we're getting that stitched," wraps my hand in 4 paper towels and a real towel, and into the car we go.
Funny moment - at the emergency room window, the nurse says "show me." so I unwrap the towel, and all four paper towels are pure red. They look like red paper. There another ER patient next to me and she goes "oh my God wrap that back up!" Then we sit to wait for help and these other people who are waiting are like "oh you need to go in first." And I did.
After it was all cleaned out it only took three stitches to tack down my pinkie tip. The ring finger was... well, tough, there's just no tip there. So they put this special non stick gauze stuff there and put these metal tips over my fingers so I wouldn't hit them on anything. Found the tip, by the way, at home. Looked like half a bean or something like that.
Lessons? Open folder before disassembly. Keep Kaiser card handy. Treasure level headed wife. Learn to type with three fingers on right hand. Knives that sharp can cut your flesh like warm butter and it doesn't really hurt until a lot later.
Irony? This is the new knife I've been raving about.
but you did a nice write up and I'm still chuckling (from your humor)!
Yup that's pretty much how it happened. I walked into the library we were close to (showing everybody who passed by the gaping, bone-deep wound
Strangely, I was the only one not freaked out by this. I remember thinking, "wow, that's pretty neat." I still have a cool scar there that reminds me of the lesson I learned that day; Never underestimate the cutting ability of a dull knife!