Safety First

My dad is a safety professional.  Teaches saftey for miners.  Teaches Hunter Saftey.  He takes it very seriously.  Has for a long time.  Naturally, as the children of "Saftey Man", we also can detect unsafe events more than the average human.

Well, my "Safety Kid" alarm should have been working a bit better when Nathan showed me this Stanley board tool.  It is made for using as a board bender (when you have crooked boards, but need them to be plum, you can use this tool to torque the board into position realtively easily).  It's also got a hammer head and a crow bar at the other end.


If you see this tool and are tempted to buy, please put it back on the shelf...

 Nathan was using this tool as a hammer last night.  The better tool for his this particular job should have been a sledge hammer, but well we don't have one and this was handy...on the last whack, the tool flung out of his hand, cut through 2 layers of pig skin and about 1/2" - 3/4" deep into his hand between thumb and fore finger.

Yeah.

We visited the Walk In clinic, received 6 stitches and a tetanus shot.  No tendons or nerves were damaged.  He hurts, of course. 

I'm mad that my "double ended tools are bad" rule didn't pop into my head when I saw this tool the first time :/  Our conversations later have recovered a few new safety rules:

1.  Double ended tools are a bad idea.  Period.  Got that Stanley?
2.  If you have to try that hard, you are doing something wrong (N said he was really wailing on the thing he was working on...working TOO hard...)
3.  The motivation of saving money & materials isn't a good enough excuse.
4.  Remember that other people can spend time taking the widget apart to be used later & use new materials. (or don't mix demo with building)

On a good note.  I think the family did a really good job of changing plans and taking care of what was needed efficiently and lovingly.  All kinds of plans got put on hold, rearranged, then rearranged again.  BUT no one yelled, no one freaked out...

And...now the "Snoopervisors" have asked to help...well Chuck did!  Bill has a tool that will help Nathan, so great contributions on all fronts!  To add insult to injury, the plywood delivery came today.  We were excited to get some sheathing on the floors!  Still are, it'll just be a few more days. 

Not for the faint of heart...but scroll down for injury pics if you are interested...

Getting wound cleaned out

OUCH!  deep in the middle, not so much toward the palm.