Occupational hazards
A bunch of years ago, I was helping a friend of mine build a garage in the middle of noplace. We had gotten it under roof and had the outside walls up, and I was there, working alone, hanging interior walls. I had a Paslode cordless framing nailer, which was a godsend, and I was just framing away. It was a fine day, and I was moving right along.This was before the day of the anti-tiedown on nailers, most guys taped the switch down and used the nose switch to trigger the nailer, just pressing against the board triggered it and it shot a nail.
I was struggling with a particularly virulent case of athelete’s foot at the time, and it was killing me this day; I’d bet I took my steel toes off a dozen times to scratch and apply gold bond.
One time, though, in an absentminded moment of personal stupidity, I put my foot up against a wall, and scratched it with the nailgun. Remembering the taped down trigger and hearing the gun fire happened almost instantaneously. So there I was, standing on one foot, nailgun in hand,hammer at least six feet away, right foot nailed to a wall about 3′ up in the air.
SO I bent down and grabbed a stud off the pack, and dragged the hammer to me, where, as gently as possible, I hooked the claws under the head (thankfully I had gone through the steel toe, otherwise ithe head would have been buried in the meat of my foot) and pried the nail out of the 2×4, the boot sole, my foot, and the steel toe.
I bled pretty good for a long time. It had gone through the foot just between the second and third toe, not hitting any major blood vessels, and not causing any major collateral damage, but it hurt like hell.
I had to finish out the day, so I did, another two hours. And I got all the interior walls up. But I was in some pain. ANd I took the tape off the switch.
13 comments Og | Uncategorized
Youch. We used to do the opposite: pull back the nose trigger and wedge a piece of wood in the safety hole, and used the trigger to nail. Of course this was cabinet making, where the precise location a finishing nail was extremely important, and the nose trigger blocked the view somewhat. It made it easy to have nailgun fights, too, which I never participated in, but I did see one guy hold his gun up to another guy’s asscheek and shoot a two inch finishing nail into his butt through denim. Countersank about a half an inch. Dumbasses.
Not so much an occupational hazard as it is “better lucky than good.”
Since you’ll never get off that easy again, may I suggest you never try.
M
You perhaps misunderstood the point of the post. It was not “Occupation: Carpenter” but “Occupation: Foole”. But your point is valid, and I keep the safeties functional on my nailguns now.
I worked at a pallet shop years ago. One particularly bright guy was using a staplegun when he noticed the sole of his boot had come loose. Naturally he decided to staple his boot back together without removing it from his foot first.
You could actually watch the pain signals slowly work their way along the nerves from his heel to his head. Classic.
Saw a guy nail his hand to a 2×4 wall stud once.
I still laugh about it.
He just kept yakking, looking backwards and not paying a bit of attention, then wham!
We left him there for a few minutes, just for fun.
I guess the best one of those I ever saw wasn’t from so much inattention or thoughtlessness as it was from cocky overconfidence.
Back in the mid’80s, my shop foreman at the Patch Factory (Old Plant) was up on the deck of our big two-color press, watching it ink up (press running at 12,000 iph, rollers perhaps 20x that). He was all high and tight for safety — no loose ends to get caught in the rollers, all gates shut and locked, rubber gloves …
When he decided to check the tack on the top distributor roller.
As he said later, as soon as he saw the tip of the middle finger of his glove get jerked around the roller — even before he could get his other arm moving through the 15 degree arc to the emergency stop button, and even before he heard the Giant Voice of God shouting YOU DUMBASS! in his mind’s ear, his stupid little brain said, “Yup. It’s tacky, alright.”
Fortunately, the only permanent damage was the loss of sensation in his fingertip. But that was AFTER all the usual drama with red lights and sirens and paperwork and everything.
M
OTOH, I bet you did not feel an itch in that foot for some time thereafter.
Indeed not, Pascal!!
To save a little time we used to wire up the guard on circular saws.
Watched the boss set his down with the blade moving at lots of RPM’s, saw went around and over his foot.
Blade went deep into the foot.
Ruined the shoe.
Some swearing.
Gouged the heck out of his plastic foot.
Widowmaker tree had taken his lower leg years before.
Don’t you just hate the feeling that you just realized you’re doing something stupid right after you’re committed to the act? And your next thought is ‘Gawd, that’s going to hurt”.
My own personal “Gawd, that’s gonna hurt’ moment occurred at 20,000 volts DC. A quick {{SNAP!!}} and it was over. Fortunately nobody saw me as I sat in the middle of the substation floor with tears running down my cheeks…
MC
[…] Since Og told on himself, I guess I’ll come clean too. […]
I used to work under cars in the florida summer… so there were lots of metal parts above my head that were hot enough to burn me. the interesting thing was that the layer of sweat on my skin would sizzle as it boiled off when i touched something really hot. so you would hear a sizzle about 2 seconds before the pain started. ill never forget that sound.