Well today is the first day in 4 days that my hand has been not hurting enough to type a short message. On friday I learned the hard way that; Razor blade + Metal Lathe + Bamboo = 15 stitches in your right hand… You you guessed it. i was trying to work on a section of bamboo when my Medulabadidea thought it would be a good idea to use a 4" industrial razor as a chissel… Well to make a long story short, the razor caught on the wood “of course” and spun around in my hand “of course” and now my hand looks like I had an argument with a Quesinart. 8 stitches on my right thumb, 2 stitches on the tip of my index finger, 2 stitches on the tip of my middle finger and 2 stitches on the side of the knuckle closest to my finger nail also on my middle finger… What have I learned from this little exerscise in stupidity? Novicane needles in the tips of your fingers hurt more than the cuts the are supposed to numb, and Razor blades do not make good chissels… and it is far better to cut you arm, than your hand 
Goodnight
ooouuch…hope the pain will get better soon…you dummy. 
Yow!!! Don’t they do glue down your way? Sympathies.
Oooooh I felt that.
TMI
I’ve done small amounts of self-mutilation whilst engaged in the using of sharp tools, but this sounds really nasty.
Good luck with the recovery.
John S
I am sorry to hear about blood on bamboo. Amongst Hindus bamboo has both divine and malefic connotations. The appollonian cowherd god Krishna, the lover of soul, plays a bamboo flute. On the other hand some (like my ma) will not grow bamboo near the house for fear of evil spirits that it may attract within its grove.
I would tend to see your accident in the best light,
as a crucible for spiritual cleansing,
a little sacrifice before your rising as a bamboo master.
May the Spirit heal well.
Rest well.
Yup, instrument making CAN be a cruel mistress who requires a blood sacrifice from time to time…
shudder nasty, wishing you a quick heal!
I can sympathize. A few years ago, while removing plaster from a ceiling, I ripped open my left index finger with the scraper I was using. I was home alone and both our cars were being used so I had to walk 1.5 miles to the emergency room. That earned me 5 stitches. One week later I was back to playing guitar for a flamenco dance class. I just put a bandaid over the stitches and ignored the pain. Stupid, eh?
Take it easy (like I didn’t) and be careful out there!
Mike
You’re very lucky there was no tendon damage.
I will again remind all reading this, of something I read years ago in a Fine Woodworking magazine article reporting a study on hand injuries.
They found that in most instances, just before the accident occurred, the injured woodworker had an intuition, a gut feeling that what they were doing might be dangerous. When I was 12 years old, I severed the extensor tendon in my left index finger, which remains disfigured 39 years later. Just before that happened, I had the thought, “I maybe could hurt myself using a knife this way.” I’ve taught myself to recognize such thoughts and change whatever I’m doing immediately.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I had no premonition but then I’m pretty dense when it comes to intuition stuff. My first inkling that I was, or would be, injured was pain in my finger and blood dripping on the floor. I hate getting blood on the floor.
Mike
I’ve had plenty of injuries before which there was no mental warning. However, I’ve developed a habit of figuring out what happened whenever I hurt myself, however slightly.
It’s been many years, knock on wood, since I cut myself badly. For several years after I stopped cutting myself, though, I would often bang up my right hand when a tool I was using slipped or went further than I expected, and my hand hit an edge of the workpiece itself.
I didn’t expect that to begin with, but having noted that it happens, I’ve added it to my database of things that can happen. Nowadays, I often notice I’m doing something in a way that I could hurt myself by banging my right hand into the workpiece. When I notice, then I change what I’m doing. It happens only rarely now. In other words, the intuition of danger isn’t necessarily inborn, and it’s worth cultivating.
When I got my first carpentry job, the boss gave me some work to do on a table saw. I asked him if there was anything I needed to know about using it safely. He said, “Are you afraid of it?” I said yes. He said, “You’ll be fine.”
That was about as stupid as anything could be. I’m very lucky I still have 10 fingers after that job. Generalized fear doesn’t help at all. What helps is knowing specifically what’s dangerous or of unknown danger and heeding the thought that something might not be safe by changing to a practice that’s known to be safe.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Oh man, that’s a drag, Cyf! Get better soon!
This gives new meaning to Dale’s “Bloody Hand Whistle Plans”
OUCH! You shouldn’t handle sharp objects after your 4th adult beverage! Hope you heal up soon. Will you be able to play anytime soon?
Ouch thats nasty… 
but as Jerry says when yer hear a wee voice saying thats nae the way ta use a tool stop. 
Its saves heaps on bandaids
I once did something similar. I worked for 5 years as a “professional” metal finisher. As a favor I was buffing an antique boy scout straight knife on a 5 horsepower industrial buffing machine which turned 135 miles per/Hr. ( which I bought from the company and now sits unused in a storage basement). The edge which had become razor sharp caught the buffing wheel. I got a 3 inch DEEP incision and the knife was thrown against a cinder block wall.After cleaning up blood and using an entire box of steri strips I spent 3 hours "restoring " the knife.The owner was very pleased with the results and I no longer buff knives or antique straight razors. 
edited to add. Jerry, I had a premonition something bad was going to happen just before I (stupidly) turned the knife edge TOWARDS the wheel just to reach that last little spot.In fact a got a sick feeling in my stomach but did it anyway
I have mental warnings about stuff like that all the time. Mabey even every day (such as, “I shouldn’t be going down these stairs alone because I’ll be mugged.”). Usually, nothing happens though.
Jerry Freeman wrote:
When I got my first carpentry job, the boss gave me some work to do on a table saw. I asked him if there was anything I needed to know about using it safely. He said, “Are you afraid of it?” I said yes. He said, “You’ll be fine.”
I have heard this line of thought before in my chemistry lab.
One lady always followed proper procedure because she was afraid of everything in the lab. It made her tense.
I mentioned this to a coworker and he said that he thought it was stupid the way she wore gloves all the time and always made sure to take off her lab coat leaving the lab and putting it on when reentering.
I stated that those habits are good and you should respect the chemicals, but her fear was the problem.
Any way one or two sulfuric acid burns and he now thinks that gloves and safety goggles are a good thing.
I prefer a more balanced approach, but what ever keeps you safe is fine by me.
PS I have done my share of preventable accedents.
I agree with Jerry about the little voice that often goes unheeded. I’ve had my car broken into twice, each time when leaving it in a spot that made my little voice unhappy. The second time, I went back after about half an hour to move it since I noticed my unease, but it was too late.
When working on a band saw, I try to follow this rule: Never push in a direction that, if I slip, will make my hand go towards the blade.
Aint’ it the truth?
As I’ve mentioned previously, I managed to stick the tip of my left middle finger into a table saw blade while passing my hand over it to move a piece of plywood along the table. This was while I was building an Appalachian dulcimer in a US military craft shop in Japan.
There was a thud and no pain, but my left hand was flung up against my right shoulder, and when I looked down, I saw a spray of blood running from the blade, down across the wood.
I was afraid to look at my hand for a minute or so, figuring that my guitar-playing days might be over. When I saw that the tip of my finger resembled fresh hamburger in both color and texture, I went over to the craft shop office and asked for a bandage. Another GI saw me and insisted on driving me to the hospital–about a 20-to-30-minute drive. I sat with my hand raised to keep it from dripping too much blood.
This was on a Saturday, and there was just a single corpsman on duty–and just a moment before I arrived, a woman was brought in with a broken hip. By the time the corpsman got to me, the numbness had pretty much worn off, and it was beginning to throb.
Finally, he brought me into the office, took a look at it, and got the novocaine. Inserting the needle into the hamburger wasn’t much fun, but when he shot the juice to me, it felt like I imagine a glowing, red-hot ice pick would feel. It was somewhat intense. Then, however, all the pain evaporated, and I almost collapsed from relaxation. I hadn’t realized how much I had tensed up while waiting. I didn’t feel a thing as he cleaned it and covered it. I’m not sure whether there were any stitches involved. I don’t think so, though.
When I gasped at the pain of the shot, he said, “Hurts, huh? Lots of people throw up from the pain of that shot.”
Your injury sounds much worse than mine, Cyf. I’ve done my share of attacking my appendages with sharp objects, too, but nothing like what you described.
While I’m here, I might as well repeat the rest of the story:
It took nine months before I could even think of pressing a guitar string with that finger. For about six months, I wore a little strip of aluminum, fashioned into a bumper to protect it. There’s still a lump of scar tissue on the tip of that finger, and it’s a bit shorter than the rest, so when playing guitar or mandolin, the fingernail often gets kind of chewed up by the strings, and it looks like rats have been chewing at it.
The guy at the pharmacy in the Army hospital who handed me my various medications afterwards told me the following story:
Seems his father ran a cabinet shop. One of the workers cut off a finger in the bandsaw. Some time later, a fellow came by from the insurance company to find out how it had happened. The victim stood at the bandsaw and said, “I turned on the saw, and I went…” – and cut off the next finger over.
I wonder if the insurance company decided to add an intelligence test to its reqirements.