My homemade project knife bit me!

jimh0220

jimh0220

Joined
Apr 15, 2008
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Doin' a little finish sanding on my former machete, now knife, homemade project that I had just sharpened on my WorkSharp to a beautiful convex grind. Just starting to get a nice look going when, SLICE - it bit me! About 1+ inches right across my left index finger, and nearly as deep.

Trying to be manly, I won't go to the doc to have it stitched (it should have been), so I wrapped it tight with Corban and gauze, and viola, all better... until it bled through 30 minutes later. Now, a day later, the bleeding is mostly done, my entire finger tip is black with bruising, but I can still feel my whole fingertip (which hurts like hell).

Macho manly move... yeah.

Am I dumb for not having it stitched? My wife is laughing her butt off saying I'm gonna regret not doing it.

Your opinions?

BTW, I was dying to get back to work on the knife yesterday. Wierd?
 
Well your window for having it stitched is pretty well closed. I opened up my thump around 10 pm and wrapped it up tight until 8-9 the next morning and when I pulled the compression wrap off it started bleeding again. Up at the emergency room the doc soaked it in iodine and stitched it up and put me on antibiotics to make sure there was no infection. He told me that it is best to get it taken care of within a couple of hours to provide quick healing. It took about a week to be really usable again compared to 3-4 weeks of babying it. You got your wish of getting back to work but it will take much longer to heal.
 
i've cut myself may times, the most important thing is that you didn't cut anything vital. after a bad cut, you should move your finger/body part in all directions to make sure everything still works ok. if you still have full movement, there is a good chance you didn't do any major damage.
 
Doin' a little finish sanding on my former machete, now knife, homemade project that I had just sharpened on my WorkSharp to a beautiful convex grind.

No offense intended, but here's where you were.... not thinking correctly?

When you're working on a blade like that, either dull the edge or put a thin strip of tape over it. Then you can't get cut. I'd dull the edge myself, you've got a WS, it would only take a minute to make it good again.

Not getting the stitches was a bad idea too, but I've been there and done that. I keeps a lot of butterfly closures around and use them on deep cuts. Most times they're as good as stitches and a whole lot cheaper. :D

Last time I really cut myself was about 10 years ago. I was using a paring knife to cut a piece of jute twine and sliced across the palm of my hand, right below the thumb joint. I went in the house with blood everywhere and put the butterfly's on it and was going to finish what I was doing. My wife (8 months pregnant with our 1st son) saw the blood and freaked out, insisting that we go the ER. Giving in to her extreme pregnancy emotions, off we went. When I was taken back to a room, the doctor came in and checked me out. He said that I'd done a great job with the butterfly's and he'd just leave it as is. I told him that my wife brought me in and that I should get the stitches. He looked at me oddly and I said "She's 8 months pregnant" and kind of shrugged. He said, "Yep, you better get the stitches." :D
 
I was reading about that one time and it said that in Vietnam and such, medics used superglue and safety pins as field sutures to control bleeding until they could get the injured Medevac'd to the base hospital.
 
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