A bad day

Ernie,

I wish you the speediest of recoveries. I'm so sorry for the loss of your two fingers. Be well and recover swiftly.

rvb

-- pc: Dogs have a unique perspective of things. pc: If you can't eat it, f**k it, or tear it up, piss on it.

rvb: Hahahaha. Words to live by! I often wish I was more like my dogs.

( conversation on sci.enginr.joining.welding )

I was somewhat luckier 20 years ago in that I did not loase any of my fingers - but I still have a very visible reminder to watch where I put my fingers - and when it gets cold I have a painful reminder. Got the two middle fingers on my right hand with an impact hammer (zip gun) while removing a pitman arm from an old Dodge van. End of the second finger (beside the pinky) was bone meal from the joint oit - next finger was broken in 6 peices from the joint out. Off work for 2 months, then on light duty (I was service manager - light duty meant no wrenching) for another 2 or 3. Finger nail took 2 years to grow back and is considerably wider than the one it replaced.

I wa VERY fortunate in that the joints were not damaged and I have full functionality - just a deep tissue split up the middle of the fingertip pad and some sensitivity - particularly to cold

---OWWWW!!!!

Ernie:

I hope that you heal quickly. Heel Boy!!

I gave my first group of three day students the safety lecture Mentioned this fellow I have corresponded with on the west coast who had a monemtary loss of attention and paid the price.

This year we have 190 freshmen in the building and they will all come through the shop for three days in our "exploratory" program. My chief goal is that they all leave with the same number of body parts that the arrive with. And hopefully snag some good kids to teach the trade to.

Errol Groff

Errol Groff

Instructor, Machine Tool Department H.H. Ellis Regional Technical School Danielson, CT 06239

860 774 8511 x1811

[...] Hope you heal quickly and well. I've learned a lot from reading your posts.

Dave

I like it.

Should be a sesamoid bone, which is a normal ossification of a tendinous area (the largest of which we call the kneecap (patella) IIRC--it has been a while since first year med school and I was never a threat to radiology anyway. Notice the smooth but not spherical margins; and the location is typical.

Lawrence Farries MD FRCS(C) Red Deer, AB

I was in Portland this last weekend and helped my brother-in-law setup a tig on his home-made welder, and was telling him about this board. I was thinking on the ride back down the coast that i owe a debt of gratitude to you Ernie, and Leo and the rest for answering many questions that i haven't even asked. I hope your pain will cease enough to enjoy some unexpected vacation.

Ouch! Ow! Owie! And furthermore, Eeew...

What model press brake was that again? So I NEVER buy one...

Yes, it could have been much worse - just ask my dad.

He went waterskiing, fell, and got run over by another powerboat (asshole was trying to pull a skier without an observer, so he wasn't watching where he was going) and got his left arm and leg sliced up like a salami. Through a series of miracles, there was a boat full of off-duty County Lifeguards nearby, and they got all of him out of the lake and to a hospital fast...

Dad had to have his left arm and leg rebuilt and practically reattached. Only practically, they were both being held to the body by a few flaps of skin, so it wasn't technically a "reattachment" - but this was still uncharted territory in 1962. They're still reattached to this day, and they still work (mostly). His fine motor skills aren't so good on his left hand, but it's plenty good for holding screws and nails, driving, flipping switches, doorknobs, filling out a shirt sleeve, etc.

And I have a good friend who's a Professional Ragtime Pianist who had a broken lower back at age 14, around the same time frame (1962-ish) in the wilds of Iowa. They fused his spine in a seated position and the doctors predicted he'd never walk again. WRONG!! Really funny standing posture and walking kinesiology (1), but he gets around just fine...

I'm deliberately not naming my friend yet, but I'll bet many of you have met him before and didn't realize it. But as Paul Harvey says, Now you know "The Rest Of The Story." [TM] Any guesses? ;-)

So I can categorically prove that you can recover from darned near anything if you /want/ to, and get a little medical help when needed.

But now the important question: How is this going to affect your driving abilities?

Specifically, how are you going to critique the abilities of the guy who just cut you off so he could get there 10 seconds ahead of you?

Start practicing the Left Handed Bird. Then again, if they're close enough to get a good look, the right one might be more effective.

-->--

(1) - Yeah, I had to look it up. I was thinking 'kinesthetics'.

I fell out of a tree and broke my sternum and 3 ribs back in 1978. The ribs healed fine, but the sternum is still tender if you press on it where it broke.

Gary

You had bypass surgery, and your pain is 100% gone?

My surgeon is one of the best that can be had. I wouldn't trade him for anything. He said it was just the way it is, and that there was nothing wrong. My greatest problem is doing too much.

Well, if it is okay with you, I will stick with my regular doctors until you get your MD.

Steve

Accurpress 60-ton x 6 foot Don't blame the machine. Boeing donated it with a dead CNC controler. We had to extract the dead CNC and restore the manual functions ourselves.

The safety guys asked me how to prevent this from ever happening again. I said, install a second control switch at the opposite end of the machine, so it requires 2 people to operate the press. As long as the switches are far enough away from eachother it should be difficult for 1 person to operate the press. Not impossible but difficult.

Cool.

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 06:38:02 GMT, Ernie Leimkuhler vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Jeeze Ernie! Next time please do it with a good big hammer and make it quick. My hand is feeling quite strange.

***************************************************** I know I am wrong about just about everything. So I am not going to listen when I am told I am wrong about the things I know I am right about.

Ive got a similar finger. Had my right hand on the pipe rail around an oilfield gang truck when the Ginsel dropped a Guiberson stripper on it. Exloded my 3rd finger. When I got my rubber glove off..it looked like a normal finger with this 1" patch of ..well..it looked like a pink exploded firecracker, in the middle of it.

The Doc wanted to take it off. I refused. He cleaned and debrided it, spinted and wrapped it..and it healed. Took about 4 yrs before any feeling came back..then it tingled for another 4. Didnt take much cold to turn it into a frozen bratwurst with a nail on it. Screwed up my handgun shooting style for years.

Its got a bit of a twist (matches my frostbitten and deformed toes ) but it works well enough to allow me to type about 65 words a minute. There is still enough nerve damage to it and the pinky finger that I have a very difficult time hitting the " and the ' etc though.

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

My wife has the split sternum from her double bypass a couple years ago. She has very little discomfort from it. She says its more numb than anything else. The one thing that bothered her (and only after looking at the X-rays....she claims the ends of the stainless steel cable they laced her back up with, some times feels like the ends are loose. They had to show her the xrays again to prove to her they didnt leave em flopping around loose like shoelaces , before she would stop getting "the wierd feeling"

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

All that will do is allow *two* people to stick their fingers in the press at the same time. What you want is two switches set up so one person has to use *both hands* to press them in order to make the press work, and don't let a helper near the press when you do it. That way, there's no spare hand that can be in the press when it is running.

Gary

I was wondering this - although it's a few years since I worked with presses (I used to build control and instrumentation gear for them).

UK practice would be either twin start buttons, or a light curtain. HSE really wouldn't like a single start button with no other guarding.

US practice would be the same as well. Twin buttons that MUST be maintained during the press cycle are the most common, with the newer machines using the light curtains and often also a pair of maintained buttons.

Even punch presses. In fact, Ive seen a number of punch presses with light curtains on all 4 sides.

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

Pneumatic controls with the dual finger button are quite common, and work very well.

I must have personally pressed about 500,000 steel inserts into nylon wear pads during my tenure at that job.

Of course the first thing I did was figure out how to defeat the two-button setup so I could run parts faster.

But seeing Ernie's X-rays does make my blood run cold.

Jim