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Okay, so I scanned these right when I got home from work. What you're looking at is my left hand.. all nice and mangled.

What happened is this; I was working on a drill press with a big 3.5" brand new (read RAZOR sharp) drill bit. Oh, and that's 3.5" in DIAMETER, not length. These suckers are meant to cut through 12" plates of steel without a hitch.

So I was lining up the bit on the steel, my target was a tiny mark scribed on it. I had to keep my eye on the tip of the bit to keep it lined up while I moved the head of the unit. I accidently managed to hit the on switch, and zoom, in .5 seconds the bit went from 0 rpm to 1350 rpm with my hand firmly wrapped around it.

I was lucky, the drill only took a few chunks before it spit my hand out. I mean I was REALLY lucky. I've heard stories of what this machine can do, and it's usually not this tidy.

So, what you're looking at are 3 small but DEEP chunks of hand missing, mixed with assorted smaller cuts and scratches. The deepest is the one on the bottom of my thumb. In the closeup you can see all sorts of stuff hanging out.. veins or tendons.. I don't know. It's pretty tasty.

The cut on the middle finger isn't as deep, but it hurts 100x more for some reason. It's just a tidy little chunk, not much to explain.

There's also a wound you can sort of make out on my palm, it's not much to look at because the flap of skin managed to hang on to the rest of my hand, so I just shoved it back in place and there it stayed. It's pretty deep too, and deserves an honorable mention.

There are various other smaller cuts, like on the thumb and ring finger. Also one nice scratch right along the wrist.. as if to serve as a warning of what could have been. Well, I'm taking that warning to the bank. These machines can be deadly, all it took for this to happen was 2 seconds of carelessness. Never will it happen with me again.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering, all the little black all over my hand are tiny little steel slivers. They don't hurt at all, but they're next to impossible to get out.

I'll send along progress images of the healing.. and maybe if you're lucky it'll get all infected and nasty. ;)

Great site! Take it easy.

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Editor's Notes:

Oh please don't let it get infected on our account...keep it clean!

A scanned hand...good idea. The quality is better than I would have expected. I think one other submitter scanned somthing once, but I don't remember it being in such good detail. Way to make do with what you had.

And since I'm out of time today I won't deliver a long winded lecture about guys losing fingers to fans and longhairs having their scalps pulled off by machinery. Here's my advice, listen to Ice-T and keep Safety First.

Sharky

Photos:
drilled 1- two wounds
thumb- base of thumb
Finger- took a clean chunk