Won't be making knives for about 6 weeks :(( !

Well I won't be making knives for awhile. On Wednesday I was cutting corian on the table saw for knife handles and waiting for my Grizzly knife making grinder to arrive when the corian kicked back on me and knocked my left thumb into the saw blade. I foolishly (my wife added that part) tried to drive myself to the emergency room and got as far as the doctors office down the street from me. I was taken to the hospital and seen in the ER. The ER doc took one look at my hand and said "Oh that is surgical". It took the hand surgeon an hour and a half to clean out the wound, fuse the distal joint and close the wound. I lost motion in the last knuckle but at least I still have my thumb. I spent the night in the hospital and came home the next morning. My grizzly 2X72 grinder sits in the garage waiting for my recovery. Just another little bump in the road. I learned the safety lesson the hard way so hopefully no one else has to. I've been using power tools most of my life, maybe I just got complacent and messed up. Looking forward to when I can get back to knife making.

Sorry to hear.Take care of your hand,that grinder will still be sitting there when you heal.
Good luck

God bless,Keith

Ouch!! Of all the power tools I have in my shop, The table saw scares me the most! I have seen a person cut three finger right off. Live and learn! Hope your recovery time goes by fast for ya!
Martin

Hang in there and do what the doctors tell you to do. It really sucks to hear that you injured yourself but at least all the body parts are still there. Ya, your wife is right that it wasn't the smartest thing to try to drive yourself to the ER but, even though I know better, I might have tried to do it myself.

Doug

Sorry to hear about this mishap,
Don't feel to dumb about it, Not only have I driven myself to the ER, One time I had to take a bus! LOL
I had a hardened blade Helicopter on me when I was trying to drill out the handle holes that shrunk during Cryo treatment.
Opened my left index finger to the bone! It's still numb in part of the wound.

A lot of feeling did return from how it was initially, So Like the others said! Rest, Do What your Dr tells you to do!
And even more important is to NOT do what your Dr tells you not to do!

I learned to wear a glove on that left hand at the drill press and to clamp the darn blade down.

Keep the faith!
It will work out.

Laurence

www.rhinoknives.com/

Accidents happen, just have to learn from them and find ways to keep them from happening again. A year ago or so I was in the shop with flip flops on, I stepped on a blade that fallen off the work bench and somehow landed and on a 2x4 piece causing the tip to face upwardly at an angle. Seeing as I had just sharpened the darn thing, it had to trouble going through about an inch into my foot. Luckily, it didn't hit anything important and with the help of my wife and kids, I was able to suture it up and teach a lesson on tying a surgeons knot. (had I been alone I would have gone to the hospital but my kids gave me the inspiration to do it myself. I learned not to tell them military ditch medicine stories.

Well sorry to take focus away from your story.

Anyhow, God bless you with a quick healing phase.

Could have been alot worse, at least you still have all your fingers. I foolishly was pushing too hard on the metal bandsaw and had a small mishap.
It happens to us all, as others stated learn from it and dont ever make that mistake again.
Now rest up and get back to the shop soon.
CW

Best Wishes to you! I can certainly relate....I was down for 8 weeks when they had to take a chunk of my right lung a couple of years ago. If you're like me, it gives you a lot of time to think about things, and in my case, it really changed my attitude, and attention to detail when I'm in the shop.

Will keep you in prayer!

Prayers for a quick and complete healing for you.

I've had my table saw kick a 3' x 3' chunk of 3/4" ply wood at me. Got a good bruise on my stomach (got lots of padding there:biggrin. So about a month later my co worker shows me this bruise on his stomach. I responded "plywood on your table saw gotcha' ?" He was amazed that I knew before he said anything. So I fessed up that I had just done the same thing.

Anyways I figured out that as I was cutting the board, I twisted it between the fence and the blade (10" Delta, 1.5 HP) and it caught.

One safety tip for the Grizzly: Wear a baseball cap. It is better to sand down the brim of a cap than your forehead. Guess how I learned this one.....

One more thing, take off the graphite platen liner and replace it with a ceramic one. The graphite one that came with mine was too soft and wore out quickly.

Ric

Kickback on a table saw, Oh yeah, I have been there and done that!:what!: It is that one moment of complacency that causes us do to do stupid things. And what makes them the most stupid is we usually no better!

Glad it was not worse than it was! Best wishes for a quick recovery.

First time contributor here and hate to be the bearer of bad news, but..................
You will have to construct your own work rest for the Grizzly. The one that comes with the unit is a fubar. If I had known about the NWG when I returned to making knives a year ago I would have gone that route. I am a relative short distance to the Grizzly showroom in Springfield, MO. so I purchased their unit. Whoever said to wear a cap was spot on. This unit only runs at high speed and I have learned the hard way that is not the best way to re-learn grinding. The good news is the buffer works well! The platen needs modification as someone else mentioned. I have ordered the NWG and will weld it up as soon as the bugs are worked out, then I will use the Grizzly unit for other grinding/sanding or for leather work. It will come in handy for dressing the metal parts on the NWG.

As an old fart (63) I have had several close calls with power equip. and the table saw is the worst for mistakes as well as a high speed buffer. Do yourself a favor and make a sled for crosscutting on the table saw. It will give you something to push with above the blade and out of harms way and make a better product.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Other than outright stupidity most of the near misses or just plain damage exerienced with power tools has been caused by being in a hurry. These days I think through everything carefully and proceed slowly. For me, making a fast knife usually means a poorly crafted one. If you need a pic of the sled, lemme know and I will post.

Robert