Bandsaw Bites

Here is what happens when you just Touch a sharp, moving, band saw blade with your fingernail.





This is one of those "you're SO Lucky" statements where you are lucky it wasn't worse but "Lucky?". If you were lucky, it wouldn't have happened at all!

Your carivngs looks so life-like! I would swear that was a real finger.

But seriously, could you just stop hurting yourself please?

BZ, you really need this table saw I saw on some HG tv show. WHen any skin touches the blade, it closes a circuit that causes the blade to retract into the table in a millisecond. The demo was pretty cool (they used a hot dog). All it did was leave a tiny nick, less severe than these pics you posted.

Ben , Please be careful. Do you know how important those hands are to us.
Maybe we should take a collection to insure them through lloyds of london.
If J-lo can insure her ass and Tina Turner has leg coverage, Benzarts hands should be too.
All kidding aside glad to see your okay and my thoughts are with you as your surgery aproaches..

Thanks guys, you must think I'm a Klutz or something like that. It really looks worse than it is, but it sure freaked Sherry out when I came in holding my finger in a bloody paper towel and she asked "What did you do"?. When she heard the word BandSaw, she didn't hear anything else. She thought I had cut it off. Really it isn't that bad.
Thanks

damn Benz you are scaring the hell out of me. I have almost made a few mistakes with my bandsaw it is easy to do. You need some special saw and chisel proof gloves. Glad it was not worse..

Power tools scare me... especially table saws... the boards always kick back at me. The bandsaw scares me alot too but I keep fingers as far away as possible.
Anything with high rpm can do big time damage... I've had a few run ins with the angle grinder...

Take care of yourself Ben...

Welcome to the club of almost missing fingers.

Three words Ben: Chain Mail Glove
:P

Also comes in handy when challenging someone to a duel.

Correct me if I'm wrong Benz, but I think we have a Moai here.
Can you say "Ebay"? :D
Glad to know you're not looking for a high school wood shop-teaching job (four finger prerequisite).

WOW, Yes it's a moai. I wonderif I cna get the whole nail off the finger and put it in a baggie. What do you think it's worth 60G? More??
Thanks Unga.
Thanks to everybody else too, I appreciate your interest in preserving my fingers.

Was that the middle finger? I'm glad you still have it to tell us all that we're #1.

On 2005-03-21 08:36, Tiki-bot wrote:
BZ, you really need this table saw I saw on some HG tv show. WHen any skin touches the blade, it closes a circuit that causes the blade to retract into the table in a millisecond. The demo was pretty cool (they used a hot dog). All it did was leave a tiny nick, less severe than these pics you posted.

Tiki-bot's probably talking about SawStop. The viedos of the hotdog demo are impressive.

[ Edited by: Philot on 2005-03-22 08:01 ]

Ben hope that filangee is doing ok. That nail should be coming off soon enough! Sell that sucka!

Hey Yum Yum kid. How does that medieval looking glove feel on your hand. Can you still grip things good with it? Looks like a good idea to me.....What do you call it actually. Is it shark proof?

G.

groovy.

[ Edited by: Johnny Dollar on 2005-03-22 10:49 ]

Hi Ben,

Just checking to see if that pesky nail has come off yet.

I thought you might appreciate the similar problems I encountered while carving tikis in the Amazon Jungles of Peru.

Here I am getting ready to carve with my trusty CAIMAN-22B.

These beauties are great for making deep cuts in logs. They are surprisingly sharp as well and can do detail work in a pinch.

Unfortunately, they also have a lot of torque and can spin free if you don't hold them with an extremely firm grip. That's what happened to me with this one. I let it get away from me during an intense carving session:

Clean slice to the bone up to the first knuckle. Split the nail cleanly as well, right down to the bone. I was lucky. No major nerve or tendon damage. But I couldn't play volleyball for a few weeks.

Because the nail-bed itself was damaged, my fingernail now grows with a pronounced ridge down its length. Left me with a gnarly scar.

Here is my uncle with some of our finer carving tools, used for detail work. Mostly PIRANHA-5's and 6's.

Sabu

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy on 2005-04-05 09:39 ]

Hey Sabu, thats a pretty cool tool and I realy like the fine detail ones. I could ues the #6 and #7 for my work. Your bite looks nasty. When the nail is cut or torn it hurts more.
I only lost a match-head size chunk from the middle of the nail. It's doing fine now tho

Hey Tiki G, I missed this question before. Just type "cut resistant glove" into your search engine. They are normally used in food service kitchens. I know of two kinds: the chain mail and the nylon/mesh kind. We have a few of the mesh ones at my work and I thought it was a joke when I saw them. I put a carrot into the finger part of the glove and started sawing away with a buther knife. I didn't punture the glove at all.

I can grip stuff pretty good with the chain mail glove and it is pretty comfortable. I wood recommend either one for hand carving but I don't know if I would wear one when working with power tools. The glove itself could get wrapped up in a spinning (insert instrument of pain here). On a side note these will protect you from a slashing/cutting motion, not a stabbing motion. I didn't try it, but I'm guessing you would feel some pain if your hand was stabbed. Hope this helps.