Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Nailed It.....

Well....after a half century as a Carpenter/Superintendent....probably twenty years of which I spent driving a nail gun....I had seen several nail gun related injuries but somehow managed to avoid being the victim of one until a couple of days ago while doing a little remodeling in my dog kennel.....
While dangling off of a ladder in a precarious position nailing up a piece of facia board I did a double tap and sent an errant 16 penny into my thumb....clean through my thumb actually.....
Naturally I stopped what I was doing and pulled it out which caused a pretty good flow of red stuff all over me and the ladder but I got that stopped up with my bandanna and made it in the house where I flushed it with some betadine and applied a good tight bandage to stop the bleeding...
Took the bandage off today to clean it and survey the damage....other than some swelling and bruising I think I'll live but boy is that poor old arthritic lower joint in my thumb sore....

Here's a pic....you can see wherer it went through my thumb and stopped about a quarter of an inch into my palm....



Guess that's what I get for not having that OSHA bitch in her pink hard hat hanging around with her notebook telling what to do......

As painful as that must be, thank The Good Lord you did not sever a tendon, ligament, or nerve.

Heal quickly!!

Ouch ,

Hope you heal up soon......

Yea....a half inch one way and it would have hit bone...or something worse....
Course...a half inch the other way and it would have missed me entirely....
You take the good with the bad eh....

hey, I got that T-shirt, too.....





at least I took pics BEFORE yanking it out......grin

Yea but I don't carry a camera around my neck all day either....

My camera is in my boot, the phone is on my neck. I can't hear it ring, if I carry it in the other boot.....

Field, do you guys have Halstead nails out there? Their boxes used to come with a hilarious safety warning on one side of the box......

were any 'words unbecoming a professional' uttered?

Hey! Did yall put any coal oil on them wounds???

Ouch is right! Dang!

Fair enough....if I owned a cell phone that's where I'd carry it too.....



I've never seen that brand but I'd buy em just because the "supplemental warning"....that's priceless......someone has a sense of humor.....

I was out of coal oil but I figured that sweat and bugger saturated bandanna I wrapped around it should have killed most anything I needed to worry about.....

PS....16 penny exit wounds ain't near as bad as one might think.....hardly any expansion at all.....

But over penetration is paramount, correct???

FG and huntsman,

those things don't happen nearly as often when one uses a framing hammer

Geno

PS, but then again, I've been accused of being a Luddite.

That has to hurt!

Anything that drives nails will make you cuss!

Can't help but think you guys were doing something you shouldn't have been doing, and were actually warned not to do.

I know all about hammers Geno......when I was a pup just breaking in I worked on a joisting crew for a big multi-family builder...we were issued a 50# keg of sinkers every morning and if you couldn't drive em all in a day (not drop em, drive em) you went back to packing lumber until you could....
I've not only framed literally hundreds of houses by hand....but there was also the quality time I spent hand nailing floor sheathing with 16 galvies for my old man while he sat on the tail gate and drank beer...
I wake up at least once every night with a throbbing right arm due to my years swinging a rigging axe before nail guns were invented.....

BTW....a new framing hammer with nice sharp corrigation can peel a bacon sized chunk of skin off your thumb or fore finger that hurts worse and takes A LOT longer to heal than this does.....
I'm sure Don will confirm that theory......

Coal oil is your friend!

confirmation..... The best thing a guy can do with a new waffle-faced rigger, is drive a buncha rebar stakes to take the 'sharp' outta it.......