Battle Wounds from modeling?

mitsdude

Timely subject. This happened just a few days ago.

I'm cleaning up a part with an x-acto knife.

The part is in my left hand. The knife in my right hand.

I've gotten to where I remove my glasses while doing close up work.

With my right hand I go to rub my eye forgetting the knife is in my hand.

Fortunately the tip of the knife only hits the bridge of my nose.

It was definitely a wakeup call!

i have tried to do that too and now i weart safety glasses when i am using blades. i wear a surgical mask when sanding body filler or doing large sanding and a respirator when using cya since i have gained some lung sensitivty to it. always but googles and respirator on when airbrushing because, w/o my glasses, i am almost closer than the airbrush. my ship club guys call me squint.

I have a pair of matching 3/8" scars on my left hand from when I was 10, one on the palm side of my thumb web and one on the back. I had just found a box of my grandfathers tools and inside was one of those auto screwdrivers that you push the handle in to turn. I was trying to screw in a firewall engine mount for an RC cub I was building, holding the firewall in my left hand and pushing with my right. I remember the screwdriver slipping and dropping the part, then seeing the screwdriver dangle limp out of my hand. I yanked it out, ran downstairs dripping blood and got my dad who bandaged me up. By the time I got there my heart was pumping hard and I remember almost fainting. Later on I used them as battle scars to impress girls in high school.  

Speaking for myself only if I posted a pic of old battle wounds you couldn't tell the scars from the wrinkles!

Devil Dawg

Cool, Reaper! You're the first to post a picture in this thread. Plus, we learned a new word, too. Never heard of detritus before. Might have to add that one to the FSM Glossary!

Man, isn't modeling educational?!?  

Gary

Cool, Reaper! You're the first to post a picture in this thread. Plus, we learned a new word, too. Never heard of detritus before. Might have to add that one to the FSM Glossary!

Funny but I almost forgot about this post until seeing it today. Good timing too as I suffered a new injury (after doing so well too dangit). I was trimming some sprue detritus off a nozzle for my F15K and I had just put on a new blade for the xacto. Being used to working with a blade near the end of its life, I used a bit more force than necessary for a new blade. Needless to say the blade slice through the sprue remains and continued to slice into my thumb. I now have a very nice deep cut on the side of my thumb that goes all the way to the side of the fingernail. Serves me right I guess for throwing caution into the wind. I almost forgot this wound too. It happened about five years ago but I recieved it when I was using a plastic scorer to trim up some 1/4 inch thick pieces of acrylic for a display. As I was coming down on the down stroke, the scorer slipped out of the grove I was making for the break and went straight into my palm. Anyone who has used one before knows you have to apply decent force or your going to be scoring all night till it gets to a point where you can snap the acrylic. Anyway it went into my palm and all the way to the bone. I said f$$k it and threw on like 4 bandaids and went back to work. Funny thing about it is I can touch that spot and press hard on it with no pain or feeling but when I just lightly touch it with the scorer, I get a weird almost uncomfortable sensation in that spot.

For me, I've only experienced the infrequent X-Acto blade cuts on the fingers in my 30-odd years of modeling. Now, using power tools, on the other hand................

Back to our hobby, though... About 10 years ago, I had a friend in Indianapolis who was building a rather nice modeling bench for himself - alone (he wasn't married, either, so no wife to help him when things got rough). With a really nice Craftsman drill in his right hand and a long Phillips bit in it, he had a piece of the bench in between his knees, attempting to get a screw started in the wood. The drill bit decided it didn't want to put the screw in the wood, and takes out his right knee cap instead. I lived about 7 miles away at the time, and this was about 9:30pm, but he calls me anyway, in severe pain and anguish. I drove over, expecting to see him over-reacting to the wound, but he was definitely not acting. Blood everywhere, and he is  belly-crawling to the door to let me in. I had to carry him to my little Dodge Dakota truck, get him somewhat-situated in the front seat (which was extremely painful for him, as he couldn't bend his right leg, and my truck was a standard-cab, which meant that the seat wouldn't go very far back at all), and got him to the emergency room. He couldn't walk for almost a month after that little episode. He still finished the bench......eventually.

Timely subject. This happened just a few days ago.

I'm cleaning up a part with an x-acto knife.

The part is in my left hand. The knife in my right hand.

I've gotten to where I remove my glasses while doing close up work.

With my right hand I go to rub my eye forgetting the knife is in my hand.

Fortunately the tip of the knife only hits the bridge of my nose.

It was definitely a wakeup call!

Sprue-ce Goose

VanceCrozier

Most of my self-inflicted, model-related "wounds" are... stress-based & emotional.

No cats harmed during the making of models is something to be proud of ........ 

MEOUWWWW!!!!!

Years back I was working on a German half track and was going to cut out some panels using my trusty xacto knife when it slipped and I buried it to the hilt in my right leg just above the knee. Think 'Young Frankenstein' and you get the picture. And like Gene Wilder I opened my hand, observed the buried knife and yanked the blasted thing out. ...That was 3 stitches.

 

Scott

VanceCrozier

Most of my self-inflicted, model-related "wounds" are... stress-based & emotional.

No cats harmed during the making of models is something to be proud of ........ 

Most of my self-inflicted, model-related "wounds" are... stress-based & emotional.

I blasted my eyes once with canned airbrushed propellent once. I've slice fingers and thumbs. I seem infamous for squeezing the Exacto knife back towards my thumb as I clean up attachment points, sometimes I pull too hard. And then there was the time I superglued a piece of balsa to my el;bow and didn't notice for several hours later. That was more of an "injured pride" thing though.

I was talking about this threat today and was told about a friend's father who got an exact knife stuck in the bone of a finger, and it was stuck in wouldn't come out. A nice trip to the emergency room followed by an operation. It wasn't from modeling rather it was wallpaper. I thought I would mention it, and make everyone cringe.

I know this is an older thread but I couldn't resist.  Besides the normal minor cuts and glued fingers I was about 12 or 13 building an aircraft carrier. Trying to paint all of those tiny little gloss blue jets. Well I tipped the bottle over into my lap. I was wearing shorts. Mom had to almost bathe me in paint thinner to clean me up.  Also had an incident last year. Was building some shelves for my display area. Was using screw gun to put them together. Bit slipped off screw head and drove deep into my right thumb. Lost part of my cuticle and my nail is growing back funny. Oh well

Once upon a time I was decaling a model.. Revell F-15E I believe. I dropped something on the floor, put my knife down, bent down to get it.. and planted my lip right against the knife blade. I have the scar to this day.

I have been doing a good job of training myself to not catch anything that falls. However, a while back I dropped an Xacto with a brand new blade straight down.. Right in to my foot. The blade buried most of the way in my foot. The dining room and kitchen still looked like a murder scene when my significant other got home.. If she had given me an extra 30 minutes she would have never known it happened.

Note: I know never to pull out anything inside a puncture wound. However, I was not explaining that one to the medics so I handled it myself.

I found I stopped injuring my fingers when I started changing blades more often. The sharp ones don't slip.

I also managed to splatter Model Master Insignia Yellow all over my dining room when I was opening a stuck bottle. It took every drop of mineral spirits I had but I managed to hide all the evidence except the smell before she got home.

Well so far knock wood nothing but the most minor cuts for me.  I use my Xacto like a paring knife a lot so my thumb gets pretty raw...

But I did once learn something the hard way that should go with out saying:

Never use your teeth to remove the cap on a tube of superglue!

:)

Well I guess my two worst ones would be, using a single sided razor blade to remove a part from a sprue, all because I was to lazy to grab a side cutter. And the entire time, as I am pulling the blade to ward the thumb on my opposite hand, thinking to myself, this is really a stupid move. Viola!!!! I was proven right, it was in fact a very stupid move, razor broke through the sprue at the end of the cut, and lodged nicely into the end of my thumb, nothing a half a box of band aids couldn't cure, but completely preventable. <homersimpsonvoice>DOH!</homersimpsonvoice>

Second one was accidental, using a Dremel with a cylinder shaped carbide cutting bit, cleaning up the edge of some plexi glass for a part, and the Dremel bit the edge of the plexi  and bounced out of my hand, landed inside my slipper, bit end down and got tangled into my sock (thank god for the sock!) I was left with a wound about the size of a dollar coin, that took about three weeks to fully heal up, and a mangled sock. But it was the sock that bought me a couple of seconds time to pull the plug and grab the Dremel, without the sock, it would of been straight into the skin.

Your not a real modeler until you have a few scars from hobby knives. All of mine happened when I was a teenager. My worst was when I cut my fingernail with a razor blade. Ended up going to the emergency room with that one. I'll spare everyone the rest of the details.

I will never model without a full suit of armor after reading this.

f8sader

Never attempt to catch a falling X-acto knife, especially with a No. 11 blade mounted!  Now my round knife handles have the "press on" rubber erasers mounted so the knife won't roll.

 

A couple of tips to reduce the potential for injury: I have a large workbench and when I put the knife down, I make sure it is perpendicular to the edge of the workbench facing me, so if it should roll, it can't fall off that edge. If I'm putting the knife down for more than a minute or so, I put the little plastic blade guard back on to prevent the knife from rolling at all.

DiscoStu

My worst experience didn't involve me, but my 2-year old daughter.  She wandered into the basement to see me work and in a flash managed to grab my extra thin CA, spilled a pool on the table and placed her hand in it.  In an instant she was stuck to my table screaming bloody murder.  The lesson here is never, EVER, take your eyes off a toddler.

 

ohhh, that sounds bad. How did you unstuck her? (I have a two year old running around the house, so I would like to know such things)

 

As for my own battle wounds, just a few small scars where I cut myself. Nothing major.

Many years ago, I worked as a goldsmith for a manager who was generous enough to allow me to stay late after-hours and off the clock to use the company equipment for my modelling projects. During one Christmas season, we worked until well after midnight to get the shop work caught up and I clocked out at around 3:00 AM to solder together a Poste Militaire figure of a 90mm samurai mounted on horseback before heading home. My manager was struggling with a particularly challenging channel set ring and asked me to pass him a tube of wax which we used to lubricate drill bits and burrs while working metal. I stretched my arm out to pass him the wax and got lost in a conversation on how best to address the problem, chatting the whole time with arm still extended, then turned back to the figure. About ten minutes later, he asked if I could smell someone cooking bacon. Pretty odd considering that hour of the night and that the mall had been closed for many hours, but it certainly did smell of bacon. I finished soldering together the horse and my forearm was suddenly in a lot of pain - in passing the wax, I had apparently placed my left arm in the flame of his oxy-acetylene torch and left it there while we chatted, but did not see it because I had my Optivisor lowered over my eyes. To this day, I'm not certain if it was because I was so tired or because the flame ran so hot that I did not feel the burn. I'm pretty certain that was the last time I brought a kit to work with me...

Let's see.  My worst was when I was seven.  I was using a jigsaw and somebody had not tightened the blade.  After a few strokes, a third of the way through my wrist.  I wrapped it up in paper towels and duct tape.  Many a time have I glued my fingers to things.  The worst was when I glued my index finger to my eye lid.  I was reaming a clogged ca bottle, with piano wire.  On one particular down stroke, the wire missed the hole and went through three of my fingers.  Didn't hurt a bit.  Took a good chunk out of my right thumb, while removing flash.  Fingers like to bleed.  And, several more that are erroneous.

Well , This should fall right in here:

  I was about thirteen .My very first NEW X-ACTO knife and a BIG model . The model , LIFE-LIKE'S STEAMER " NATCHEZ " .Dad got them mixed up .I really wanted the ROBT .E.LEE . I still was very thankful .That was an expensive model back then . Now , they went on vacation to FLORIDA leaving me to take care of the house and collect the tenant rents when they were put in the mailslot in the living room door . ( We owned an old fashioned boarding house at the time .Would you believe 1958 ?) I had the ability to call the police or the fire department if I had to . Try that today !

   Now , I am sitting at the kitchen table working on the model . I am trimming the deck where the sprue  , yup, that stuff( a real thick piece) was attached ) Knife slipped , went to the bone , right down the center of my thumb .Called our vet .YUP , I said the vet .Why? well I knew he was a responsible adult and a ship modeler . Followed his instructions and by the time MOM and DAD got home I didn't need even a band -aid anymore .. Mom said a month later , she figured what happened , by the way I used my pens and pencils .See , MOM'S even have eyes that see at long distance ! He ! He !  I still do knife things .You can believe that ! I am HUMAN after all , durned it !       Tanker-Builder

My uncle was a butcher, and he taught me something very important when I was a kid-  "NEVER try to catch a falling knife!"  Wise words that I have always heeded!

i dropped an xacto with a brand new blade and caught it by squeezing my legs together fast. unfortunialy it fell parallel to the floor and perpendicular to my thighs. stayed that way when i opened my legs. now i keep a towel across my lap to catch errant tools and parts.

dang, when i think i could get hurt doing some cutting,..... I just have my 3 year old do it   lol jk

I can relate,  the Xacto #11 blade and my right index finger have had love hate relationship for decades.

I've take off the left side of the knuckle as well as embedding the blade in the main part of that finger.  And I had a brand new #11 that poked into the finger tip and as I was trying to get it out of the tip it dragged itself all the way down to the first knuckle, thus opening up the end of my finger.

John

You brought back another memory for me DiscoStu. I have a son, now 5yrs old but when he was 3 he went into my office/modeling room while I was predisposed on the toilet. I had been painting and rushed out to use the restroom real fast. He was being loud playing so all was well. While in the restroom it grew to be very quiet. My dad alarms started going off saying something is wrong. I finished up quickly and rushed back into my office to find that I know had multicolor walls and carpet. No paint in the mouth or anything, not even a drop on him in fact, but two or three of my brushes were ruined as well as my walls and floor. Amazingly he didnt even touch or get a drop on the model I was working on which was right in front of him albeit I did have to scare up a new instructions manual which had so much paint on it that it was impossible to decipher.