Resin Addict Forum

I think I'd rather the hobby knife slips than to get burned with one of those irons. The idea of stepping on one just made me cringe really bad, that be very painful.

Zac you've just tempted fate, now you're likely to get burned and cut at the same time.

Once upon a time, before I discovered http://hotwirefoamfactory.com, I have a 40w soldering iron modified with an x-acto blade.

Come on Zac, you know you want to make one.

I don't cut foam enough to warrant a fancy cutter. I've just got a simple nichrome wire based one I made up. Actually it's not so simple - it has a spring loaded arm so that it keeps the wire taut and a PWM circuit so that the wire temperature can be adjusted to suit whatever power supply is handy to power it!

4-5 years ago, I had one that could have turned up very bad, but treated correctly, happened to be benign.

While cutting a miniature with an X-acto blade, I slipped and the blade ended up in my index 2nd knuckle, right in the articulation joint. I stuck it out and I was frightened to se the tip of the blade was missing. I didn't know if it was already missing before the blade entered my flesh. So I called my father, who was a doctor, for both reasons : in the knuckle and maybe the tip of the blade still inside.
As I feared, my father told me injuries in the articulations can be degenerative if they get infected. The infection then eats the "cartilage" and you loose the use of the articulation.
So I headed for 2 places : The hospital for a radiography to check for the missing bit. Then, to a surgery hospital to get a surgeon to look at my wound.

I ended up with : The tip of the blade was not in there and then the surgeon told me that it was the thing to do to come to him, a antibiotic treatement for a week and a check up meeting with him on the next week to see if the wound was healing correctly. And it healed correctly.

Nevertheless, the surgeon told me that if it had gone wrong, I would have had to get surgery to clean the joint of any infection.

So be warned of this kind of injury ! Doesn't look that bad but it can degenerate to a very bad thing...

SSB you were indeed very lucky! The complications of damaging a joint are good to know though - if it ever happens to me I'll know to go to the hospital immediately!

I spotted this thread when I first joined up a some days ago, now I uhhhhm, finally got summink to add -

... Heheh, so.., whilst trying to 'part the sides' of a rigid box mould yesterday, after a casting had gone haywire (foamed up and took days to set and gummed up all the mould) using the bottom knife in the picture below, well it slipped between 2 parts of the mould as they finally separated and stuck in my left hand tip first... with quite a lot of pressure. Luckily it didn't have far to go as the bone from base of my forefinger joint to the hand itself, was only a few mm below where it hit, and stopped it dead. Checked the knife tip to be sure there was no little bit of carbon steel missing but it was OK, but I bled quite a lot... heheh...





Did I mention the blade and tip had recently been diamond honed to 1000 grit, then stropped and polished with 5 micron green chromium compound?

I love my sharp knives and chisels etc. but they are my hands' nemeses for sure.

So, not as bad as yours but coulda been a lot worse, and it's my worst 'casting' related injury so far, heheheh...

Be well AND SAFE folks ',;~}~

FlowolF

At some stage we're going to have to have some gory pics added to this thread