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Both of these nicks were caused by splinters this past weekend.
Splinters are par for the course when working with wood. But when you work in a shop where your hands provide the precision, a bad splinter can end your workday prematurely or just make your work less enoyable. So I’d just like to add a few thoughts that may help you prevent and treat these minor injuries.
Gloves are your first line of defense:
I keep a pair of soft calf skin gloves in my shop for moving lumber. Wearing them for these tasks is a no brainer. I was raised thinking that gloves were only for the weak. My brother Steve once boasted that he spent a week laying cinderblock and at the end of the week his hands were as tough as baseball gloves. But I don’t lay cinderblock. I’m a cabinetmaker. And even when I work full time at it, my hands are never like that. When the job calls for it, I don my gloves without a second thought.
Moisture barrier:
In addition to barrier protection, I think keeping my hands soft helps prevent splinters. When my hands become dry and chapped, they become splinter magnets. I keep a bottle of hand lotion next to the sink where I wash up. I try to moisturize after each hand washing. I avoid abrasive or strong soaps if I don’t need them. And I wear gloves to protect my hands from the jobs that require detergents to wash up afterward. My fingers get black when sharpening my tools or scraping walnut. Nitrile or latex gloves offer good protection with little or no inconvenience. They are inexpensive, reusable, and work great. Their use saves me from having to scrub off stuff I don’t want to transfer to my work or tools.
Treating splinters:
My goal when removing splinters is to do it in such a way that I don’t make a small injury worse. I keep a good, sharp pair of tweezers in my shop’s first aid kit. What? You don’t have a shop first aid kit? Well use Woodworker’s Safety Week as your excuse to make yourself a small dovetailed box to hold these essential woodworking tools. Have fun with this. Inlay a bloodwood red cross for instance. Or decorate it with bent-over nails.
I made this miniature of a PA Dutch blanket chest for my wife, but it would make an excellent shop first aid kit.
Add to it a good magnifying glass and some alcohol swabs. When you need to dig out a deep splinter, first clean the tweezers with the alcohol. Once the splinter is out, be sure to wash the area well (soap and water at least). Use the magnifying glass to make sure you got all of it.
Keep it clean:
In most cases, I remove my splinters, wash my hands and go back to work. But if the splinter drew blood, I treat it like a cut. No it’s not a serious wound. Yes this sounds excessive. But you want to protect it so you can go on working without turning it into something worse. If you get dirt or chemicals in there, even a lowly splinter can snowball into a painful infection. I like to apply vaseline to small wounds as I think the vaseline helps keep the wound clean. It’s a barrier. Bandaids alone don’t seem to be much help. When it’s a fingertip or joint, which are difficult to bandage, maybe it’s time to break out a pair of gloves. If the latex is too thin and the calfskin gloves too clumsy, try a pair of these.
Related: The Best Shop Towels
Elsewhere on the internet, folks are discussing what to package a severed digit in for the trip to the emergency room. We’re talking about splinters. I don’t want to mislead you into making light of injuries in your hand tool shop. I just wanted to start Woodworker’s Safety week by seriously considering the most common woodworking injury.
Adam
P.S. Give me your thoughts about what you think belongs in your hand tool shop’s first aid kit.
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
"Any plans to cover ergo issues for hand tool users this week?’
That’s tomorrow, Josh. Glad you’re enjoying these.
Adam
I’ve not used NuSkin, just the 3M version, which as I mentioned yesterday is great for keeping small cuts closed if you’ve already stopped the bleeding.
Great idea BTW to do daily hand tool safety blogs this week. It’s very easy for us those of us in non electric shops to get arrogant about shop safety when we’re bombarded with gory tales of kickback induced impalement and finger eating router bits. I’m learning a lot of good practices in these posts and the comments. Any plans to cover ergo issues for hand tool users this week?
I don’t use NuSkin on cuts, but I do use it on those annoying (and painful) fingertip cracks that one gets in cold weather. It works great for sealing/healing those up. There’s a new variant from 3M (I don’t recall the name) that’s even better, as it dries much more quickly.
I would recommend keeping a small bottle of Betadine (or generic equivalent) in your first aid kit. It is good for flushing out deep and/or large wounds, and it doesn’t sting like alcohol. It makes a mess, however, staining everything a yellow-brown. (It might make a good wood stain–who knows?)
For splinters that don’t go very deep, I prefer fingernail clippers over tweezers. It’s easy to get the corner into a shallow hole, and the lever gives you plenty of grip on the splinter itself. Just remember not to squeeze too hard or you’ll just end up clipping the splinter off.
Anti-bacterial hand sanitizer wash is good stuff, too. Not only does it sanitize, it dries quickly letting you get back to work.
I’ve never had much luck with NuSkin, but I’ve heard (never tried) the same thing you said about super glue.
I think medically, cuts are better when exposed to the air and kept clean and dry. And I do that when I go to bed. But I think the salves or vaseline and bandages are the better choice when you want to continue working. I think any dirt in the wound presents an opportunity for infection, which, even when minor, extends the healing process, possibly limiting what you get to do next weekend.
I’ve had good luck closing little slices (like paper cuts) with super glue. It doesn’t sting, (it doesn’t last) and it isn’t very different from the stuff they use in hospitals. I asked last time I visited.
I never tried nu-skin or any of the over the counter products, but I would like to. Anybody have any specific recommendations? Experiences?
Adam
A portable, sterile eye wash bottle is definately something to strongly consider. The worst shop injury I have had to date came after sharpening a couple of hand saws. I thought I just had an eyelash in my eye when the pain started so I rinsed and rubbed and figured the irritation would go away. However, after several hours of worsening irritation and pain that prevented me from sleeping, I ended up at the emergency room at 2:00 in the morning .Somehow, when I was sweeping the filing swarf off of my bench, I managed to get a metal filing in my eye. I didn’t even know until I was in pain in the ER. Luckily, there was no permanent damage but it may have been avoided with a proper eye wash bottle.
I too always wear gloves, the cheap cotton ones with a latex coating, these are fantastic for gripping and moving timber, but sometimes splinters get through. I will have to get some calf skin ones like you.
Very good tip about using latex gloves when sharpening, why I have not worked this one out myself I do not know.
Masking tape and a small square of loo paper has been the first port of call before the first aid kit, this is only so that blood does not get onto my work. If I am working on small stuff I always use micropore tape, you hardly know it is there. I do not wear plasters etc, as I like any wound to be open to the air, if possible.
I once was using a plane on a plank of recycled pine and a splinter went right up into my little finger, a friend and a pair of pliers was used to pull it out, it was large.
I don’t have a kit dedicated to the shop but I work in our attached garage so I just make use of the main kit in the bathroom when I have a boo-boo in the shop.
I have the excellent splinter removal kit Joel at TFWW sells in my first aid kit. The very sharp probe and tweezers are very effective at getting even deeply embedded splinters out. It’s inaugural use saved me a trip to the ER to remove what turned out to be a rather nasty 3/8" poplar splinter that went up under my right thumbnail. That hurt enough that I was happily confessing to a number of crimes against lumber to the board that was interrogating me.
For cuts I don’t really have a problem with them being either painful or medically serious most of the time, just small nicks on my hands from getting a little too comfortable around the sharp things. What gets to me is that they won’t stop bleeding while I work and I really don’t want blood stains on my tools or my projects. To deal with those cuts I first apply direct pressure with a clean shop towel to stop the bleeding and then make my way to the first aid kit. First step is to thoroughly clean both hands and pat dry with a clean hand towel (sterile cotton balls to dry the actual cut) If the wound hasn’t started bleeding again during the washing I’ll hit it with a few sprays from those CA glue based spray on bandages, which I find to work very well at keeping small cuts closed while working in the shop. If I’m still oozing a bit of blood I’ll rub in some neosporin and bandage it. I’ve been real happy with the 3M line of breathable, flexible clear bandages designed for playing sports. Even on a joint they stay on fine and don’t impede movement.
If you didn’t know honey also makes a decent ointment in a pinch.
Cheers,
Josh
Well, I um, cough, don’t actually have a first aid kit, you see. However, I do work in our carport which is attached to our house which has some rather generic first aid supplies.
My go to cream is Eden salve, an herbal cream concoction from the Bulk Herb Store. It really is great stuff. The small tin is all you need. The kids like it too for their scrapes – they can put in on themselves.
Also, Cayenne pepper (get the powder) is effective for stopping bleeding – just don’t rub your eyes when you finish putting it on your cut, or the bleeding won’t seem so important for a while! Your mileage may vary on this one with sawed off limbs or severed arteries. I haven’t tested it that way and really have no idea.