the face that launched 1000 ships

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Well, I might not be Helen of Troy, but I sure my wife finds me handsome... mostly... :C

Thursday night, midnight. Making a bowl on the lathe and it was 99% finished. Giving it a final sand when I felt a little unhappy with the bottom. Decided to touch it up with the chisel. I must have had a catch, for the next thing I knew the bowl split into two, one climbed my left arm and hammered itself directly into my face.

BOOF!!!! It was like Mike Tyson had hit me. Blinding white light, disbelief and interestingly a slow motion "oh, this will hurt tomorrow" descended into my slow brain.

The bowl was a nice Russian olive, maybe a KG in weight, about 25cm in diameter and 10cm deep. I copped the big chunk...the bit with the edge too no less (I found bits of my nose on it when I found it yesterday. Grim!!!)

BLOOD EVERYWHERE! It absolutely fountained out. All over the floor, all down my arm, all over my shirt and pants. I made it to the bathroom mostly blind holding my nose together! Sprayed blood all over the sink then went to wake my wife with "I think I MIGHT need to go to the hospital". How droll.

Anyway, broken nose, 4 deep cuts, bridge lacerated. Glued up with CA! (how cool is that!) Steribands to keep it together.

Lesson learned? Wear a facemask. Impact goggles are not enough. On recommendation I bought a Umatta full face shield.

Here is my beautiful face all puffed up (I'm being deliberately grumpy like the cat above, I'm not a grumpy dude). The photo was this morning, it's now black eyes, puffed cheeks and squinty eyes.

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Tell you what though, that was the hit of the century. I did martial arts for years and know how to hit AND have been hit, hard, but this one was an absolute blinder.

I would say you got off lightly, could have blinded you

But as you say, lesson learnt and a good one for the rest of us to take precautionary note

Good on for posting this is the safety forum.

A timely reminder to us all.

I hope it heals quickly.

Cheers

And you did not blame the better half?

If the wife was like that and taken to medical assistance it is likely the husband would be questioned by the police.

Glad you are able to see the light of day and make a full recovery.

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Here's grumpy cat's position.

OK thats a good story about the catch with a chisel in the bottom of a bowl......now lets have the real story......you were late home after being with the boys after work, and you completely forgot that the in-laws were coming for tea because it was M-I-L birthday, your mobile was turned off so you wouldn't be interrupted with the boys and you were tiddly when she opened the door while you were on all fours trying to find the front door keys that you dropped........yeh we know......(been there done that...)

It does look sore though. Did the wife do martial arts?

Very painful looking. I was going to ask if you had an after photo but then I saw the martial arts bit.:no:

Ouch! Very nice of you to take a hit, so you could give us a safety reminder! Certainly hope it heals up quickly. I got two great reminders last fall in one month. Two bad kickbacks on the table saw for doing stupid. My Dad always said I had to be told twice....

MIL is in the hospital getting a knee replacement. Wife and I went to the hospital to visit this arvo. I've been copping a ribbing all day from everyone, but a nurse came up to me and looked at my wife suspiciously (gave her "the eyeball") and said "there are help lines you can call" :)

We all had a good laugh. I'm 6'4" and weigh 150 so I'm a big dude. Not the sort of meat head to tangle with by choice, so it's funny....it was funny from the nurse as they see that kind of ugliness and it has it's serious side. It's good being Australain some times, we can laugh at the ugly.

As everyone pointed out, there is a very serious side to it. I'm not accident prone and I do take very reasonable precautions, but obviously I should have taken Robbos very early advice to buy an Armadillo or equivalent (acquired today from BOC). I always was very careful, yet here is proof that safety is not a binary thing.

It could have been my teeth....Jesus. My eyes were covered by a very good pair of high impact goggles.

My face is now very puffed and my eyes are black.

Be safe everyone. Don't use your head, use a $35 piece of polycarbonate!

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Originally Posted by Evanism

MIL is in the hospital getting a knee replacement. Wife and I went to the hospital to visit this arvo. I've been copping a ribbing all day from everyone, but a nurse came up to me and looked at my wife suspiciously (gave her "the eyeball") and said "there are help lines you can call" :)

Be safe everyone. Don't use your head, use a $35 piece of polycarbonate!

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:2tsup: Good advice. It looks like you were a training partner for Alex Leapai. :D

Very hard lesson to learn. Hope you get better soon.

Holy Smoke that looks very painful. The nose doesn't look too good either. Forget about the teeth, it could so easily have blinded you!

As others have said - thanks for posting a very timely reminder.

Look on the bright side - I'll bet you haven't given your current gut-ache a thought for days. :;

"the face that launched 1000 ships"
Yep, I can see that - it's got Spanish Amada written all over it.

I'll warn Ueee about what he can expect to see later this arvo.

All the best for a quick recovery Evan.

Everyone is right. The more I think about it, the more unbelievably lucky I've been. It has been replaying through my mind almost continuously. I have been a foolish man. The gods gave me a second chance.

I returned to the shed today to do some client project work. I stood there for a while I will admit, the horse looked a bit black, but it must be ridden...but it's now back on track.

There is one huge bonus to the big face masks, I was doing some work on the TS and the vision improvement is absolutely incredible. The goggles will never be worn again. It's masks everywhere for me, two more will be bought on Thursday, one for each station.

One second finding - I sprayed blood everywhere... and I mean EVERYWHERE. There was a bit of time cleaning that up and I found it all over my Incra gear. The TS-LS32 carriage which was next to the lathe was covered. It wipes right off! Zero effort! Dried blood doesn't stick to anodised aluminium, so there is a very nice selling feature! :rolleyes:

(since its a TS accessory, mainly, it makes it easy for the misses to clean up after the finger has come off. That's very considerate!)

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Originally Posted by Evanism

MIL is in the hospital getting a knee replacement. Wife and I went to the hospital to visit this arvo. I've been copping a ribbing all day from everyone, but a nurse came up to me and looked at my wife suspiciously (gave her "the eyeball") and said "there are help lines you can call" :)
!

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That reminds me of when I fell through a plate glass door and the first thing the triage nurse said (it was 2am saturday) was "How many drinks have we had?" when I said none she looked at me like I was a large dog dropping on a narrow footpath.
Then when I went into emergency to get stitched up a lady doctor that first came to see me asked me the same question. Ten minutes later she came back with another doctor and they stood at the foot of the bed and they laughed. When I queried why they were laughing she said "I wanted to show a colleague how much damage you can do to yourself without having a drink"

My partner collapsed in the bedroom from jetlag in December, and sconned her forehead on the bedpost - right on that vein. Within 10 secs she had a ½ egg welt which dropped under gravity over the next few days. Two raccoon quality black eyes. Went to have a scan and there was a woman there that was looking daggers at me bigtime - changed her position in the waiting room three times to get it from every angle. I maintained her eye contact until she was the first to blink (which prolly only reinforced her thoughts :U).

What she didn't know was that my partner is an Aikido black belt, and I'm just a wuss. :D

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Originally Posted by Evanism

…………. It's good being Australain some times, we can laugh at the ugly…...

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:roflmao:

Oh I know how you feel! …. get better soon! You wear the mask and I'll stay out of the Sun!
fletty

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Originally Posted by BobL

That reminds me of when I fell through a plate glass door and the first thing the triage nurse said (it was 2am saturday) was "How many drinks have we had?" when I said none she looked at me like I was a large dog dropping on a narrow footpath.
Then when I went into emergency to get stitched up a lady doctor that first came to see me asked me the same question. Ten minutes later she came back with another doctor and they stood at the foot of the bed and they laughed. When I queried why they were laughing she said "I wanted to show a colleague how much damage you can do to yourself without having a drink"

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Plate glass windows do a nasty job. Around 40 years ago my Dad who was a chippy / registered builder tripped up a set of stairs on a new home site and put his hand through a closed window. He did quite a bit of damage and fortunately regained full use of his arm. For a long while afterwards he was still in quite a bit of pain at times. The docs put it down to the nerves being slow to repair themselves untill a long sliver of glass finally emerged from between the radius & ulna bones in his forearm. :o

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Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Plate glass windows do a nasty job. Around 40 years ago my Dad who was a chippy / registered builder tripped up a set of stairs on a new home site and put his hand through a closed window. He did quite a bit of damage and fortunately regained full use of his arm. For a long while afterwards he was still in quite a bit of pain at times. The docs put it down to the nerves being slow to repair themselves untill a long sliver of glass finally emerged from between the radius & ulna bones in his forearm. :o

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Luckily mine were all surface cuts. They did X-ray me for glass which is rather stupid because X-rays don't pick up glass. When I said this to the doctor she said maybe not glass but they do pick up other things from time to time.
Anyway stitches went on and it all felt itchy as usually and one particular spot was itchier than the rest and about 6 weeks later when some of the bigger scabs were finally flaking off, sure enough a 1/4 match head size grain of glass came out with one of the scabs.

Well, adoring fans, this is the two week mark. The swelling was down and amazingly a large part of the deep cuts was well along healing.

Yesterday was up to the surgeon where there was a general anaesthetic a quick procedure and a few hours being looked after by pretty nurses.

Confirmed that the nose was broken in two places....a chunk of bone ripped free and the cartilage snapped clean free. The schnozzola has been Dealt With and an little armoured plate seems to be glued to the outside....seems to act as a splint. This comes off in a week or two. (Dire warnings not to get it wet!)

So, lessons learned. A $36 full face high impact mask is an absolute necessity.

For the last week I've been turning with it and it's at least 5000 times better than goggles. Sight is superior and it doesn't fog up! I use it for everything.

Be safe people. The risk of adding "interesting features" to your face simply isn't worth it.

Just think, people pay good money for facial restyling.:D
Good to know things are looking up and you've certainly been an excellent role model. Perhaps a knighthood will come your way.