Just the other day I was working with a my Kerr MasterTouch wax pen
and dripped a couple of drops of molten wax on my index and middle
finger. It’s hot and it sticks. You can’t shake it off. So I’m living
with two small blisters for a while. No big deal, but it was,
momentarily, painful. Joel
Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb
www.schwalbstudio.com
Spike, DMSO is great stuff. But be sure to get Veterinary or Medical
Grade DMSO (100% free of contaminants and impurities)…anything else
will in fact carry into the blood stream by virtue of its extreme
lipid solubility. Who knows, it could carry a microscopic mould that
could infiltrate your liver or the valves of your heart. As an
aside: try pure garlic oil, I have never researched this, but I am
almost 100% sure that garlic oil and DMSO are chemically related or
structurally related, whichever. Therefore there is some credence to
the old adage about garlic and it’s prophylactic effects.
The other magic elixir is DMSO for bruises and burns.
Dear Skip,
Interesting but oh, by the way, you might want to read this just
before throwing it all over your skin:
From “siri.org/msds”:
Mallinckrodt Baker – DIMETHYL SULFOXIDE 67-68-5
Product Identification
Synonyms: Methyl sulfoxide, DMSO; Sulfinylbis[Methane]
Potential Health Effects
Inhalation:
Causes irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include
coughing, shortness of breath. May cause allergic reaction in
sensitive individuals.
Ingestion:
Causes irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms may
include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. May cause abdominal pain,
drowsiness, chills and chest pains.
Skin Contact:
Causes irritation to skin. Symptoms include redness, itching, and
pain. May cause scaling, Readily absorbed through the skin.
Garlic-like taste and odor may develop on the breath and skin.
Transient disturbances of color vision, photophobia, headache,
diarrhea, and dermatitis may result from skin applications. A good
solvent; may result in the increased skin absorption of other more
toxic materials.
Eye Contact:
Causes irritation, redness, and pain. May cause blurred vision.
Chronic ExposuRe:
Absorption may affect the blood, Repeated skin application may cause
scaling dermatitis. Repeated oral doses may effect the liver and
kidneys.
Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions:
Persons with pre-existing skin disorders or eye problems or impaired
liver or kidney function may be more susceptible to the effects of
the substance. Topical application enhances dermal absorption of many
other chemicals, including drugs and allergens of moderate molecular
weight.
Let’s be careful out there! –
Francine Haywood
Sydney
After reading the great stories so far, I thought I’d add my latest.
I was smithing a goblet and really laying into it with the hammer. I
miss-hitwith sufficient force that I thought I tore a back muscle or
two. The pain wasn’t too bad until I sneezed. I found out that The
force of the rebound had actually caused one of my ribs to catch
under the vertebra and lock itself in place. A trip to the osteopath
put it to right but I was unable to do anything for three days. Not
as bad as being hit by a truck (that was late last year) but
certainly comes a close second. Take care
no really
Eileen (who can walk and jump and skip and play…)
Some of my contusions are voluntary. I was soldering a ring for
sizing one day, and I thought what would it be like to lick a red
hot piece of metal. So I did. Just for a second, and I proved that
indeed you can lick a red hot piece of metal. You can’t taste
anything for a week afterwards, but it’s really the experience that
counts.
I always prefer to tell the shop injury stories that don’t happen to
me. When I was in college there was first year metals student who
was what you might call a “dirty hippy”, young, drab, misguided, and
very little experience with power tools. She was using the flexible
shaft and a split mandrel on the ring she was working on. She
hadn’t tied he uneven, unkempt, dred-locked hair back, and sure
enough got a lock of it twisted up in the device. The shop tech,
who had to disentangle her told me later that not only did he have
to deal with the unpleasantness of berating her about shop safety,
as well as the yelps of pain, but the overriding odor of her
unwashed body was enough to truly irritate him.
My favorite story, however, I was fortunate enough to witness from
beginning to end. My friend Margaret was working on the opposite
side of the bench, and I just happened to look up to check the
alignment of one of my constructions, when she tried to get up from
her stool to, apparently, look at her sitting piece from a distance.
But as she did, her stool slipped out from under her, and she
started to stumble backwards. Her back hit the wall just before whe
was going to hit the ground. Then, trying to regain her composure
tried to stand up, but in the process bonked her head on the first
aid kit above her and fell on her rear on the ground. Suddenly the
first aid kit swung open and a passel of band-aid rained down upon
her. To this day, it is the funniest thing I have ever witness.
Keep it safe y’all
DAVE
Hi all,
Reading of shop injuries, I just thought to remind folk of
something. I keep an Aloe Vera plant in the shop. It’s absolutely
miraculous what this plant can do for minor burns. A couple weeks
ago, I brushed the back of my finger accidently with a torch. It
started to sting immediatly, and I thought “that’s going to blister
and hurt for a few days.” Then I remembered the Aloe plant. I
snipped off a bit of a leaf, squeezed the juice onto the burn, and
the sting stopped immediately. I kept the bit of leaf nearby as I
worked, juicing up the burn whenever I started to feel it. Next
day, I could see the area was slightly discolored, but not
blistered, and there was no pain. Next day, it was healed. Thank
you little Aloe plant.
David L. Huffman
when I looked down I saw 3 inches of steel horizontally sticking out of my left thigh about 6 inches above my knee. It seems that I had driven it in there with my right leg... all the way to the bone . .
Ok Gerald, that one sent chills through me. This gets my vote for
“injury most dizzying to contemplate”.
By the way, I’ve had lots of little ones, including a chipped tooth
and 3 stitches in the lip when a bracelet got caught in the buffer an
whipped around, smacking me in the mouth. I also leaned over a steel
sculpture projects I was welding and melted a 3 inch circle of a
tee-shirt into the skin on my belly. Cup burs, yep, they drill out
nice little plugs of flesh from fingers. But the most painful, by
far, was when I had a piece of wire stuck in a draw plate. I grabbed
the plate with one hand, the pointed wire sticking out towards my
palm on the other side of the plate. I pulled with the pliers, which
slipped, and the plate drove the point of the wire into the direct
center of my palm, nearly through to the other side. Ther must be
some sort of concentration of nerves in the middle of the palm. The
pain was so exquisite that I had quite a struggle to keep from
throwing up. I have since imagined what it would have felt like to
have nails driven through one’s palms. Can’t be much better with the
feet either.
David L. Huffman
I would like to respectfully urge that this thread be terminated.
The messages are gaining momentum in terms of “horror factor”,
without much additional by way of practical application. Even as a
comfortably competent “old hand”, I am getting freaked out by all
this negative stuff. I worry that some of our newer jewelers,
without a lot of experience to give them perspective, may not really
know that, out of person-hours of people making jewelry, significant
mishaps are rare. I believe we have more than covered the basic
safety issues. Just one point of view.
–No�l
For a really large, really bad burn, tape a piece of aloe over it
like a band-aid, and leave it there for a day or two. I once backed
into a torch being used for melting glass, and had a three inch
long burn on my upper arm. Nasty looking thing. The aloe worked
wonders. Sandra
Ringman - I am so sorry you are feeling so much pain - but I have to
tell you that my limited experience with liver cancer indicates that
your survival after 2000 is indeed a miracle - perhaps one you
attribute to herbal medicine but a miracle nonetheless. Shop
injuries (and who hasn’t suffered from burns, saw blade or graver
injuries etc) pale by comparison to life shortening or life
threatening toxic exposures which could have been avoided. Thank you
for that powerful reminder and my prayers are with you that you can
also recover from the pain which seems to be affecting your enjoyment
of life.
Sherry Reed
More Shop Injuries:
The most stupidly painful thing I have done in the shop was while
casting, andstirring the metal with a graphite stir rod, I set it
down for a second, then grabbed it, not looking, andstill red hot
with the palm of my bare hand… it took me a couple of split
seconds to realize this was a little hotter than normal. About a 5
inch mega-burn accross the whole length of my right hand.
Hi all,
I have been sort of, not wanting to reply to this thread 'cause for
sure I going to be in the top of the dumbest of dumb (big grin)
Anyway, if any thing, you can judge me lucky,and that’s for sure…
Cira 1975
I was having to drill a three eights inch (10mm) hole in a wall and
to get it accurate I had to drill it into my work shop from the
outside inwards…The problem was that the workshop was on the second
floor of the building… so, being in my early twenties, age wise, no
problem,— I climbed over the balcony and started drilling with a
9 inch long masonry drill into the wall…
So far so dumb… the drill bit suddenly bent into a U and smacked
me right over the forehead… Wham!-- and that caused me to lose my
grip on the balcony railing.
I did a stuntman effect on my way down -and landed back first on a
BMW car’s roof. It broke my fall- and I walked away from that one
with a reticulated forehead and in need of a bottle of
Tylenol…Needles to say the owner of the car was not too happy…
But it didn’t matter to me, because I was very happy-- and anyway
insurance paid his bill…
Cira 1978
In took a half inch thick piece of wood and I wanted to make a three
quarter inch dapping block - and I held the piece of wood in my
hand, I put the drill bit into my hand big time… a three quarter
inch drill bit is big time, folks…Especially in the palm of your
hand… Circa 1980-ish
I was changing the neon sign faces of my work shop… also two
stories up .I had built scaffolding this time…one learns, you
know… Any way, I switched off the buzz bar (main switch) and
climbed to the top of the scaffolding. As I touched the neon
starter, I was under 250 volt live ( which is the local current in
Pretoria, in South Africa.) Man, that voltage grabbed me and made me
jump like the original barbel fish caught on a fishing line…
Witnesses below, said I wriggled for about 10 seconds before I
managed to get my left hand away with a bright blue bang, hanging
with my right arm holding on the sign’s anchor …yet again two
stories down… A large portion of skin was pulled off my hand and I
couldn’t play guitar for months afterwards…
Turns out that the main switch had fused solid and it remained on,
no matter which position it was in…on or off…Hmmm… assume
nothing…
Circa 1982-ish…
I had my Rock Rascal diamond blade tear, while I was sawing a
beautiful piece of Tourmaline
The blade tore and smacked the guard off it’s mountings, embedding a
portion of the blade in the ceiling… Needless to say the tourmaline
went from beautiful to sugar crystals in a nano-second…My safety
glasses were totally ruined and I suffered an unannounced case of
late- age Tourmaline induced acne…(–use a weaker motor …fool ) I
refuse to speak of the cutting disks,small drill bits, setting burs
and engravers that I have put in or through my hands.(there are to
many to remember)
Circa 2003 August
I was setting up my new workshop in St. Maarten and I ordered a 700
kilo safe from Florida. So when it arrived I had to cut the wall and
burglar bars away ’ cause it was to big and heavy to fit through the
passage… As the crane/truck brought it on the balcony it slipped
out of its cradle/straps. This time, I was not the dumb and dumber,
nevertheless, we all scuttled like mice when it came down. It
slammed down at 45 degrees against a retaining wall- and that was
the only reason no-one became ketchup…
The fact that no-one was crushed was only luck…Looking around I
noticed everybody had a slightly bleached look…myself included.
And now for the last and closest near- death experience I have had
for at least in the last month… in terms of jewelry…
I have been setting up my work shop for the last three months and,
in doing so I have been affixing a good couple of workbenches to
the wall and floor. When I was working, drilling, screwing and
putting in gas tubing and the like, I pull myself up from the floor
by grabbing the work bench I am working on…Well, I pulled myself
up from the bench I was working on and it had my oven and
vulcanizer on it and the entire bench tipped over-- I fell over
backwards accordingly-- The oven also fell over and landed next to my
cheek, edge first. It trashed the tiled floor and bruised my
shoulder and hip black and blue for weeks afterwards. I’m so lucky,
'cause I would have been killed if it had been just three inches
inwards…
I know…dumb and dumber and all, but at the end of the day I still
love making jewellery…( I also hope that I have nothing to report
on this subject for a very long time!) Big,big grin, seriously
lucky-- and what can I say!!
Cheers, Hans MeevisJewelry Studio of Hans Meevis
P.O Box 1059, Philipsburg, Sint Maarten
Netherthlands Antilles
Tel: +(599) 5224434
www.meevis.com
I’ve been feeling pretty smug throughout my reading of this thread.
Some of these injuries sound horrible and I’ve gone pretty much
unscathed in the shop. But Frank’s eyeball story reminded me of my
one really scary shop incident:
I was making a model of a pendant by pinning pieces of wire to stiff
cardboard with Hot Stuff (Crazy Glue) from one of those hard plastic
vials. The glue was old and gelling up a bit so I cut the top off
the dispenser so i could dip the wires in. Needless to say one wire
stuck a bit on the way out of the container, I broke it loose and the
container spun gracefully on it’s base and off the edge of the
bench, dropping down between my knees.
I immediately pull back and look down. The container must have hit
the hardwood floor square on it’s base because a few drops of the
glue shot straight up --well over three feet I might add-- and
splattered my right eyeball. I blink. My vision clouds and now I
can’t see out of at least one eye and I can’t blink there anymore
either. It starts to sting like the devil. And then the tears come,
in a flood.
Five seconds later my girfriend walks in and sees Cyclops-boy
standing frozen in position with gouts of tears streaming down his
face. She looks down at my feet, sees the glue splattered everywhere,
turns and walks out of the room. She returns with her coat in one
hand, mine in the other and we’re off to the hospital.
Aside from my pride being seriously buffeted by snickering nurses
everything went fine at the hospital. Apparently the flood of tears
–which had literally soaked my shirt-- had loosened most of glue
and they were able to pick most of it out in chunks. I did have a
slight chemical burn on the eyeball but that cleared up in a few
days.
So the moral of this story is don’t look down a vials of Crazy Glue
that you’ve cut the top off of and have just fallen off your bench
… or something like that. I use Crazy Glue a lot less now than I
used to.
“Let’s be careful out there”,
Cheers,
Trevor F
Shop injuries (Kinda gross) …
A few years back I was drilling a peg out of a pearl with a drill
bit, it slipped and went into my thumb. did not hurt all that much
but over the course of 3 years it left a hard lump in my thumb and
was hard for judging pressure. Then the Christmas 3 years later it
started to swell, and it swelled over the course of a month to twice
the size of my thumb, making it hard to work, so I finely went to the
dr, and they sent me to get an x-ray, but it sowed nothing. Then
being an x sailor I started messing with it, and one night late I got
up the nerve to pumture it and a very thick white stuff came out, and
in large quanitys. then I squeezed it real hard and something popped
up and went back in when I relieved pressure, I got the pliers and
squeezed once more and this time when it popped up I grabbed it with
the pliers and pulled it out, what it was, was 1/2 of a cartridge
kind of sphere, so I went after the other half and got it
also. now I am left with a small scare but no lump
allright already with the stories, i think that we all should give
lists of precautionary measures that we have instituted in our daily
work routines, as absolute gospel. Obviously this is meant for the
beginners. Not to do so would make this thread a farce!
For a really large, really bad burn, tape a piece of aloe over it like a band-aid, and leave it there for a day or two.
For a “really large, really bad burn,” get professional medical
attention.
A burn can be one of the most serious types of injuries to the human
body, prompting deep-tissue infection, gangrene, shock and many
other really nasty complications, up to and including death. ANY 3rd
degree burn (one involving an open wound/sore in which blisters have
popped or where there is exposure of the underlayer of skin) should
be seen by a medical professional.
One reason for this is that you, as the victim, may be completely
unaware of the significance of a burn injury, as nerves are
frequently deadened by the burn process – you may not feel as much
pain as you would expect with a serious injury. Additionally, unless
the area is very QUICKLY cooled to “normal” body temperature, the
“cooking” process is continuing deep in the tissues until the
temperature has lowered enough to prevent further damage. An analogy
that might help understand this is when you cook meat in the oven.
Cooks are taught to take the roast out when the inside temperature
has reached 10 degrees under the goal temperature, because the
cooking will continue for 15 minutes or so at the center of the meat
after removing it from the oven – the outer layers are warmer and
transferring heat toward the cooler inner layers until the
temperature throughout “equalizes.”
The Aloe plant is wonderful and the INSIDE of the leaves (the
sticky, gooey part) is a very respectable remedy for first-degree
(reddening and pain) and even some second-degree burns (reddening
with visible blistering) if used correctly on a sterile wound. It’s
a significant or main ingredient, for example, in many sunburn
remedies. But it is not enough to simply “tape on a leaf” if the
burn is large or bad or open at all – you could be risking loss of
the limb, loss of deep muscle, or worse. Really, really not
something you want to play around with.
This is one of the big things “pounded” into us in all of the health
worker first aid training I’ve ever had, so I just had to jump in to
this one. In a profession like ours, better to be safe than sorry.
Karen Goeller
@Karen_Goeller
Hand-crafted artisan jewelry
http://www.nolimitations.com
My wife adds a little twist to the aloe vera remedy by gathering
pieces of aloe and splitting them ,then storing them in the
freezer,so the benefit of the aloe is combined with the cooling
action from the freezer…it works very well…I recently picked up
a sterling “mask of comedy” that I’d quenched insufficiently …only
about 5mm in size, and got the image of a laughing face branded onto
my index finger…quite ironic really…but the cold aloe soon
cleared it up. Steve Holden www.platayflores.com
I had about an eighth inch piece of saw blade in my finger for a
couple of years before it finally worked it’s way to the surface and
I pulled it out. After having sawed into my finger on countless
occasions I have finally reached a point where I always keep the
bench pin between the saw blade and my finger. That said, I will
probably saw into my finger today… Deb Karash
I always love hearing from Noel here but I am afraid to disagree
with her. This thread should remain open just like the other topics.
I was skipping over most of the “Shop Injuries” messages but just
started reading them two days ago. It really has made me think and
realize that seemingly innocuous things can be really dangerous. I
have really benefited from this discussion.
It’s so easy to skip over and delete the message if you are tired of
reading them and just go on to the next one.
Dan T.
I have been reading all these posts with interest. The accidents
posted here are for the most part incidents that I have been aware of
and/or have encountered. But one thing I have never considered is the
danger of a foredom handpiece with long hair…This is not a problem
for me, my hair is short, but I have recently begun introducing my
daughter to the bench and I now know another place where care must be
taken.
In response to someone’s survey of surgical gloves…I am adamantly
against gloves when polishing.
Thank you all for you posts,
Mark