Somebody stabbed me

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kookery

Joined
Oct 11, 2012
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337
Somebody stabbed me. It was me, after an epic struggle with my destiny and a loaf of bread. I stabbed myself in the foot with my WWII. I swear I wasn't prancing around like a wannabe ninja in my mom's basement, nor pretending to be having a duel to the death (almost) with Star Wars Kid.

What really happened was I was cleaning my WWII with some Ajax to polish off some of the patina so the blade will cut sticky, steaming-hot fresh bread a little more smoothly. Ajax does a pretty good job for that. I was waving the knife around to dry off the little hard to reach areas after wiping it down with a paper towel. Drying it off quickly prevents rust in the spots that the wipe-down misses.

While waving it around, the slippery horn handle popped out of my hand like a watermelon seed, and the knife went point-first into the top of my shoe. I didn't feel a thing, and at first, I thought I had just dropped it, and the handle was what hit my shoe. When blood started splurching out the sides of my shoe, I had a brief flashback to the traumatic moment, and instantly realized what had actually happened. The point of the blade went through the top of my shoe, and into the top of my foot.

I have never sharpened the blade, and the most challenging cutting I've ever done with it was on some crusty day-old bread. Thankfully, it only penetrated about a quarter of an inch, and the rubbery top of the shoes I was wearing did a very good job of stopping it from penetrating further. The cut is also only about a quarter of an inch long, and it bled a fair bit over time, but it was slowly enough to not cause much alarm when I finally noticed it.

I doused the wound with hydrogen peroxide to clean up whatever nasty bugs followed the blade from my shoe to my flesh. Shoes aren't the pinnacle of virgin sterility, so that disinfection part is important. The wound is deep enough I had a hard time opening it up all the way to get the peroxide into it before it filled up and expelled the disinfectant with fresh blood. I'm hoping whatever I couldn't reach was pushed out too.

I never did like the slick horn handle, and I think I'll wrap it with paracord once I superglue the new cracks it has, thanks to the impact on the floor. My foot is more bruised than cut, so I think I got lucky this time.
 
I'm going to buck the trend here and request that you don't post any pics!
 
I'm torn... pics of the awesome wound... or no pics because it's of a foot and feet are gross?
 
... Careful with stitching.

If the wound is deep, you DO NOT want to stitch or staple as you trap potential pathogens in the wound resulting a a horribly infected abscess. In this case, you are better off either seeking medical attention as you will need stitches at different depths, which requires different types of sutures, or wound packing. If it is truly superficial (through the epidermis, some of the dermis but not more than 1/2cm... which is about... 1/4") then go ahead and staple/suture away.

Best of luck.

Remember to clean the WWII before you slice bread :P
 
ah, the old 'i was just cleaning it and it went off' excuse. next time make durn sure you aren't loaded. :)

chain mail socks and gloves, heck the whole chain mail body suit, might be a good idea.

scars are natures way of recording experiences.

i'd go with the no-staples or sutures crowd. let it drain as it heals from the inside out. keep it clean & change the bandages frequently and go to the doctors on any sign of inflammation. turning black and falling off is not a good sign.

p.s. - if you do go the doctor route, you should sue yourself for the medical bills. it's the american way.
 
Haha, entertaining comments everyone, I had a chuckle, thank you. I'm the most safety-conscious person I know (part of my profession), so I gave a lot of thought to how I could screw this up so messily. It turns out I was using the "handshake grip" that avoids the palm-poker. The problem with the handshake grip is it only works when some thing is there to stop the blade, like a bit of wood, or a Nazi skull. With nothing but air, the knife sort of twisted out of my hand, downward, and rotating toward the center line of my body (away from the palm of my hand). The slick horn handle made that work very smoothly, almost like the knife jumped out of my hand. That put it right on top of my foot, point-first.

I guess the handshake grip is great if you're a Gurkha feeling for SS boot laces in the dark - if you miss the skull, you'll still get the foot! I'm not going to be using it anymore though, since I am not a Gurkha (that's just what MI6 WANTS you to think). A poke in the palm is much better than a stab in the foot, so I'll take the lesser of 2 "functioning as intended" evils.

I stayed off my foot for about 4 days, and by the 4th day, I felt no pain and the wound was totally closed up and well on its way to being healed. It's still not totally healed. I'm looking at it now, and yes, feet are gross. The big hole in my foot is now just a thin line-shaped scab. I'm sure by Monday it'll be gone too.
 
Becareful with Knife and get well soon.
 
I followed Steely's advise on my latest acquisition, the Pen Knife with a horn handle. I love it but that horn handle is real pretty but slippery. I thought this would be the case and was skeptical but I love the blade and everything else about it.

It pained me to no end but I took 180 sandpaper and sanded away on it. It's much better to hold onto now, not near as pretty but still a beautiful knife. I plan to rough it up even more, I'm in the thinking and planning process on how to do it. I can checker but I've never checkered horn before so I don't know it that will work or not.

On the bright side I guess it doesn't reduce my desire for more HI knifes, now I need a Pen Knife with a wood handle. Then I could repolish this one and have one for show and one for go. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to my fellow khukri addicts. Not that it takes much to make sense to me.

kookery, glad your on the mend and thanks for NOT posting pics.
 
I have been using super glue to rough up my horn handle. After I dropped it, it got a lot cracks, and the horn cracks in layers and peels away like mica. I just put super glue all over it, and the cracks stop propagating. If you checkered a horn handle, I would expect cracks to form in the horn layers. If you put super glue in the checkering, it might not crack at all. Post some pics of your roughed up horn handle, if you can. I might try that, and then put more super glue, and then paracord on it.
 
Well I tried the checkering idea and I'm happy with the results. Still a bit of fine tuning to do but it feels really good in hand. I left the back left side smooth as it didn't effect my grip and the horn looks weak in that area and I didn't want to ruin 6 hours of checkering time.
Some evidence photo's. Forgive me I forgot once again to remove the picture of Mrs. Bawanna (in an earlier life) from the bench.

DSCN3872_zps337c1a07.jpg


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DSCN3873_zpsbf55567c.jpg


DSCN3874_zps5d08e609.jpg
 
Bawanna:

That checkering is very nice. Can you describe how you did it.

It looks too regular to have been done freehand, and the handle's curves would make it hard to use any kind of machine or even a template. Maybe a flexible straightedge? But even then the regular spacing would be hard to maintain.
 
Very nice checkering on that handle. Not too easy to do a round surface. And don't be concerned about moving the pictures. I've seen worse--much worse. :)
 
I agree that checkering is fantastic. I think I would seal the horn after checkering, but just a light coat to keep the texture and not lose the added grip.
 
If you look at the last picture you can kind of see the checkering tools. They are like short little file like cutters on a handle. You just cut a single line with a v tool, they use a spacing cutter to cut the next line. Working a curved surface is a challenge as someone suggested. It's really not hard, if I can do it anyone can do it. It's just a lot of patience and the more you do it the easier it is. They do make power checkering tools, very expensive but this is all hand tools.
I make a lot of pistol handles for folks so do it regularly. i like the checkering and inlaying better than the shaping and fitting actually.
XxdrpxX, what would you seal it with out of curiosity? I was concerned when I read kookery's post about it peeling in layers after I'd already started checkering but I didn't see anything like that at all. I tried to avoid going any deeper than I had to, didn't really bring up the points as I didn't want it to bite griping it. I can always point up a bit more if needed.
 
Man that is some fine work, I think it looks great, checkering is pretty hard to do and look right, my hats off to you sir.
 
Thanks for the kind words everybody. Pugs, that will probably be the first one I send you for a sheath when I stockpile enough marbles to pay for it. While not traditional I suppose I do like it a lot.
 
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