So, I had the best New Year’s this year. I managed not to fully cut my fingers off, just maul them a little.
6 stitches, some antibiotics and a tetanus shot later, I’m sheepishly writing this post with one hand and an index finger. Some of my friends will just be finding out about my injuries now. It was definitely something I didn’t want to share on social media.
Yet here I am writing a post about it and completely contradicting myself! Why?
Let’s start with the story first. I was making some hexagon shaped boxes as my Christmas break project. After completing one box successfully, I went and got enough wood to make about 12 more. The idea is to stack them against a wall in my lounge room and use them as shelves.
I borrowed a circular saw from my Dad. Both he and my husbang told me to be careful with it. I’d also recently completed a wood working course with Perth Wood School, who spent a lot of their time going over the safety issues around using tools.
I was educated about the risk, and I didn’t cut corners. I had ear and eye protection. I turned the saw off at the wall every time I needed to change angles. I cut a few pieces, then I cleared away the offcuts and stacked my pieces against the wall so they weren’t in the way.
But as I was cutting the very last piece of wood, I reached down to flick away an offcut before the blade guard had completely lowered.
The result was two fingers with deep gouges in the flesh down to the bone. Yup, good job Eryn.
I was so lucky not to have lost my fingers.
Which brings me to the reason why I’m sharing this post, despite my shame. Even the best laid plans can fail. Even if you follow all the safety rules, all it takes is one split second of inattention for everything to go wrong.
After all the safety training I’ve gone through, at work and through classes I’ve taken, I’ve never had a real life example of when things can go wrong. So here’s your real life example. I’m capable, I was safe, and I still managed to hurt myself.
At least I’ll have two scars to remind me every time I pick up a tool, instead of two gaps where my fingers used to be.
(I’m not going to share the photo of my fingers on the blog, some people have a hard time with that kind of image. If you want to see it, email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you the gory pic).
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