Shop Safety

[CMBOSTC]

I wanted to take some time to remind everyone about shop safety. Yesterday I was working on a new box call design. The sound boards where still too thick to get a good sounding turkey out of it. So, I was thinning the sound board down with a 3/4" chisel that I had just sharpened. I got a bigger bite on the wood than what I would recommend. I decided to push harder. Well, the chisel hit a thin spot and the chisel released from the wood and went straight into my left hand which was holding the opposite end of the call between my thumb and index finger. As soon as I saw it I new it was bad. I had a 1 inch laceration gushing blood. I grabbed the closest cleanest thing possible (a shirt) and put pressure on it. My kids called my wife who had to rush home and take me to the hospital. I ended up with five stitches. Luckily it didn't go very deep.

I've been assessing what went wrong and what I can do in the future to prevent this same accident. The most important safety measure that I have come up with is to place the call in a vise to keep your hand a little further away from the danger area. The second control measure is not move a blade toward a body part.

I probably won't be making calls for a week or two. I know that all of this sounds careless on my part and I have been beating myself up about it. But, the truth of the matter is accidents will happen.

Please be safe!

Chris

Gobble, Gobble... "BOOM"!

[VanHelden Game Calls]

It happens, now you have a character mark

Yup step back an evaluate your processes.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the way we do things we fail to see dangers and sometimes improvements to the process.

Take care of the hand an infection is the last thing you want

[drenalinld]

Sorry to hear that, Chris. If we can get in the habit of thinking about safety before starting any task to identify risks you will be doing yourself a huge favor. Still the most dangerous thing any of us do is drive our vehicle and many times we don't think about the dangers and risks there either.

Heal soon. Glad you didn't get any tendons or liters.

[Cut*N*Run]

Get well soon!

We always get hurt when we forget that we can get hurt so a reminder every now and then is a good thing. Thanks for the post.

[CMBOSTC]

Yeah, that one got my attention! I've never had a cut that gushed blood like that one.

Chris

Gobble, Gobble... "BOOM"!

[Bonjour]

Glad that is all that happened because it could have been worse. Hope you have a speedy recovery. I believe they make a kevlar glove for carving to help prevent those exact accidents. Might be worth looking into.     

[js05_14]

Thanks for the reminder. I'm in a wood shop all week and try to be very careful. I take more saftey precautions than most people. It can be easy to get inattentive when processes become routine. I've had a few close calls myself.

[handcannon]

After a while, most of us will get a little relaxed in the workshop and end up with something like that happening to us. Several years back I was cutting some thin stock for box calls on the table saw. I was using push sticks and not touching the wood at all. To this day I dont know what happened but the wood kicked back and in a split second the tip of my finger went straight into the blade. I had a nice 1/8" kerf cut into the tip of my finger about half way into my fingernail. I thought I was being about as safe as I could but it still happened. I know I've read a few other mishaps on here before. Callmaking can bite ya quick!

I'm glad you did not get any more of a serious injury than that. Hope you can recover quickly and get back into the shop soon.

[bcc2011]

I bought a vise and its been a life saver, I can really control my tools with both hands. Heal up man you will be back before you know it.