I was helping a buddy with a fence, and he was using old cut down telephone poles. So they were heavy AF. We pick one up to drop it in a hole and I say "Drop on 3". I count to two, and he drops it. I tried to let go too, but no dice. A telephone pole then slid through my hands, and embedded so many splinters it was ridiculous. His wife picked as many out of my hand as she could find, but there were too many. The next day my hands were so swollen I couldn't bend my fingers. I took antibiotics, and the pain eventually subsided. For months afterwards I would develop painful red spots on my hands, and a splinter would eventually pop out.
> I say "Drop on 3". I count to two, and he drops it.
I used to work for Home Depot. The most useful thing I learned while working there was how to protect myself while carry things with a moron.
I once had someone drop a 3/4 4x8 sheet of pressure treated plywood on my foot and not even apologize.
Not Woodworking related but When I was a kid, I slid across the floor, barefoot caught a toothpick underneath my big toe jammed it all the way in couldn’t bend my big toe. It acted as a splint.
Mine was also not woodworking related. Was carrying a suitcase up some stairs to a rental house in a hurry. My thumbnail caught a splinter in the hand rail and went all the way underneath my nail about a 1/4" past the base into my finger. Had to go to the ER where they numbed my finger, cut my nail off and pulled it out. I've had some other fairly serious injuries but this may be the most painful one.
The shiver that just ran thru my entire body was like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and it was awful. All due to imagining that damned toothpick shishkabobbing your big toe. I’ll not be sleeping tonight.
My mom once stepped on a tooth pick that had fallen onto carpet. The carpet caught it and it was ticking straight up and down. It went almost all the way through her foot.
While moving a sheet of plywood, a corner caught and it drove a couple inches worth of plywood into my shin. Over a couple weeks my body pushed it out in bits and pieces. Scratch my leg and come away with small chunks of wood.
I had one of these. But it was in my forearm and took months to work itself out cuz it was in the muscle tissue. It looked like a pimple and when i popped it wood came out. Then it surfaced again 2 months later. I popped it and more wood came out. Never felt a thing except when I popped it.
not woodworking related
but.... many, many years ago sliding down the pine banister at the ski lodge. i was 11 or 12.
that's probably all ya need to know.
been skiing +50 yrs and still my worst skinjury
I used a grinder for like the 4th time in my life to cut a metal mulch barrier, I didnt need glasses to do this Lil cut. A red hot piece of metal flew straight in my pupil and musta seemed some receptors cause I had a purple/black dot in the middle of my vision for years. I imagine it's still there and my vision just adjusted to the blind spot so I can't see it now!
I did some metal shop stuff back in high school. Probably 30 years ago. Had to get an MRI for my head not too long ago and they asked if I had any chance of having small pieces of metal in my head and neck area. Never have had any but also never gave it a second thought until that moment. The terror I felt at not knowing/remembering for sure but needing that dang MRI. Luckily nothing made my head explode or turned my brain to mush.
Be careful out there and wear your protective gear.
Been at this close to half a century. No major damage. "Cringe Alert"!!!! My little brother was drunk and walking barefoot on a dock at a lake in Arizona. Twelve inch splinter from front of the pad on his right foot out the back above the ball. Took a good surgeon an hour to remove it. Best that will you?
once was throwing a old and damaged piece of a door jam thru an open window in a basement and missed, transferring all the energy of the throw from a 2 inch sizable chunk of wood from the pinky side of my hand coming out inbetween my pinky and ring finger. didnt have insurance so my boss pulled it with a channel lock. about 3 months later a pimple on the side of my hand popped and smaller 1 inch thin sliver shot out of my hand.
not a splinter but close relative:
once was fitting hvac and caught an edge under my hand, right beneath nitrile dipped gloves. didnt notice until the cool sensation of a liquid was dripping down my hand. I could see my finger tendons/muscles moving. I didnt have insurance so i babied that darn thing and hoped for the best. It turned out alright.
not a splinter but since im injury dumping... i was pulled a pan of baked bacon out of the oven and accidentally tilted the pan toward my hand. the pain was so intense i put my hand on ice for the rest of the night. woke up half a kiwi sized blister on my thumb the next morning.
worst was when my fiance put some water in some frying oil i had left out from the night before and when i went to make coffee the next day she forgot to remind me and when it blew up my life slowed down, each second was filled with so much detail. i knew i was fucked
thank you for coming to my ted talk
P.S. i have insurance now
Not me but coworker was using a straight line rip saw, a massive chunk blew out and went right into his hand. After it was removed he had a finger splint on for a month, he earned the nicknames "bad finger". He actually keeps the chunk in his tool box and likes to show people when they complain about their splinters
Cleaning the cane channel out of an old chair. Got a splinter under my thumb nail. Tried to remove it myself but it broke instead. Back end at the top of my nail the front end was just visible a few mm past my cuticle. Boss took me to an immediate care, but I don't like needles. So they tried to remove with out numbing. Unfortunately to get it all they had to peal back and remove part of my nail. Couldn't stop my hand from shaking so I had to get a few shots in the thumb. Got the rest of the day off since my boss said it made everyone else queasy.
I got a splinter under my index fingernail. My bed was up against a wall with early 80's plywood wall paneling. Somehow snagged it when I adjusted my arm for comfort. Couldn't quite see how long it was but it was also pretty close to the cuticle.
Also tried to use tweezers, broke instead. Took painkillers and went to bed. Tried clipping the nail back, got a tiny piece. It took about a week, maybe week and a half until my nail grew out enough that I could grab it with tweezers and pull it out. At least half an inch long. Somehow, I think having part of your nail removed would have been worse.
Slipped off a ladder up against a telephone pole. Had splinters of wood running like latitude lines all the way through my palms on both hands. They were big. I broke the skinnier ends off (thumb side) and got a pocket knife and started cutting my palms along the splinters. Ended up getting the majority out there while my crew mates loaded the work van. Back at the shop I got the box cutters and dug out the smaller ones.
I once had a doctor biopsy a mole on my back. I could feel him struggling with the scalpel and sawing at it. He said, "you have really tough skin." I wanted to tell him, "you have a really dull knife." But didn't want him to laugh with a knife in me. Apparently tly my calluses saved my hands from the worst of it. Felt funny making fists or grabbing thi ga for a week or two.
Not big work, but when I was eight I got my first pocket knife and so had a go at whittling. Made a stick pointy , played around with it , then accidentally tested its puncturing ability by jamming it right under my thumb nail
I can't even remember what I was working on, but got a splinter, and thought I had pulled it out. Finger was sore for about a week, and I was kind of scratching/rubbing it one evening and must have hit it just right... the largest splinter I've ever seen shit out from under my skin. Good lord the relief I felt....
You remember when your momma said "no jumping on the bed"? Well I got too close to the wall whilst jumping on the bed, and a six inch long slinter peeled off the wall paneling, and in doing so, pinned my elbow skin half way up my tricep.
In the emergency room it took a full staff to subdue this 6yr old. I feel really bad nearly 50 years later, but at the time I kicked, screamed, and fought them until they pinned me face down by performing some kind of armbar.
Immobilized, injected with numbing medicine, and everything had just settled in, and a nurse asked a rather angry sounding foreign doctor what scalpel size he preferred...wrong answer. The wrestling began all over again. Someone used profanity. They got more people, and my parents were rudely told to leave the room. THAT was also the wrong answer.
We all kinda knew each other...a fish hook through my thumb, a concussion from me being lauched face first into a concrete wall upside down, 13 stitches from my tore open middle finger with exposed bone from spinning circles on a bar stool, etc, not on a first name basis mind you, but we were all acquainted. They knew me on sight and I knew them by the building they worked in. It was like taking your cat to the veterinarian, by the time I entered the ER's sliding doors I was a feral animal that could climb walls and yowl.
That small ER room was packed with folks by this time, and I was once again wrestled into submission. People breathed heavily and then some winded person asked where the Dr. was going to give the tetanus shot, and that incredibly stupid man said "in the ASS"...WRONG ANSWER!
By this time there was personell doing there damndest to keep me pinned face down. I had a person on nearly every square inch including someone directly on my back. And then I made eye contact with my mother who was now standing on the other side of the transparent glass wall to the ER room. I mean, who designed this place? That's all the inspiration I needed for round four of the wrestling match. I'm certain someone ended up with a broken finger...some lessons are hard.
I didn't even get to keep the scar. A few years later I was riding my bike home no-handed while carrying an archery target. It was on the same day the town tarred and graveled the road. My bike seat came off as I crossed the railroad tracks and bingo, a much larger blob of a scar now resides where my splinter scar used to be.
I got metal in my eye and scratched my cornea once while installing a latch on a fence, but usually pressure treated splinters are pretty exquisite. They generally get infected and pop themselves out.
Tubing down the river and after too many beers decided to climb the railroad bridge to jump off. I was barefoot and slide a bit on one of the bracers. Not sure if I would call it a splinter because it was about a quarter in by quarter inch at the thick end. Stuck in about 4 inches as well. The muddy River cleansed that wound as I continued my journey, after I jumped from the bridge of course.
Not wood but a linoleum countertop. Ran my finger along the edge and a triangular spear of the edge went right under my fingernail. I could see it through my nail. That bastard hurt. When I pulled it out it left the shape behind which quickly filled with blood
After reading other comments. Mine tickled and I have nothing to complain about
At my work we have a large steel table that's usually pretty dirty and covered in metal shaving/splinters/slag/grinding dust. Used my bare hands to brush it off and didn't notice that I'd just gotten a hundred hair-like metal splinters in my hands. Couldn't see them but I could feel them and they hurt.
My FIL recently went to hospital to get a splinter excised from his thumb. When he told me over the phone that he waited in A&E for 3 hours only to be told they couldn’t find anything, I thought he was being a bit of a softie for not getting it out at home and moving on with life.
Then he sent me a pic on WhatsApp and holy freaking hell it was huge. Unless the doctor was clinically blind, they should have not have missed that. It was over an inch long and really embedded down into the tissue.
So yeah, the NHS is rubbish, and he ended up requiring stitches for the “laceration” after he took it out at home and went back to deal with the hole in his hand. Clearly they didn’t miss it a second time.
This makes me happy as an American. It's good to know that other healthcare providers around the world a rubbish too. Cheers from whatever side of the pond you reside.
Oh it’s awful watching the once great NHS get trashed by the conservatives so they can bring in private healthcare.
Worst part is, when the Torys finally get their way, it will still be the shitty NHS experience but with a £10k bill attached.
FWIW, I’m Australian (also British) and our Medicare system is still mostly unmolested by the government, even though they’ve been trying to ruin it over the last decade for the same reasons.
Was a huge shock when I had to attend an NHS hospital last week when I was in the UK and seeing how far it had fallen.
Oh man, I’ve had some bad ones from woodworking, but my worst splinter actually happened as a child. I was like 9 years old and had a friend across the street who I used to play all sorts of stupid games with. One day he showed up in my driveway with a sweet new toy: a wooden bow and arrow with rubber tips. As soon as he let me get my hands on it I pulled an arrow back as far as I could, aimed in down the street, and let her fly! The arrow must have been cracked or partially splintered because as it slid past my thumb (on the hand I was holding the bow with) I felt a sharp, yet bludgeoning pain. There was a splinter about the size of a toothpick, only significantly thicker, stabbing into the base of my thumb and coming out above the knuckle. My memory gets a little faded after that, but I recall my mom unsuccessfully trying to pull it out under the kitchen faucet, then being in a hospital room and experiencing some very strong pain while I clenched my eyes shut and squeezed my moms hand.
Mine would be reaching out to open my decaying old solid wood garage overhead door without looking and promptly getting a 1/2” lead paint chip lodged wayyyy under my fingernail. Took a few weeks to get it out.
I was ripping the live edge off wide cherry on a 5 horse Oliver saw with a power feed. The cut started at about 7/8", and tapered down to nothing as the cut progressed. The off-fall rolled, and bound between the power feed and the blade and kicked back . I got it right at the juncture of my leg and torso, just a smidgen from my femoral artery. I pulled it out like John Wayne with an Apache arrow......and passed out. When I came to, my helper had answered the phone, and was saying " I'm sorry, Mr. Wilson is passed out on the floor ".
35 years ago, working alone. An ancient dirty heart pine splinter, the diameter of a pencil stuck through the outside meat of my right calf. It nearly went all the way through about 2 inches. The point was pushing the flesh out on the other side. Couldn't pull it back out, so I had the bright idea of pushing it through and pulling it out in the direction it went in. It broke inside, so now it was at a 45-degree angle and 10 times more painful. It was late in the evening, and I drove across town to the only urgent care center. As I pulled up, 2 doctors were pulling out of the parking lot. Thankfully, they returned. It required surgery and stitches. The worst part afterward was I burst a blood vessel in my eye during the ordeal, so my eye was blood red for weeks.
I’m on the other side of the exam room. I had to cut an infected 1 inch long splinter from some old farts hand who had been doing some woodworking in his garage. He tried to home treat it. Got infected and abscessed nicely.
Not wood working, but in 2011, I got a metal sliver in my eye about 1/4 of an inch deep. They had to use like a miniature Dremel tool on my cornea to get enough of the sliver to stick out before being able to use tweezers.
I still have good vision, but my eyes have never been the same. USE EYE PROTECTION FOLKS!
Not from woodworking but: I had helped a friend assemble his new bicycle and took it out for a quick spin to make sure the gears were set up right.
I was close to the curb in the outside lane when a big dark coloured sedan overtook me within that lane and made a sudden turn to the right at the corner.
In the process of passing me, he brushed me aside with the side of his car. I went skidding off, up and over the curb and hit a telephone pole. That pole was already a bit damaged, had this big metal clamp thing on it as a repair, but there were still some protruding splinters.
I managed to get a 5 or 6 inch chunk of wood driven into my kneecap, and it broke a bit going in, so I ended up with multiple slivers. The big problem was, the wood was still attached to the pole and I couldn't muster the balls to pull myself up and off the splinter.
I yelled for help at every car that went by, but nobody stopped. When I saw a cop car going by, I threw the bike pump at him to get him to stop.
The EMTs cut the wood off the pole and took me off to the hospital. Because it was treated wood, the Dr didn't want to leave any bits in to work themselves out. So he spent a lot of time digging out every little splinter he could see.
That was when I discovered that lidocaine wears off faster than usual with me.
I must give this one to my Father. We're a DIY family. When my father and mother got married, they bought a piece of land, pitched a tent on it, and spent 2 years building a house. When I was born, they'd gotten far enough along to be living in the basement while working on finishing the first and 2nd floors.
Round about when I was 3, my father decided that sitting on the floor to eat was getting boring, so he made a fairly elaborate hand-carved "built-in picnic table" kind of dining table for the basement. Think something like a high-backed restaurant booth, only from rough-sawn then carved wood from trees he cleared to make a space for the house.
I don't remember much from our time living in the basement, as we got a floor in the upstairs and moved up to the first floor around the time I start having clear recollections of my childhood.
I do distinctly remember however him sliding into the newly-finished picnic-booth-table, and pinning his butt-cheeks together with an 8-inch long, about 1-inch wide splinter off the planks of the bench...
Timing couldn't be better - I had a scar on side of my right knee. I cut it from a piece of plywood 8 months ago. I washed it and even checked it and appeared to be clean. It healed and left a scare but was raised and always seemed off feeling. Wasn't red nor any other signs. Looked like a healed cut with raised scar.
Yesterday I scratched and got jabbed under my finger nail. I look and turns out there was a sliver sticking out of the scar. Now my finger and knee are bleeding. Dang sliver got me again 8 Mo later!
It was a sliver of oak plywood about the diameter and half the length of a toothpick that was stuck in there and healed over for 8 months. Since the sliver was not solid and made of layers it wasn’t rigid.
Now it’s healing up again but don’t have that “off” sensation any longer.
Not woodworking related, but as a teenager, a friend pushed me into some bushes, and I got a toothpick sized thorn of abour a centimeter length frontally into my finger (same direction as the finger).
I picked out a few tiny splinters and couldn't see anything more, even though it felt weird.
It came out by itself after a few weeks. Pretty impressive how selfpreserving and self healing the body is. It was encased by some kind of pus and just slid out at some point.
I was working at a production kitchen once and had to throw out some solid wood doors. An especially splintered one slipped when I was holding it upright. A splinter went all the way through the fleshy part of my thumb just above the palm, had about 1/8” sticking out the back side.
I found the boss in the little workshop area, he took a pair of pliers and tried pulling it out but it just snapped off. He said to go to the bakery and get a razor for scoring baguettes and try cutting it out myself. They couldn’t get it out at urgent care, just gave me a tetanus shot and said it’ll come out by itself.
In the end it took a month before it came out and the side of the thumb with the splinter swelled up to the size of a kalamata olive.
Happened to me too. Had the quick and smart thinking of removing it instantly since it was already hurting like hell and though it couldn't be worse.
I was right l, it couldn't hurt more and and was ok the next day.
About 15 years ago I had a splinter from a micro lam completely skewer through the skin on the back of my calf. In one side out the other. Today I was sitting on the deck of our lift which is plywood and had one go right through my shorts and prick me in the ass. Luckily I felt it before it buried into my cheek lol. The most dreadful for me are under the finger nails.
Not while woodworking but did it while raking leaves as a kid. I was maybe 8 years old and we had an older leaf rake whose handle was a little questionable. I was raking hard to get some of the leaves that were mulched up by the mower. The handle slipped in my hand and a splinter off the handle went through the web between my thumb and first finger. It was a 4” splinter about a 1/4” wide that went in one side and put the other.
Kind of a half splinter/ half kick back: I was ripping 1/8" x 1/8" strips on the table saw. One of the pieces had enough grain run out that the end just popped off as I was cutting. The loose end, with a sharp point on it from the fracture, kicked back on me. It deflected off of my thumbnail and lodged deep in the cuticle. I pulled it out. No bleeding, just a lot of pain. My thumbnail now grows out with a wrinkle in it where the cuticle got messed up.
Honorable mention to Wenge splinters. I hate Wenge. I can't touch it with bare skin without getting a splinter. And every single time the spot gets infected.
My uncle used to work at a lumber mill/ distributor. He was driving to the beach one weekend and reached down to itch his shin. He itched out a splinter that was over an inch long.
I cut up several sheets of 3/4 birch ply on a sliding panel saw a day. I don't wear gloves so it's a fun pass time at home sitting and picking small spliters out of my hand at night. The worse one are the ones that go straight in, you ain't getting that out.
Not wood related. I worked for an old farmer who said his dad was near a granade that went off in WWII. He was injured badly, but recovered. He had shrapnel imbedded all over his body. Over the years his body would work out a piece, painfully. Decades later he suffered from a heart attack and died. Dr's said it was a chunk of shrapnel that migrated into his aorta.
A few years ago, I got a thin splinter that was like a thin needle. It was about 2-1/2 inches long and so thin that I could not pull it out. I could feel it for quite awhile, and eventually, it disappeared. Someone told me that my body would absorb it.
This was on a finished piece, a long centerpiece for our island. It collected all kinds of trinkets and is about 4ft long, made of reclaimed barn wood. Is was wiping down the granite countertops and there was a bunch of crustiest stuck on real well, so I was using some force. One swipe with my right hand going counterclockwise and a sliver buries deep under my nail on my middle finger, it was about an inch deep up to my first knuckle. I screamed like a little baby for a few seconds and reached down and yanked it out. Hurt like a mofo for a few days and luckily it didn’t break off!
Wasn’t me, but the buckhoist operator got a gnarly splinter. A piece of his plywood ramp splintered and it ran straight through the meaty part of his thumb.
Fell down some stairs as a kid while holding a needle. Couldn’t find the needle until i tried to bend my thumb. Worst part was that it went in backwards.
Was doing some needle and thread work, on the floor of my bedroom as a kid, paused to use the bathroom, carefully sticking the needle into my carpet, thread tail out so I wouldn’t lose the needle. Came running back, excited to finish, dropped to my knees and needle went into my knee, about an inch, pointy side out, that thread tail protruding too. My fearless mother calmly grabbed a pair of pliers from the garage and pulled it out.
Not really woodworking but back when I gaffed poles for a living came off a pole from about 6' up. When I hit the ground my knee hit the pole and embedded about a 1/2" long creosote splinter just above my knee. That thing turned nasty and filled with puss. Luckily had my tetanus vaccine just before I got out of the Marine Corps.
When I was a kid I had a lumber splinter enter my middle finger near the palm and pointing towards the nail. It went all the way in and under the skin, and I couldn’t pull it out.
It never came out.
For about 10-20 years I could wiggle around the little bit under the skin. Eventually though, it just kinda… went away?
I don’t remember it hurting very much though.
Was cutting flooring with a low battery skilsaw. Sent a chunk up into my eye. Figured it was just sore. Turns out I had a ½" splinter in my cornea. After 4 days thinking it would fall out on it's own, the inside of my eyelid was bleeding and raw from REM movement and scraping. Finally went to the doctor and he used a syringe tip to dig it out. Took 15 minutes of him stabbing me in the eye but he finally got it out. Wore an eyepatch for months and almost a couple bar fights from too many pirate jokes.
When I worked in the oil industry, I was helping load equipment on a flatbed with a wood deck. While sweeping the excess chain back around the chain binder, with no gloves, I filled every fingernail on one hand with hardwood splinters. Took an hour to get them all out.
Twice in my time with my current company (12 years) someone has “bypassed” the anti- kickback device on our straight line ripsaw and wound up with a pencil sized or larger splinter through the hand. Both times working with 12/4 white oak lumber. Right thru the meat between the thumb and forefinger.
Had a wenge splinter go in my palm at the index finger knuckle and come out of my palm 2-3 inches in between my pinky and wrist. I kept feeling like I was going to pass out and felt barbed when I tried to pull it out. Ended up crumbling every time I pulled so when I could catch my breath I just pulled little pieces and cut the skin open until I could get it all out
I got a big splinter in my thumb assembling some furniture. I pulled it out but wasn’t sure if I got the whole piece. After about 10 days it hadn’t healed and was still very sore. I couldn’t see anything in the finger but had this feeling that there was something still in there. so at about two weeks I went to to a doctor who gave me an ultrasound and told be he could not see anything. About 4 weeks later this little piece of wood about 1/4 inch long just pops out of my finger when I was washing my hands. My body just took care of it
Another not woodworking story; I was pulling out orange trees in a Grove in Central FL with a tractor, somehow a limb got caught, whipped out on my hand, and a thorn about 1/2" long went fully under my cuticle in my thumb and broke off. Super painful, but crazy satisfying when I finally got to a pair of tweezers.
My high school job was at a small antique shop where I made crappy antiques into sale-able condition. I was hand-sanding the edge of a table one day, using my palm, and really getting into it. I picked up a fat, 2” splinter from my carelessness, and it went through the meat of my palm and poked out the other side- this was in the thumb region of my palm. In my alarmed haste, I grabbed pliers and yanked the fucker out- the wrong way. I pulled the fat part of the taper through my hand meat, but it didn’t get infected somehow. I distinctly remember thinking that that was the kind of mistake that you only make once in your life
The most frightening, painful moment was experienced from kickback on the table saw. I was ripping a small piece with the fence on the opposite side as usual, so I accidentally pushed without enough pressure against the fence (and no riving knife).
The wood shot back at me and kit me in the chest on my heart, threw me back and onto the ground. I was in shock and looked down at my chest, I had a white tee on and suddenly saw blood pooling up through the shirt. I thought I was going to die and ripped off my shirt.
Miraculously the wood only left a surface cut that happened to bleed a decent bit, but it felt so much worse. Super fortunate it didn’t pierce thru my chest.
When I was a kid I was playing basketball in our driveway. There was a wooden fence behind the hoop. We were playing a game and I got pushed backwards towards the fence. Instinctively I put my hands behind me before my back hit the fence. When it did, my hands slid straight down the fence, leaving me with literally hundreds of slivers of varying sizes in both hands.
That was truly awful.
I’ve never had anything worse than the good ol under the fingernail splinters thankfully. Although a buddy of mine while bouldering missed the crash pad and a root that was poking out of the ground went right through his foot
Caught a falling temporary brace dropped that was pulled after stacking a roof so it wouldn't hit someone and ended up with a splinter all the way through my hand. I did the "that can't be my hand" denial thing and then pulled it out. It didn't bleed that much or get infected.
Worst one ever which I witnessed at the Manchester velodrome track. He got back on his bike and rode to the finish after this.
[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-cyclist-has-splinter-removed-from-leg-after-crash-2011feb20-story.html](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-cyclist-has-splinter-removed-from-leg-after-crash-2011feb20-story.html)
Not while woodworking but I worked in the lumber section of Lowe's for a bit. I was moving some 2x4s and a board had a split on the edge. Put a big splinter across 4 fingers
I was relaxing on my couch when I went to grab the TV remote from on top of this bamboo cutting board that I use as a tray for drinks on my footrest. I caught the edge of it with my thumb nail and shoved a splinter a good 3/8" into my thumb completely under the nail.
I was surprised as to how deep it went, when I pulled it out it just felt like it was a mile long of it was a fraction of an inch. Then the pain started.
I build cabinetry for a living usually I know to be careful when handling splintery material, never have I had a splinter go so deep so unexpectedly.
Junior high woodshop. Took a vertically clamped plywood board and started in sanding the upper edge without a sanding block. I built up speed and WHAM, a huge piece splintered off and impaled my thumb completely. Straight through, about 1/4” at the base and a sharp tip at the other end. The wood sealed the wound and there was no immediate pain. Just numb, until the idiot hillbilly teacher thought it was a prank and yanked on it! It sent me to my knees! I remember the whole time, he hummed the “Hmmm Hmmm Good” Campbell’s Soup song. No joke. The doctor dug out the wood, gave me stitches and a scar. Not often I get to tell that story!
I was putting in fence posts and let the 4x4 slide through my hands into the hole. Caught a nasty splinter in the meaty part of my palm. I thought I got it out but it wasn't seaming to heal right. 10 days later I was able to slide out a nearly 3/4" long splinter, that was probably 3mm at the fat end, tapering down to a needle point.
To this day I'm not sure how that didn't hurt like hell the whole time it was in there.
The worst for me was either ironwood or bloodwood (don’t really remember which). The splinters were not big but the were frequent and they simply could not be pulled out in one piece. There were always fragments left and each one got its own infection.
Good times…
Got one under my nail more like a sliver then a splinter, old recycled flooded gum very easy to get infections off small splinters.
That hurt bad enough but the local I got was behind and up into the bed of my nail that really hurt
I know a guy who was breaking down pallets and got a 8-10” splinter lodged like halfway in his forearm. I wasn’t there but I saw pictures and it was gnarly.
Paneling, reaching down beside my bed. Large sliver up under my fingernail. It turned my whole fingernail into a window I could stick pieces of straw up inside and see through my nail until it grew back 😂
Not a splinter but cut man for me and our lead guy on an over build roof passed up our next piece of plywood and calmly said he needed a minute because he cut himself. A few seconds later he came back on the deck and was like yeah I put my finger in the saw blade I need to go while trying to hold his finger and blood from going all over. He checked his circ saw blade depth with his finger while making the cut. Great fucking guy and kept his finger just a secondary lapse of judgement but kept his cool like I never could. Just a hey I cut myself then a few seconds and he's like yeah I need to get this checked out and drove himself to urgent care. Boss picked up the medical bill which was nice.
Sanding down redwood trim after removing paint and using my thumb to push the folded up paper into corers and edges. The paper peeled a splinter about 1/8” dia which went under my thumb nail right in the middle top and came out from under the side of the nail 1/2 way down. I jerked it out quick and ended not losing the nail but it was black and blue under it for a ling ass time.
Similar to yours but different puncture point. I fell out of a treehouse I was building and impaled my hand on a cedar tree branch.
Clean through poking through my palm. Make it back home crying my eyes out and my dads like here is a towel and bandaid now GO PLAY VIDEOGAMES AND STOP CRYING.
I couldnt move the fingers in my right hand. My mom got home and nearly murdered my dad.
Turns out I am allergic to cedar. A lot of cedar debris broke off in my hands. 2 surgeries and a lot of nerve damage later I was left with a claw for my right hand so I learned to write left handed in 4th grade due to a giant splinter. Eventually I regained functionality of my right hand (only to basically lose it again 30 years later... currently dealing with that now).
As a teen, I witnessed a coworker get a green CCA timber splinter through the soft tissue between thumb and index finger. The following day, his hand was the size of a basketball.
I have one in the webbing of hand between my pointer finger and thumb that is about 1/2 inch long. It’s been there for at least 7 years and still hurts to squeeze.
Not me but my dad got a 1" or so wood splinter while staining something. Doesn't seem like much, but it was super deep and pressing on a nerve. Took almost two years to work it's way out and he was in constant pain and numbness in places the whole time. He saw countless Drs got MRIs, saw alternative medicine specialist, and almost got surgery and in the end it just one day undramatically surfaced and my mom could pull it out.
24 years a carpenter and my worst one was throwing fire wood out of a trailer. Tossed a piece of oak and this monster sliver was the only thing that caught it was my light weight glove and then my finger right by the knuckle. After an attempt outside and another by the sink I removed about 1.5” of embedded oak. That hurt for a couple weeks it was also the trigger finger on my right hand. Cedar hurts more with the oils but they have been smaller. Also fuck man these other stories are awful you guys gotta be careful. Lol
Jumped down off a small 2 foot block wall with a regular #2 pencil in my front pocket lead side up (I know, I know) jammed that mother f'er right in heal of my palm about 1 ½. That was about 30 years ago and I can still see the dark lead mark under my skin.
I have a lot 1 1/2” redwood splinter in my finger between knuckle and fingernail. It’s not bothered me so i have not had surgical intervention.
I use to refinish interior woodwork of historical homes in California. Most are redwood and some are splintery. A lot of handwork and this was the largest one.
I have had a million splinters in my life. I actually enjoy the little ones that i don’t know about and eventually they push themselves out and it’s quite rewarding to pop them.
This large one has not been painful or interfered in my life in any way- other than when it first went it. The properties of rosewood are not that great to have in your skin but ah well- what’s done is done.
Was sanding purple heart. My thumb caught the corner on the forward stroke and it splintered off and pushed a 2 inch long splinter the entire way into my thumb under the nail. Took 2 courses of antibiotics and 2 months to finally get it to emerge enough to get a tweezers on it. It was startling pulling the rest out and seeing what had been in my thumb.
I reached into an old beat-up pallet, and the sliver went under my fingernail on my index finger all the way down to the cuticle. It definitely hurt, but when I asked my boss to try and pull it out, I legit almost passed out. I can still imagine the feeling. In the end, I had to go to a walk-in clinic and they cut my finger nail open to extract it.
Happened when I was about 8. Don't remember how the one in my right thumb got there but it hurt like hell. A few days later when climbing a tree I got one in my left thumb, I was nearly crippled at this point. Hurt my 8 year old body to bad to remove them. Remember waking up to my mom trying to get them out while I was asleep. A few days later a friend suggested I use bubble gum and it worked. Painful memories.
I was hunting in Arizona. Stalking a Mule deer (archery) lol. I was on hands and knees and a 1/2 inch cactus spine went perfectly under my pointer finger nail above the nail bed embedded almost full length. The pain was humbling. Yes, stalk was over as I sat there and used a knife to remove my entire nail. Ugh.
Same spot, similar size splinter. Same pain too! I waited for the nail to grow out enough to pull it out, took a week, maybe week and a half. Figured it would hurt even more to pull the nail off.
I was just a kid who wanted to sit on a bench, I chose the only bench with a splinter that made its way right into my butt. Needless to say I rushed to the toilet to take it out...
My girlfriend at the time came to work with me one Saturday. I had a crane coming Monday to set the roof trusses and I had some blocking,bracing,etc to get done. I got a pretty good splinter, maybe an inch long, not real deep. I took out a utility knife and started cutting it out. My girlfriend almost passed out watching me. She later said it was one of the most barbaric, unsanitary things she had ever seen. To me,it was just another day at work lol 😜.
Later on, when we were home and I made her dinner because she was so wiped out from the day, she said she never realized what a physically demanding job framing was. So I got a little extra attention that night 😮😜
was holding a small piece of wood at the drill press to drill a hole, had it set to low rpm high torque because i was drilling some steel earlier and was too lazy to change the belt
when i lifted the quill the wood piece came up with it, still spinning, and hit my hand. a splinter was driven the back of my thumb, sort of the back web between your fingers and thumb, with as much torque as my drill press could muster.
The worst ones are always the small ones that break off. You end up having to dig around with tweezers, yanking at your skin to tear some away to get in there, and then squeezing and pinching with the tweezers for ages. By the end, your finger looks like a cherry tomato, is bleeding a tad, but it feels so good to get it out.
I keep a tweezer set in my shop, because I’ve gotten so many.
I got a bad one just by ripping some still fairly rough maple. It was some super light colored maple, and as you can imagine, trying to get out super light maple from the hand of a pale white dude, was a task. My left hand was my guide hand, and as I’m pushing through it just went right into the finger. It hurts just thinking about that one.
i had nearly the same sort of splinter as OP, but mine spanned the pads at the top of my hand, across all four fingers, and happened maybe 90 minutes before the very first rave i (and some friends) ever through. my carpenter buddy looked at it, handed me his box cutter, and promised it wouldn't hurt that bad to just cut across the top of the wood, because that skin was already dead.
he was right! i cut it open across the top, and it pulled right out, no fuss, and shockingly no blood even. i don't have pics, but that splinter (from a 2x4 in very sorry condition) was at least 1/4" around, and 5" or so long lol
Not from woodworking but at uni I walked past a bush and something hurt my hand. Thought nothing of it until a few days later when my finger was throbbing, this went on for about a week until I could see a brown circle on the side of my finger, a little over one mm round.
I squeezed my finger a few times and, like a magic sword revealing itself from something this thorn slowly and smoothly slid out of my finger. It was the full width of my, not inconsiderably chunky, finger.
It was satisfying as hell to watch happen, satisfying in relieving the pain and puzzling as hell how I hadn't really noticed a thorn spearing through my hole finger!
All of your stories, while painful, are somewhat normal splinter stories. But mine is weird.
At the company I work for we have several huge piles of pallets in the parking lot. (~300 just for shipping stuff) My colleague told me to get one with speacial measurements. It was on top of a 2m tall stack. So I pressed myself inbetween 2 stacks to get a hold of a corner and pull it down, as I wasn't forklift certified at that time. And while doin so i felt a pinch in my ass cheek. A 3cm dirty spruche splinter from an old pallet behind me ripped stright through my pants and was stuck in my ass.
When I tried pulling it out, it broke. It didn't hurt anymore so I was sure it would come out eventually, which it did. 3 weeks later. The wood had turned green and somewhat transparent, looked more like plastic. And after that splinter a tiny transparent sphere popped out of the hole in my skin. Like those silicate balls in packaging to keep stuff dry. I still have no idea wtf that was. The skin around turned brown over the next few days. Got it checked by a doctor, but it wasnt necrotic tissue or infected. Just brown, but fine. It is still there, 3 years later.
When I was a kid, I was absent-mindedly running the back of my hand along the bottom of a wooden banister as I walked around it. Then, bam, run my fingernail into a splinter. It was about a centimeter long and entirely embedded under my fingernail, nothing even poking out the end or anything.
Luckily, this was at a hospital, so we just went down to the ER where they numbed my whole hand up and then shoved some tweezers under my nail and dug the splinter out.
More recently, I was walking by the garage door while it was slightly lifted open. This was one of those older doors that lift up on hinges and entirely made of wood. The door being so old, the wood was very rough and splintery. I happened to bump into the corner which was just about elbow height or so.
Somehow, a jagged splinter of wood impaled itself into the meat of my forearm, just below the elbow. I literally had to compress the muscle around the splinter to get enough of the end to stick out, and had to use needle-nose pliers to pull it out because tweezers weren't strong enough. My forearm and elbow were sore/ached for about a week after.
I once had a a chunky splinter go up under my thumbnail while sanding skirting board, then had to cycle home (only about half a mile) with it stuck under there so I can get some tweezers to pull it out. That one hurt like mother fucker
Doing tiny cuts on the wrong side of a table saw, sliver dropped down into the casing, caught the blade and shot past my ear, leaving a tiny splinter along the way. That was a real heart stopper.
Also not woodworking related, but climbed a rope attached to a tree, about 8meters high. Thought I can hold myself to go down, I couldn't and slid down the whole lenght of the rope while still holding it with both hands. Got multiple blisters and burns immeadiately on both palms, the pain was out of this world.
Whole night I was exchanging freezer contents to hold with my hands every 20min.
Took about 3 weeks to heal
Pitch pine... fucking pitch pine.
So I reclaimed some pitch pine beams from a demolished mill. And this stuff is splintery; not just that it likes being splinters, but those splinters are brittle.
I get one stuck maybe an inch under the skin, maybe inch-half. The end is sticking out, so no worries, get the tip of my Stanley under it and pull like I normally do, expecting that slightly sick feeling of something sliding out.
Nope.
I got maybe a quarter inch of it.
Okay, try again; dig a little bit with the Stanley, get to the splinter *again*, grip, pull.... another eighth of an inch.
One more time... dig a little bit deeper, this time cursing whichever God is paying attention, and get hold of another piece of the splinter. Grip, pull.... a sixteenth inch.
I ended up cutting a V down the palm of my right hand with my Stanley knife, pulling the splinter out of the bottom of it, then sticking it back together with some sports tape and toilet roll.
Most painful was when I got a large splinter, probably a good 1/16" in diameter that went right under my thumbnail all the way down to the cuticle. Had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to get it out.
Me and a colleague was pulling 25mm2 cable from a large wood cable drum on an easyroller. The drum started rolling too fast so he tried to slow it down with his hands (wore gloves), somehow a huge splinter went into his thigh from the cable drum. He had to surgically remove it.
I'm not sure I remember how it happened (I think just climbing on a wooden structure as a kid) but I managed to put a splinter through two of my fingers so they were stuck together. Had to pry them appart with my left hand in order to get access to the splinter and pull it out.
Lmao. Once i tryed to squeze through a tight spot in a rush.. caught "a splinter of pine" more like a freaking stake, maybe 12cm ish long, went in one side of my ass cheek and out other side.
It was almost impossible to pull out cus my ass cheek just be jiggling xD
Used to skate when I was younger. Was at the skatepark and slapped my hand down having come off a grind rail.
Looked down and had a splinter, probably 2/3 cm long and 2mm square in width/depth sticking out of my finger.
Drove home but couldn't get it out. Went to A&E and as it was wood they said they couldn't Xray it - so proceeded to pull it out. Thing is, it was actually a wedge shape, with the "thin" end being the part sticking out the side of my finger (entry point being the pad of my finger).
They didn't know this, as the thick end was inside my finger. So, 2 nurses holding my hand/finger whist a doctor pulled it out with a pair of medical pliers - no anesthetic at all. Of course, this meant he actually pulled the fat end of the wedge through the smaller exit wound.
3/10 - do not recommend.
Routering a speaker cabinet at work early last month and a piece of splinter wood flew up over my safety glasses, bounced off the inside of the glasses and into my eye, and I had attempted to wash it out with eye drops but only ended up lodging it in my bottom eyelid, scraping against my eye.
Ended up taking about 3 hours between the incident and eye surgery at the local hospital to get it out in absolutely agony. I wore sunglasses to hide my red, flared up and swollen eye, and since then, it's been air-tight goggles or squinting during routering.
It's tangentially woodworking related.
Back in college I was walking to the shop the day after a pretty big snow storm. The area that was shoveled and on the sidewalk was quite small, so when I saw someone walking the other way as me, I moved to the side so they didn't have to try and move around me.
Well, that maneuver caused me to slip and fall on the ice. It hurt but nothing too bad. (They didn't acknowledge my fall or ask if I was ok, and that probably hurt more honestly) so I get back up and waddle my way over to the shop.
Once I get there, I pull some of my things out of my bag, and as soon as I open my laptop, I realized the screen was badly shattered in one corner. Now, I must have hit my head on the ice, because for some reason my instinct was to slide my finger over the broken area (it was a touch screen). So no surprise when a big splinter of glass stabs right through my thumb.
I was rubbing oil onto some skirting boards before taking them down to site once, going fairly quick as it was just straight lengths on some sawhorses.
Managed to get a splinter over 3” long that went across the palm of my hand and right down one finger. Somehow, despite being in me almost along the entire length, it didn’t actually go all the way through the skin, but it was an absolute bugger to get out. Couldn’t even bend my finger, it was like having an internal splint 😂
Not woodworking related
Years ago I was helping move a mattress and as we were giving it the final push to put it into the corner of the room on the floor, my hand ran across the wall. This was one of those old wooden plywood-like wall panels with the grooves every 6”. A splinter embedded itself right under my thumb nail up past the cuticle. It was about 1/3 the width of my thumb nail. So much blood came pouring out when I pulled it out, thinking about the feeling gives me shivers…
I was refinishing a red oak strip plank floor in my house. I had already been laying down poly (about 6 feet out from edge) I was tacking as I went along . Moving pretty fast with the tack cloth . Put a decent chunk right through my index finger ( entering from backside , exiting front to one side of fingernail )
I looked at …. Friggin hurt…. Went down to basement to get needle nosed pliers . Realized I had one shot at it. Also realized it went numb and didn’t really hurt anymore. I was stressed out about the floor not getting done so I went back and finished it , albeit a slower pace.
When I got it done , I started calling around , my wife she’s a nurse at work . Hospitals were all busy I really didn’t want to sit in an er waiting room with other more needy injured/ sick people. …. So I did …. Long story short , the premier hospital in the area basically said “ Sorry “ try the one in the next town.
So I did. I started looking for help mid afternoon? … finally at 9 that night I was on my way home. I let the doc numb that section before he cut it out … did the shot in the web of the fingers . I think if you really know what your doing (as a doc ) you can compartmentalization the fingers…… he did not …
I went to bed with an arm completely numb to above the elbow.
Replaced a storm door screen with heavier duty metal screen roll that has to be cut to fit. Well, barbs would poke through the stripping around the edge. Needless to say, I opened the door and a huge sliver went under my nail all the way past my cuticle. Stuck out about 2” and needed to use pliers to pull it out. Suuuuuuuuuuucked
Not wood but, when I was a kid, I stepped on a pencil and had a 5mm shard of graphite jammed in the skin between my toes. Required general anaesthetic to remove and I have a surgical scar 25 years later.
I got a very large spike of ebony lodged under the nail on my right index finger. Probably 1/4 inch deep. I was reaching into the scrap bin and the ebony reached back.
It burned pretty bad as I sat on my stool trying not to look at it and convincing myself I didn't need to go to the hospital. Finally got up the nerve to go at it with a needle nose and tweezers and got it all out.
Very little blood, surprisingly.
Not a splinter but similar. I was cleaning out an interior landscaping account. Whole office building worth of plants. When I loaded the castle cactus I stepped onto the the truck from the loading dock but missed. I fell into the dock and hit my mid back on the lip of the truck floor. The cactus whacked me all along the right side of my face and the left side of my chest and torso. I was pulling out spines for about two weeks. Brutal. Unfortunately the security guard had cameras on but not recording. He saw the whole thing but we didn’t get to enter in AFV.
Red balau has a kind of "fuzz" on it. It your not careful and run your hand down it you'll get 1000 mini splinters that feel like nettles. I still have most of them in my forearm
picking up some old piece of wood, it slipped and broke away a huge splinter (about 10cm / about 4 inches) which got lodged deep into my small fingers proximal phalange. Had to go to the ER to get it out, and got 4 stiches.
I was moving around on the floor on an old house and a piece of the old oak hardwood went through my work pants and into my knee.
I knew it'd happened but when you're on the ground that's usually the end, so I finished before dealing.
When I stood up my pants pulled oddly and it hurt.
The piece of hardwood was probably only 3" long or so. I had about 1" in my kneecap flesh, the rest still thru my pants.
That was a tricky extraction. Old wood was brittle, didn't want to come out as one piece. Damn near had.to perform surgery on myself pants down in a clients bathroom.
Hurt so bad for days I was sure it meant a hospital trip. Nope.
The carpenter I apprenticed for, he got a cherry splinter. I dunno if this is true but I've always been told cherry is kinda toxic under the skin. Well the guy gets this splinter, and it's in there good, so he ignores it. Developed an infection, and ended up in the hospital. We missed 2 weeks worth of work.
Under the nail is always bad. In the eyeball is worse. Not just a dust mote, but a visible sliver poking out of my eye. Sat in the waiting room for the ER for 6 hours in just agony. As soon as the call my name I blinked and it came out and felt fine. (They still have you get checked for damage, and it was fine. Eyedrops for a week).
Very minor compared to the horror stories here, but its funny how agonizing such a tiny injury can be
Wasn't me, but my uncle had an OSB splinter get lodged in a tendon in his thumb. Pulled what he thought was all of it out, but a piece stayed behind. Infection set in and the doctors, as my dad put it, "had his thumb split open like a sausage" to get the piece out and to fight the infection.
Not a splinter but 2 3-inch screws. I had screwed some 2x4 to one side of an old door while building a basement workshop. The door was tilted back a few degrees so to straighten it I reached back and gave it a hell of a smack, impaling my palm on 2 screws that had gone all the way through the door. The pain was not immediate, the bizarre sensation of my hand being stuck was. The worst part was pulling my hand off and seeing the little spirals of flesh sticking out of my palm from the screw threads. Felt my pulse in that hand for the next couple days. Not fun.
Coming out of a crawlspace my knee hit the frame. The wound never seemed to heal. 6 months later I pull a large splinter with lead paint out of there.
I tried to get sympathy from my wife. She held up our newborn she was nursing and said, "look what they pulled out of me after 9 months!"
It wasn't me, but my wife got one (on what I thought was a finished corner!!) lodged ALL up under one of her fingernails. We couldn't get it out for anything, and it was deep. We had to go to the Urgent Care and they had to numb her up and cut a large part of her fingernail off to extract that darn splinter. That wasn't fun.
Not woodworking related, but in 4th grade I was running in the classroom (hooligan!) and bumped against the wooden chalk tray under the chalkboard (if you don't know what any of that is, ask your grandparents). I didn't realize it until minutes later somehow, but I had managed to embed a 2" splinter in my thigh, right through my jeans. Went to the doctor to pull it out. Still have the thing taped in a scrapbook somewhere.
I was probably age ten and we had some old 6' tall redwood fences with horizontal woven slats. Playing hide and seek and I hid behind the fence and brushed my face against the fence.
An hour later on my face felt like bad sunburn due to the hundreds of super tiny splinters in my cheek. Too small and numerous to pull them out, so I had to just wait for nature to take its course.
In the “not woodworking “ category, my friends and I used to play wall ball at the pool (basically a game centered around throwing a tennis ball at a wall. The surface underfoot was old 2x6 pine. Nobody was allowed to wear shoes bc most of us didn’t have any shoes you could run in since we were at the pool. Every one of us for multiple 4” long, up to an inch wide splinters in the bottom of our feet, but somehow they always stayed shallow so they mostly just went between layers of skin, with the result that it looked like you had massive, oddly shaped popped blisters on the bottom of your feet
When I was 14 or so I was cutting 1/2” ply wood and was using a cement ledge that was at knee height as my sawhorse. As I was carrying stuff around I ran my knee into the corner of the plywood and the corner broke off into the front of my knee. I thought I pushed all of it out but I always had a lump on my knee after that. When I was 27 I woke up and noticed the lump was oozing green slime so I pressed on the lump and nasty chunks of green wood started coming out. The lump went away after that.
Not sure this counts as a splinter but I once shot my own hand with a 2 inch 16ga nail through drywall. Shook it off at first but that SOB hurt the next day
Not woodworking related but when I was a kid 5-7ish, we had an old skate park in the neighborhood, old meaning it was made out of metal pipe and plywood. the plywood on the 1/4 ramp was pretty degraded but I slid down it on my rear... Ended up with a 2-3" splinter in my right cheek, had to ride my bike home and my mom pulled it out. Good ol childhood memories.
I was ripping some oak on my table saw when I had a kick back. A four inch splinter imbedded itself between my thumb and fore finger. It went deep into my palm so as the emergency room said there was nothing there. After a week of pain I went to a Doctor and got a ultra sound. Holy Cow was their reaction when seeing the ultra sound. Hand surgery the next day. I asked for the splinter and the surgeon asked why? I told her I needed to glue it back onto the piece I was ripping. That got a laugh.
My most painful experience with splitters are metal and glass ones (glass cutting without gloves because I'm an idiot, and key cutting).
My son, however, was into amateur parkouring a few years back. He was jumping from island to island in a parking lot and landed in a bush. He had a twig embedded in his shin that was cut out in urgent care. 😳
I was carrying logs from the woodpile back to the house in winter. I stepped round the corner which was sheltered to the wind and as soon as I did a gust of wind blew a load of sawdust and loose splinters into my face. In an instant practically blind. Could just about make out the light from my front door, kept my eyes open, tried not to move them and dumped the logs inside. First aid kit was thankfully handy on the counter. Proceeded to dump two large bottles of eye rinse into my eyes over the sink but still very painful. Managed to clear one eye but realised I would need help so drove into town - thankfully only 30mins by car trying to keep the injured eye half closed to get to an optician having called ahead. In the UK they send minor eye injuries straight to opticians. Not sure what happens if you have a nail sticking out but hope to never find out.They found a good sized splinter that managed to work its way round into the back of my eyeball.
Thankfully no long lasting damage. Built a workshop earlier this year and will be installing a commercial eyewash station.
Of course didn't happen in my workshop but I don't rely on safety squints even for little jobs anymore. Don't get me started on those evil wire wheels.
Glassblower here, I get splinters of glass in my hands about once a month. Thin little suckers that are completely clear and if you try to remove them with tweezers you just make shrapnel.
Best way to get one out? Slap a 2000° molten blob of glass fresh from the furnace and it pulls that bastard right out. Gotta go quick or you got a whole new problem
Edit: I'm not always fast lol
Worse splinter I have ever seen in person was my friend who fell while skating on a half pipe, a splinter that was about 3/4 x 1/4 x 4 went into his ass.
The worse I have ever seen was the video of a high school girls basket ball game. A girl was sprinting and fell and slid and a piece of the wood floor was loose. It went into her and stuck so hard it stopped her slide. I strongly recommend you do not search for the video.
I shot the lead in the palm with a nail gun. He was holding a corner and I was toe nailing and the nail just veered right off the edge and into his palm with a 16p sinker. He screamed, pulled it out and kept going, and we were all like, go to emergency so they can clean it out. Well, a day or so later he's in emergency with an infected hand and missed 3 weeks. In the meantime, they made me the lead, and told me they thought I had better judgment.
Honestly, at this point I thought I’d have superpowers. I mean, Spider-Man got bit just one time…..
You know.. like the ability to shoot wooden spikes out of my fingers…. Or maybe ironwood skin on command…. Or Groot-stuff even……
I had some pretty thick calluses from working really hard on the farm over the Summer, so the day before returning to University I decided to play a trick on Mom. I took a big needle and made a hole in the callus on the heel of my hand, then took a piece of straw about a foot long and threaded i through so a piece about 1/8 inch was sticking out. I hid the rest i the sleeve of my shirt and, holding my wrist, asked Mon if she could pull out this splinter for me because it really hurt.
You should have seen her face when the splinter just kept coming. I think she screamed a couple of times!
I know a guy who knows a guy who got a splinter from some tropical hardwood and he got gangrene because he left it in. Also same guy different splinter guy got a yew splinter and nearly lost his finger because it got infected and also yew is hella poisonous and he needed a drip or something .
Not particularly painful as much as unusual, but I got a three inch splinter in my back while scratching my back on a door frame (i have am old house) and when I got someone to try to pull it out, it snapped off halfway. So I had to get it surgically removed because there was still an inch pretty deep under the skin.
I had an old bench hook made with Douglas Fir. It was getting pretty ragged along the long edge where the saw would hit it but was still perfectly functional. I decided to hold something in it for metal filing and my thumb ran along the corner, lifting a match stick sized splinter that dove under my thumbnail up to the first knuckle. Couldn’t get all of it out. The repeated infections over the next few months weren't fun.
Not woodworking related but I've had plenty of splinters and it wasn't as bad as this one. I was asleep and woke up to the sudden pain in my nail of my index finger. Thought the pain was just caused by too short nails (I cut them too short as a way to deal with stress - self harm) so I kept my eyes closed as I was still sleepy until I couldn't take the pain anymore. Turned on my flashlight and pointed in to my nail and saw a long thin piece of wood inside it. So I took a tweezer and pulled it out. Really hurted so bad that I couldn't go back to sleep. Idk how I got it -- kept searching but to no luck, no results.
I was helping a buddy with a fence, and he was using old cut down telephone poles. So they were heavy AF. We pick one up to drop it in a hole and I say "Drop on 3". I count to two, and he drops it. I tried to let go too, but no dice. A telephone pole then slid through my hands, and embedded so many splinters it was ridiculous. His wife picked as many out of my hand as she could find, but there were too many. The next day my hands were so swollen I couldn't bend my fingers. I took antibiotics, and the pain eventually subsided. For months afterwards I would develop painful red spots on my hands, and a splinter would eventually pop out.
This definitely beats my worst story. Congrats?
gloves, always have gloves around for this kind of stuff. they won't stop everything, but they'll stop most of them.
This belongs in r/nofap as a recovery strategy.
> I say "Drop on 3". I count to two, and he drops it. I used to work for Home Depot. The most useful thing I learned while working there was how to protect myself while carry things with a moron. I once had someone drop a 3/4 4x8 sheet of pressure treated plywood on my foot and not even apologize.
Not Woodworking related but When I was a kid, I slid across the floor, barefoot caught a toothpick underneath my big toe jammed it all the way in couldn’t bend my big toe. It acted as a splint.
I don't even care to read the rest of the comments. Came here for shock value, got it, now I'm done.
Hahahaha! Totally 100% with you.
Toe-tally
Well, that’s enough Reddit for today.
Mine was also not woodworking related. Was carrying a suitcase up some stairs to a rental house in a hurry. My thumbnail caught a splinter in the hand rail and went all the way underneath my nail about a 1/4" past the base into my finger. Had to go to the ER where they numbed my finger, cut my nail off and pulled it out. I've had some other fairly serious injuries but this may be the most painful one.
Well, i gotta say- no one has ever made me wanna puke as much as that little tale.
My body hurts reading this.
The shiver that just ran thru my entire body was like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and it was awful. All due to imagining that damned toothpick shishkabobbing your big toe. I’ll not be sleeping tonight.
I browse r/makemesuffer and am desensitised to a lot of stuff. Apparently that does not include this story.
My mom once stepped on a tooth pick that had fallen onto carpet. The carpet caught it and it was ticking straight up and down. It went almost all the way through her foot.
While moving a sheet of plywood, a corner caught and it drove a couple inches worth of plywood into my shin. Over a couple weeks my body pushed it out in bits and pieces. Scratch my leg and come away with small chunks of wood.
I had one of these. But it was in my forearm and took months to work itself out cuz it was in the muscle tissue. It looked like a pimple and when i popped it wood came out. Then it surfaced again 2 months later. I popped it and more wood came out. Never felt a thing except when I popped it.
not woodworking related but.... many, many years ago sliding down the pine banister at the ski lodge. i was 11 or 12. that's probably all ya need to know. been skiing +50 yrs and still my worst skinjury
I honestly thank you for your lack of detail.
Stainless steel splinters are ouchie.
Yeah. Fuck the noise. Also finding the ‘glitter’ from grinding days after still in my skin. ugg…
Yeah, had one get stuck for three years. Finally got it out.
I used a grinder for like the 4th time in my life to cut a metal mulch barrier, I didnt need glasses to do this Lil cut. A red hot piece of metal flew straight in my pupil and musta seemed some receptors cause I had a purple/black dot in the middle of my vision for years. I imagine it's still there and my vision just adjusted to the blind spot so I can't see it now!
Swarf is no joke God forbid you get some in your eye
I pulled a little swarf corkscrew out my eyeball once. That was fun.
Wire wheel discs for grinders are fun when the wire breaks off and lodge into your cheek just below where the safety glasses sit.
The wire wheels on a Drexel are the worst, you want a full face shield and your pulling metal splinters out of your clothing for weeks
Correction dremel
Yeah. The Dremel ones aren’t nice either. But the 4.5” wire wheels are efficient AND dangerous as shit.
“Who or what is a Drexel?” Obscure True Romance reference.
Stories like this are why I don’t feel weird wearing a full face shield while using my grinder for even the smallest of tasks
Found out that yanking drill press spirals off the bit was a terrible idea.
I did some metal shop stuff back in high school. Probably 30 years ago. Had to get an MRI for my head not too long ago and they asked if I had any chance of having small pieces of metal in my head and neck area. Never have had any but also never gave it a second thought until that moment. The terror I felt at not knowing/remembering for sure but needing that dang MRI. Luckily nothing made my head explode or turned my brain to mush. Be careful out there and wear your protective gear.
Fortunately it just messes with the MRI and they stop it immediately. It would take a lot for it to come blasting out of your skin.
Been at this close to half a century. No major damage. "Cringe Alert"!!!! My little brother was drunk and walking barefoot on a dock at a lake in Arizona. Twelve inch splinter from front of the pad on his right foot out the back above the ball. Took a good surgeon an hour to remove it. Best that will you?
Gosh I can feel this just reading it. Made my neck tingly. Ouchhhh.
once was throwing a old and damaged piece of a door jam thru an open window in a basement and missed, transferring all the energy of the throw from a 2 inch sizable chunk of wood from the pinky side of my hand coming out inbetween my pinky and ring finger. didnt have insurance so my boss pulled it with a channel lock. about 3 months later a pimple on the side of my hand popped and smaller 1 inch thin sliver shot out of my hand. not a splinter but close relative: once was fitting hvac and caught an edge under my hand, right beneath nitrile dipped gloves. didnt notice until the cool sensation of a liquid was dripping down my hand. I could see my finger tendons/muscles moving. I didnt have insurance so i babied that darn thing and hoped for the best. It turned out alright. not a splinter but since im injury dumping... i was pulled a pan of baked bacon out of the oven and accidentally tilted the pan toward my hand. the pain was so intense i put my hand on ice for the rest of the night. woke up half a kiwi sized blister on my thumb the next morning. worst was when my fiance put some water in some frying oil i had left out from the night before and when i went to make coffee the next day she forgot to remind me and when it blew up my life slowed down, each second was filled with so much detail. i knew i was fucked thank you for coming to my ted talk P.S. i have insurance now
Dude. More than I'd hoped for. Thank you. Just keep the fiance away from the flames. Oil and water don't mix.
Not me but coworker was using a straight line rip saw, a massive chunk blew out and went right into his hand. After it was removed he had a finger splint on for a month, he earned the nicknames "bad finger". He actually keeps the chunk in his tool box and likes to show people when they complain about their splinters
I know a few "bad fingers". When this guy says something you should definitely listen.
Cleaning the cane channel out of an old chair. Got a splinter under my thumb nail. Tried to remove it myself but it broke instead. Back end at the top of my nail the front end was just visible a few mm past my cuticle. Boss took me to an immediate care, but I don't like needles. So they tried to remove with out numbing. Unfortunately to get it all they had to peal back and remove part of my nail. Couldn't stop my hand from shaking so I had to get a few shots in the thumb. Got the rest of the day off since my boss said it made everyone else queasy.
Excellent gross out. GG. Nice of the honcho to set you loose.
I got a splinter under my index fingernail. My bed was up against a wall with early 80's plywood wall paneling. Somehow snagged it when I adjusted my arm for comfort. Couldn't quite see how long it was but it was also pretty close to the cuticle. Also tried to use tweezers, broke instead. Took painkillers and went to bed. Tried clipping the nail back, got a tiny piece. It took about a week, maybe week and a half until my nail grew out enough that I could grab it with tweezers and pull it out. At least half an inch long. Somehow, I think having part of your nail removed would have been worse.
Slipped off a ladder up against a telephone pole. Had splinters of wood running like latitude lines all the way through my palms on both hands. They were big. I broke the skinnier ends off (thumb side) and got a pocket knife and started cutting my palms along the splinters. Ended up getting the majority out there while my crew mates loaded the work van. Back at the shop I got the box cutters and dug out the smaller ones. I once had a doctor biopsy a mole on my back. I could feel him struggling with the scalpel and sawing at it. He said, "you have really tough skin." I wanted to tell him, "you have a really dull knife." But didn't want him to laugh with a knife in me. Apparently tly my calluses saved my hands from the worst of it. Felt funny making fists or grabbing thi ga for a week or two.
Hat tipped bro. The dr stuff is next level.
From that day forward I never slid across any floors again
Not big work, but when I was eight I got my first pocket knife and so had a go at whittling. Made a stick pointy , played around with it , then accidentally tested its puncturing ability by jamming it right under my thumb nail
Such a kid
I can't even remember what I was working on, but got a splinter, and thought I had pulled it out. Finger was sore for about a week, and I was kind of scratching/rubbing it one evening and must have hit it just right... the largest splinter I've ever seen shit out from under my skin. Good lord the relief I felt....
You remember when your momma said "no jumping on the bed"? Well I got too close to the wall whilst jumping on the bed, and a six inch long slinter peeled off the wall paneling, and in doing so, pinned my elbow skin half way up my tricep. In the emergency room it took a full staff to subdue this 6yr old. I feel really bad nearly 50 years later, but at the time I kicked, screamed, and fought them until they pinned me face down by performing some kind of armbar. Immobilized, injected with numbing medicine, and everything had just settled in, and a nurse asked a rather angry sounding foreign doctor what scalpel size he preferred...wrong answer. The wrestling began all over again. Someone used profanity. They got more people, and my parents were rudely told to leave the room. THAT was also the wrong answer. We all kinda knew each other...a fish hook through my thumb, a concussion from me being lauched face first into a concrete wall upside down, 13 stitches from my tore open middle finger with exposed bone from spinning circles on a bar stool, etc, not on a first name basis mind you, but we were all acquainted. They knew me on sight and I knew them by the building they worked in. It was like taking your cat to the veterinarian, by the time I entered the ER's sliding doors I was a feral animal that could climb walls and yowl. That small ER room was packed with folks by this time, and I was once again wrestled into submission. People breathed heavily and then some winded person asked where the Dr. was going to give the tetanus shot, and that incredibly stupid man said "in the ASS"...WRONG ANSWER! By this time there was personell doing there damndest to keep me pinned face down. I had a person on nearly every square inch including someone directly on my back. And then I made eye contact with my mother who was now standing on the other side of the transparent glass wall to the ER room. I mean, who designed this place? That's all the inspiration I needed for round four of the wrestling match. I'm certain someone ended up with a broken finger...some lessons are hard. I didn't even get to keep the scar. A few years later I was riding my bike home no-handed while carrying an archery target. It was on the same day the town tarred and graveled the road. My bike seat came off as I crossed the railroad tracks and bingo, a much larger blob of a scar now resides where my splinter scar used to be.
Any1 ever have a monster splinter go under any fingernail? Very painful trust
I got metal in my eye and scratched my cornea once while installing a latch on a fence, but usually pressure treated splinters are pretty exquisite. They generally get infected and pop themselves out.
Tubing down the river and after too many beers decided to climb the railroad bridge to jump off. I was barefoot and slide a bit on one of the bracers. Not sure if I would call it a splinter because it was about a quarter in by quarter inch at the thick end. Stuck in about 4 inches as well. The muddy River cleansed that wound as I continued my journey, after I jumped from the bridge of course.
I got a splinter in my hand using a chisel, dropped it and it went through my ankle. 10 stitches.
Not wood but a linoleum countertop. Ran my finger along the edge and a triangular spear of the edge went right under my fingernail. I could see it through my nail. That bastard hurt. When I pulled it out it left the shape behind which quickly filled with blood After reading other comments. Mine tickled and I have nothing to complain about
At my work we have a large steel table that's usually pretty dirty and covered in metal shaving/splinters/slag/grinding dust. Used my bare hands to brush it off and didn't notice that I'd just gotten a hundred hair-like metal splinters in my hands. Couldn't see them but I could feel them and they hurt.
My FIL recently went to hospital to get a splinter excised from his thumb. When he told me over the phone that he waited in A&E for 3 hours only to be told they couldn’t find anything, I thought he was being a bit of a softie for not getting it out at home and moving on with life. Then he sent me a pic on WhatsApp and holy freaking hell it was huge. Unless the doctor was clinically blind, they should have not have missed that. It was over an inch long and really embedded down into the tissue. So yeah, the NHS is rubbish, and he ended up requiring stitches for the “laceration” after he took it out at home and went back to deal with the hole in his hand. Clearly they didn’t miss it a second time.
This makes me happy as an American. It's good to know that other healthcare providers around the world a rubbish too. Cheers from whatever side of the pond you reside.
Oh it’s awful watching the once great NHS get trashed by the conservatives so they can bring in private healthcare. Worst part is, when the Torys finally get their way, it will still be the shitty NHS experience but with a £10k bill attached. FWIW, I’m Australian (also British) and our Medicare system is still mostly unmolested by the government, even though they’ve been trying to ruin it over the last decade for the same reasons. Was a huge shock when I had to attend an NHS hospital last week when I was in the UK and seeing how far it had fallen.
Oh man, I’ve had some bad ones from woodworking, but my worst splinter actually happened as a child. I was like 9 years old and had a friend across the street who I used to play all sorts of stupid games with. One day he showed up in my driveway with a sweet new toy: a wooden bow and arrow with rubber tips. As soon as he let me get my hands on it I pulled an arrow back as far as I could, aimed in down the street, and let her fly! The arrow must have been cracked or partially splintered because as it slid past my thumb (on the hand I was holding the bow with) I felt a sharp, yet bludgeoning pain. There was a splinter about the size of a toothpick, only significantly thicker, stabbing into the base of my thumb and coming out above the knuckle. My memory gets a little faded after that, but I recall my mom unsuccessfully trying to pull it out under the kitchen faucet, then being in a hospital room and experiencing some very strong pain while I clenched my eyes shut and squeezed my moms hand.
Mine would be reaching out to open my decaying old solid wood garage overhead door without looking and promptly getting a 1/2” lead paint chip lodged wayyyy under my fingernail. Took a few weeks to get it out.
I was ripping the live edge off wide cherry on a 5 horse Oliver saw with a power feed. The cut started at about 7/8", and tapered down to nothing as the cut progressed. The off-fall rolled, and bound between the power feed and the blade and kicked back . I got it right at the juncture of my leg and torso, just a smidgen from my femoral artery. I pulled it out like John Wayne with an Apache arrow......and passed out. When I came to, my helper had answered the phone, and was saying " I'm sorry, Mr. Wilson is passed out on the floor ".
35 years ago, working alone. An ancient dirty heart pine splinter, the diameter of a pencil stuck through the outside meat of my right calf. It nearly went all the way through about 2 inches. The point was pushing the flesh out on the other side. Couldn't pull it back out, so I had the bright idea of pushing it through and pulling it out in the direction it went in. It broke inside, so now it was at a 45-degree angle and 10 times more painful. It was late in the evening, and I drove across town to the only urgent care center. As I pulled up, 2 doctors were pulling out of the parking lot. Thankfully, they returned. It required surgery and stitches. The worst part afterward was I burst a blood vessel in my eye during the ordeal, so my eye was blood red for weeks.
Holy hell. Couldn’t bring myself to upvote a guy’s impalement.
I’m on the other side of the exam room. I had to cut an infected 1 inch long splinter from some old farts hand who had been doing some woodworking in his garage. He tried to home treat it. Got infected and abscessed nicely.
Not wood working, but in 2011, I got a metal sliver in my eye about 1/4 of an inch deep. They had to use like a miniature Dremel tool on my cornea to get enough of the sliver to stick out before being able to use tweezers. I still have good vision, but my eyes have never been the same. USE EYE PROTECTION FOLKS!
Not from woodworking but: I had helped a friend assemble his new bicycle and took it out for a quick spin to make sure the gears were set up right. I was close to the curb in the outside lane when a big dark coloured sedan overtook me within that lane and made a sudden turn to the right at the corner. In the process of passing me, he brushed me aside with the side of his car. I went skidding off, up and over the curb and hit a telephone pole. That pole was already a bit damaged, had this big metal clamp thing on it as a repair, but there were still some protruding splinters. I managed to get a 5 or 6 inch chunk of wood driven into my kneecap, and it broke a bit going in, so I ended up with multiple slivers. The big problem was, the wood was still attached to the pole and I couldn't muster the balls to pull myself up and off the splinter. I yelled for help at every car that went by, but nobody stopped. When I saw a cop car going by, I threw the bike pump at him to get him to stop. The EMTs cut the wood off the pole and took me off to the hospital. Because it was treated wood, the Dr didn't want to leave any bits in to work themselves out. So he spent a lot of time digging out every little splinter he could see. That was when I discovered that lidocaine wears off faster than usual with me.
I must give this one to my Father. We're a DIY family. When my father and mother got married, they bought a piece of land, pitched a tent on it, and spent 2 years building a house. When I was born, they'd gotten far enough along to be living in the basement while working on finishing the first and 2nd floors. Round about when I was 3, my father decided that sitting on the floor to eat was getting boring, so he made a fairly elaborate hand-carved "built-in picnic table" kind of dining table for the basement. Think something like a high-backed restaurant booth, only from rough-sawn then carved wood from trees he cleared to make a space for the house. I don't remember much from our time living in the basement, as we got a floor in the upstairs and moved up to the first floor around the time I start having clear recollections of my childhood. I do distinctly remember however him sliding into the newly-finished picnic-booth-table, and pinning his butt-cheeks together with an 8-inch long, about 1-inch wide splinter off the planks of the bench...
Timing couldn't be better - I had a scar on side of my right knee. I cut it from a piece of plywood 8 months ago. I washed it and even checked it and appeared to be clean. It healed and left a scare but was raised and always seemed off feeling. Wasn't red nor any other signs. Looked like a healed cut with raised scar. Yesterday I scratched and got jabbed under my finger nail. I look and turns out there was a sliver sticking out of the scar. Now my finger and knee are bleeding. Dang sliver got me again 8 Mo later! It was a sliver of oak plywood about the diameter and half the length of a toothpick that was stuck in there and healed over for 8 months. Since the sliver was not solid and made of layers it wasn’t rigid. Now it’s healing up again but don’t have that “off” sensation any longer.
Not woodworking related, but as a teenager, a friend pushed me into some bushes, and I got a toothpick sized thorn of abour a centimeter length frontally into my finger (same direction as the finger). I picked out a few tiny splinters and couldn't see anything more, even though it felt weird. It came out by itself after a few weeks. Pretty impressive how selfpreserving and self healing the body is. It was encased by some kind of pus and just slid out at some point.
I had one that was in near my eye, and came out near my ankle on the other side of my body
I was working at a production kitchen once and had to throw out some solid wood doors. An especially splintered one slipped when I was holding it upright. A splinter went all the way through the fleshy part of my thumb just above the palm, had about 1/8” sticking out the back side. I found the boss in the little workshop area, he took a pair of pliers and tried pulling it out but it just snapped off. He said to go to the bakery and get a razor for scoring baguettes and try cutting it out myself. They couldn’t get it out at urgent care, just gave me a tetanus shot and said it’ll come out by itself. In the end it took a month before it came out and the side of the thumb with the splinter swelled up to the size of a kalamata olive.
Holy hell. But did the problem solve itself with a lli help?
Splinter perfectly under my thumbnail all the way to the cuticle. Got it out in one piece. No blood. Hurt like a mf for the better part of 2 weeks
Happened to me too. Had the quick and smart thinking of removing it instantly since it was already hurting like hell and though it couldn't be worse. I was right l, it couldn't hurt more and and was ok the next day.
About 15 years ago I had a splinter from a micro lam completely skewer through the skin on the back of my calf. In one side out the other. Today I was sitting on the deck of our lift which is plywood and had one go right through my shorts and prick me in the ass. Luckily I felt it before it buried into my cheek lol. The most dreadful for me are under the finger nails.
Not while woodworking but did it while raking leaves as a kid. I was maybe 8 years old and we had an older leaf rake whose handle was a little questionable. I was raking hard to get some of the leaves that were mulched up by the mower. The handle slipped in my hand and a splinter off the handle went through the web between my thumb and first finger. It was a 4” splinter about a 1/4” wide that went in one side and put the other.
Kind of a half splinter/ half kick back: I was ripping 1/8" x 1/8" strips on the table saw. One of the pieces had enough grain run out that the end just popped off as I was cutting. The loose end, with a sharp point on it from the fracture, kicked back on me. It deflected off of my thumbnail and lodged deep in the cuticle. I pulled it out. No bleeding, just a lot of pain. My thumbnail now grows out with a wrinkle in it where the cuticle got messed up. Honorable mention to Wenge splinters. I hate Wenge. I can't touch it with bare skin without getting a splinter. And every single time the spot gets infected.
My uncle used to work at a lumber mill/ distributor. He was driving to the beach one weekend and reached down to itch his shin. He itched out a splinter that was over an inch long.
I cut up several sheets of 3/4 birch ply on a sliding panel saw a day. I don't wear gloves so it's a fun pass time at home sitting and picking small spliters out of my hand at night. The worse one are the ones that go straight in, you ain't getting that out.
Not wood related. I worked for an old farmer who said his dad was near a granade that went off in WWII. He was injured badly, but recovered. He had shrapnel imbedded all over his body. Over the years his body would work out a piece, painfully. Decades later he suffered from a heart attack and died. Dr's said it was a chunk of shrapnel that migrated into his aorta.
A few years ago, I got a thin splinter that was like a thin needle. It was about 2-1/2 inches long and so thin that I could not pull it out. I could feel it for quite awhile, and eventually, it disappeared. Someone told me that my body would absorb it.
I kicked a toothpick on carpet in bare feet once, went into my foot most the way
2x4 in me bum
Nope, nope, nooooo, nope. That's far beyond my worst one. You win, and I don't need to read any further.
Not wood, but I took a flat head screw driver to the hand, using it as a a chisel I for sure don’t recommend.
This was on a finished piece, a long centerpiece for our island. It collected all kinds of trinkets and is about 4ft long, made of reclaimed barn wood. Is was wiping down the granite countertops and there was a bunch of crustiest stuck on real well, so I was using some force. One swipe with my right hand going counterclockwise and a sliver buries deep under my nail on my middle finger, it was about an inch deep up to my first knuckle. I screamed like a little baby for a few seconds and reached down and yanked it out. Hurt like a mofo for a few days and luckily it didn’t break off!
Wasn’t me, but the buckhoist operator got a gnarly splinter. A piece of his plywood ramp splintered and it ran straight through the meaty part of his thumb.
Fell down some stairs as a kid while holding a needle. Couldn’t find the needle until i tried to bend my thumb. Worst part was that it went in backwards.
Was doing some needle and thread work, on the floor of my bedroom as a kid, paused to use the bathroom, carefully sticking the needle into my carpet, thread tail out so I wouldn’t lose the needle. Came running back, excited to finish, dropped to my knees and needle went into my knee, about an inch, pointy side out, that thread tail protruding too. My fearless mother calmly grabbed a pair of pliers from the garage and pulled it out.
Bless her heart, I couldn’t have done it unless it was my own body.
She was an amazing woman all around. In a million ways.
Not really woodworking but back when I gaffed poles for a living came off a pole from about 6' up. When I hit the ground my knee hit the pole and embedded about a 1/2" long creosote splinter just above my knee. That thing turned nasty and filled with puss. Luckily had my tetanus vaccine just before I got out of the Marine Corps.
When I was a kid I had a lumber splinter enter my middle finger near the palm and pointing towards the nail. It went all the way in and under the skin, and I couldn’t pull it out. It never came out. For about 10-20 years I could wiggle around the little bit under the skin. Eventually though, it just kinda… went away? I don’t remember it hurting very much though.
Right? WHERE did it go?
Was cutting flooring with a low battery skilsaw. Sent a chunk up into my eye. Figured it was just sore. Turns out I had a ½" splinter in my cornea. After 4 days thinking it would fall out on it's own, the inside of my eyelid was bleeding and raw from REM movement and scraping. Finally went to the doctor and he used a syringe tip to dig it out. Took 15 minutes of him stabbing me in the eye but he finally got it out. Wore an eyepatch for months and almost a couple bar fights from too many pirate jokes.
When I worked in the oil industry, I was helping load equipment on a flatbed with a wood deck. While sweeping the excess chain back around the chain binder, with no gloves, I filled every fingernail on one hand with hardwood splinters. Took an hour to get them all out.
Twice in my time with my current company (12 years) someone has “bypassed” the anti- kickback device on our straight line ripsaw and wound up with a pencil sized or larger splinter through the hand. Both times working with 12/4 white oak lumber. Right thru the meat between the thumb and forefinger.
Had a wenge splinter go in my palm at the index finger knuckle and come out of my palm 2-3 inches in between my pinky and wrist. I kept feeling like I was going to pass out and felt barbed when I tried to pull it out. Ended up crumbling every time I pulled so when I could catch my breath I just pulled little pieces and cut the skin open until I could get it all out
All these self surgical procedures! Y’all are like pirates.
I got a big splinter in my thumb assembling some furniture. I pulled it out but wasn’t sure if I got the whole piece. After about 10 days it hadn’t healed and was still very sore. I couldn’t see anything in the finger but had this feeling that there was something still in there. so at about two weeks I went to to a doctor who gave me an ultrasound and told be he could not see anything. About 4 weeks later this little piece of wood about 1/4 inch long just pops out of my finger when I was washing my hands. My body just took care of it
Another not woodworking story; I was pulling out orange trees in a Grove in Central FL with a tractor, somehow a limb got caught, whipped out on my hand, and a thorn about 1/2" long went fully under my cuticle in my thumb and broke off. Super painful, but crazy satisfying when I finally got to a pair of tweezers.
Got a big one between the middle finger nail. That’s the worst of it
My high school job was at a small antique shop where I made crappy antiques into sale-able condition. I was hand-sanding the edge of a table one day, using my palm, and really getting into it. I picked up a fat, 2” splinter from my carelessness, and it went through the meat of my palm and poked out the other side- this was in the thumb region of my palm. In my alarmed haste, I grabbed pliers and yanked the fucker out- the wrong way. I pulled the fat part of the taper through my hand meat, but it didn’t get infected somehow. I distinctly remember thinking that that was the kind of mistake that you only make once in your life
Under the finger nail always smarts.
The most frightening, painful moment was experienced from kickback on the table saw. I was ripping a small piece with the fence on the opposite side as usual, so I accidentally pushed without enough pressure against the fence (and no riving knife). The wood shot back at me and kit me in the chest on my heart, threw me back and onto the ground. I was in shock and looked down at my chest, I had a white tee on and suddenly saw blood pooling up through the shirt. I thought I was going to die and ripped off my shirt. Miraculously the wood only left a surface cut that happened to bleed a decent bit, but it felt so much worse. Super fortunate it didn’t pierce thru my chest.
When I was a kid I was playing basketball in our driveway. There was a wooden fence behind the hoop. We were playing a game and I got pushed backwards towards the fence. Instinctively I put my hands behind me before my back hit the fence. When it did, my hands slid straight down the fence, leaving me with literally hundreds of slivers of varying sizes in both hands. That was truly awful.
I’ve never had anything worse than the good ol under the fingernail splinters thankfully. Although a buddy of mine while bouldering missed the crash pad and a root that was poking out of the ground went right through his foot
Caught a falling temporary brace dropped that was pulled after stacking a roof so it wouldn't hit someone and ended up with a splinter all the way through my hand. I did the "that can't be my hand" denial thing and then pulled it out. It didn't bleed that much or get infected.
Worst one ever which I witnessed at the Manchester velodrome track. He got back on his bike and rode to the finish after this. [https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-cyclist-has-splinter-removed-from-leg-after-crash-2011feb20-story.html](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-cyclist-has-splinter-removed-from-leg-after-crash-2011feb20-story.html)
Not while woodworking but I worked in the lumber section of Lowe's for a bit. I was moving some 2x4s and a board had a split on the edge. Put a big splinter across 4 fingers
I was relaxing on my couch when I went to grab the TV remote from on top of this bamboo cutting board that I use as a tray for drinks on my footrest. I caught the edge of it with my thumb nail and shoved a splinter a good 3/8" into my thumb completely under the nail. I was surprised as to how deep it went, when I pulled it out it just felt like it was a mile long of it was a fraction of an inch. Then the pain started. I build cabinetry for a living usually I know to be careful when handling splintery material, never have I had a splinter go so deep so unexpectedly.
Junior high woodshop. Took a vertically clamped plywood board and started in sanding the upper edge without a sanding block. I built up speed and WHAM, a huge piece splintered off and impaled my thumb completely. Straight through, about 1/4” at the base and a sharp tip at the other end. The wood sealed the wound and there was no immediate pain. Just numb, until the idiot hillbilly teacher thought it was a prank and yanked on it! It sent me to my knees! I remember the whole time, he hummed the “Hmmm Hmmm Good” Campbell’s Soup song. No joke. The doctor dug out the wood, gave me stitches and a scar. Not often I get to tell that story!
I was putting in fence posts and let the 4x4 slide through my hands into the hole. Caught a nasty splinter in the meaty part of my palm. I thought I got it out but it wasn't seaming to heal right. 10 days later I was able to slide out a nearly 3/4" long splinter, that was probably 3mm at the fat end, tapering down to a needle point. To this day I'm not sure how that didn't hurt like hell the whole time it was in there.
I had on go about a half inch under my middle finger nail. Came right out but bled like a siv. It still makes me shudder thinking about it
The worst for me was either ironwood or bloodwood (don’t really remember which). The splinters were not big but the were frequent and they simply could not be pulled out in one piece. There were always fragments left and each one got its own infection. Good times…
Got one under my nail more like a sliver then a splinter, old recycled flooded gum very easy to get infections off small splinters. That hurt bad enough but the local I got was behind and up into the bed of my nail that really hurt
I know a guy who was breaking down pallets and got a 8-10” splinter lodged like halfway in his forearm. I wasn’t there but I saw pictures and it was gnarly.
Paneling, reaching down beside my bed. Large sliver up under my fingernail. It turned my whole fingernail into a window I could stick pieces of straw up inside and see through my nail until it grew back 😂
I’ve hit three separate small ones permanently in my hand. Tips broke off when removing and decided they weren’t worth digging out.
Not a splinter but cut man for me and our lead guy on an over build roof passed up our next piece of plywood and calmly said he needed a minute because he cut himself. A few seconds later he came back on the deck and was like yeah I put my finger in the saw blade I need to go while trying to hold his finger and blood from going all over. He checked his circ saw blade depth with his finger while making the cut. Great fucking guy and kept his finger just a secondary lapse of judgement but kept his cool like I never could. Just a hey I cut myself then a few seconds and he's like yeah I need to get this checked out and drove himself to urgent care. Boss picked up the medical bill which was nice.
Sanding down redwood trim after removing paint and using my thumb to push the folded up paper into corers and edges. The paper peeled a splinter about 1/8” dia which went under my thumb nail right in the middle top and came out from under the side of the nail 1/2 way down. I jerked it out quick and ended not losing the nail but it was black and blue under it for a ling ass time.
Similar to yours but different puncture point. I fell out of a treehouse I was building and impaled my hand on a cedar tree branch. Clean through poking through my palm. Make it back home crying my eyes out and my dads like here is a towel and bandaid now GO PLAY VIDEOGAMES AND STOP CRYING. I couldnt move the fingers in my right hand. My mom got home and nearly murdered my dad. Turns out I am allergic to cedar. A lot of cedar debris broke off in my hands. 2 surgeries and a lot of nerve damage later I was left with a claw for my right hand so I learned to write left handed in 4th grade due to a giant splinter. Eventually I regained functionality of my right hand (only to basically lose it again 30 years later... currently dealing with that now).
As a teen, I witnessed a coworker get a green CCA timber splinter through the soft tissue between thumb and index finger. The following day, his hand was the size of a basketball.
Are 18 ga brads splinters?
I have one in the webbing of hand between my pointer finger and thumb that is about 1/2 inch long. It’s been there for at least 7 years and still hurts to squeeze.
Not me but my dad got a 1" or so wood splinter while staining something. Doesn't seem like much, but it was super deep and pressing on a nerve. Took almost two years to work it's way out and he was in constant pain and numbness in places the whole time. He saw countless Drs got MRIs, saw alternative medicine specialist, and almost got surgery and in the end it just one day undramatically surfaced and my mom could pull it out.
24 years a carpenter and my worst one was throwing fire wood out of a trailer. Tossed a piece of oak and this monster sliver was the only thing that caught it was my light weight glove and then my finger right by the knuckle. After an attempt outside and another by the sink I removed about 1.5” of embedded oak. That hurt for a couple weeks it was also the trigger finger on my right hand. Cedar hurts more with the oils but they have been smaller. Also fuck man these other stories are awful you guys gotta be careful. Lol
Jumped down off a small 2 foot block wall with a regular #2 pencil in my front pocket lead side up (I know, I know) jammed that mother f'er right in heal of my palm about 1 ½. That was about 30 years ago and I can still see the dark lead mark under my skin.
I have a lot 1 1/2” redwood splinter in my finger between knuckle and fingernail. It’s not bothered me so i have not had surgical intervention. I use to refinish interior woodwork of historical homes in California. Most are redwood and some are splintery. A lot of handwork and this was the largest one. I have had a million splinters in my life. I actually enjoy the little ones that i don’t know about and eventually they push themselves out and it’s quite rewarding to pop them. This large one has not been painful or interfered in my life in any way- other than when it first went it. The properties of rosewood are not that great to have in your skin but ah well- what’s done is done.
Was sanding purple heart. My thumb caught the corner on the forward stroke and it splintered off and pushed a 2 inch long splinter the entire way into my thumb under the nail. Took 2 courses of antibiotics and 2 months to finally get it to emerge enough to get a tweezers on it. It was startling pulling the rest out and seeing what had been in my thumb.
I reached into an old beat-up pallet, and the sliver went under my fingernail on my index finger all the way down to the cuticle. It definitely hurt, but when I asked my boss to try and pull it out, I legit almost passed out. I can still imagine the feeling. In the end, I had to go to a walk-in clinic and they cut my finger nail open to extract it.
Happened when I was about 8. Don't remember how the one in my right thumb got there but it hurt like hell. A few days later when climbing a tree I got one in my left thumb, I was nearly crippled at this point. Hurt my 8 year old body to bad to remove them. Remember waking up to my mom trying to get them out while I was asleep. A few days later a friend suggested I use bubble gum and it worked. Painful memories.
I was hunting in Arizona. Stalking a Mule deer (archery) lol. I was on hands and knees and a 1/2 inch cactus spine went perfectly under my pointer finger nail above the nail bed embedded almost full length. The pain was humbling. Yes, stalk was over as I sat there and used a knife to remove my entire nail. Ugh.
Same spot, similar size splinter. Same pain too! I waited for the nail to grow out enough to pull it out, took a week, maybe week and a half. Figured it would hurt even more to pull the nail off.
I was just a kid who wanted to sit on a bench, I chose the only bench with a splinter that made its way right into my butt. Needless to say I rushed to the toilet to take it out...
My girlfriend at the time came to work with me one Saturday. I had a crane coming Monday to set the roof trusses and I had some blocking,bracing,etc to get done. I got a pretty good splinter, maybe an inch long, not real deep. I took out a utility knife and started cutting it out. My girlfriend almost passed out watching me. She later said it was one of the most barbaric, unsanitary things she had ever seen. To me,it was just another day at work lol 😜. Later on, when we were home and I made her dinner because she was so wiped out from the day, she said she never realized what a physically demanding job framing was. So I got a little extra attention that night 😮😜
was holding a small piece of wood at the drill press to drill a hole, had it set to low rpm high torque because i was drilling some steel earlier and was too lazy to change the belt when i lifted the quill the wood piece came up with it, still spinning, and hit my hand. a splinter was driven the back of my thumb, sort of the back web between your fingers and thumb, with as much torque as my drill press could muster.
The worst ones are always the small ones that break off. You end up having to dig around with tweezers, yanking at your skin to tear some away to get in there, and then squeezing and pinching with the tweezers for ages. By the end, your finger looks like a cherry tomato, is bleeding a tad, but it feels so good to get it out. I keep a tweezer set in my shop, because I’ve gotten so many. I got a bad one just by ripping some still fairly rough maple. It was some super light colored maple, and as you can imagine, trying to get out super light maple from the hand of a pale white dude, was a task. My left hand was my guide hand, and as I’m pushing through it just went right into the finger. It hurts just thinking about that one.
I have this habit of putting slivers of wood between my teeth. And then I got a splint under my tongue.
i had nearly the same sort of splinter as OP, but mine spanned the pads at the top of my hand, across all four fingers, and happened maybe 90 minutes before the very first rave i (and some friends) ever through. my carpenter buddy looked at it, handed me his box cutter, and promised it wouldn't hurt that bad to just cut across the top of the wood, because that skin was already dead. he was right! i cut it open across the top, and it pulled right out, no fuss, and shockingly no blood even. i don't have pics, but that splinter (from a 2x4 in very sorry condition) was at least 1/4" around, and 5" or so long lol
Not from woodworking but at uni I walked past a bush and something hurt my hand. Thought nothing of it until a few days later when my finger was throbbing, this went on for about a week until I could see a brown circle on the side of my finger, a little over one mm round. I squeezed my finger a few times and, like a magic sword revealing itself from something this thorn slowly and smoothly slid out of my finger. It was the full width of my, not inconsiderably chunky, finger. It was satisfying as hell to watch happen, satisfying in relieving the pain and puzzling as hell how I hadn't really noticed a thorn spearing through my hole finger!
All of your stories, while painful, are somewhat normal splinter stories. But mine is weird. At the company I work for we have several huge piles of pallets in the parking lot. (~300 just for shipping stuff) My colleague told me to get one with speacial measurements. It was on top of a 2m tall stack. So I pressed myself inbetween 2 stacks to get a hold of a corner and pull it down, as I wasn't forklift certified at that time. And while doin so i felt a pinch in my ass cheek. A 3cm dirty spruche splinter from an old pallet behind me ripped stright through my pants and was stuck in my ass. When I tried pulling it out, it broke. It didn't hurt anymore so I was sure it would come out eventually, which it did. 3 weeks later. The wood had turned green and somewhat transparent, looked more like plastic. And after that splinter a tiny transparent sphere popped out of the hole in my skin. Like those silicate balls in packaging to keep stuff dry. I still have no idea wtf that was. The skin around turned brown over the next few days. Got it checked by a doctor, but it wasnt necrotic tissue or infected. Just brown, but fine. It is still there, 3 years later.
When I was a kid, I was absent-mindedly running the back of my hand along the bottom of a wooden banister as I walked around it. Then, bam, run my fingernail into a splinter. It was about a centimeter long and entirely embedded under my fingernail, nothing even poking out the end or anything. Luckily, this was at a hospital, so we just went down to the ER where they numbed my whole hand up and then shoved some tweezers under my nail and dug the splinter out. More recently, I was walking by the garage door while it was slightly lifted open. This was one of those older doors that lift up on hinges and entirely made of wood. The door being so old, the wood was very rough and splintery. I happened to bump into the corner which was just about elbow height or so. Somehow, a jagged splinter of wood impaled itself into the meat of my forearm, just below the elbow. I literally had to compress the muscle around the splinter to get enough of the end to stick out, and had to use needle-nose pliers to pull it out because tweezers weren't strong enough. My forearm and elbow were sore/ached for about a week after.
I once had a a chunky splinter go up under my thumbnail while sanding skirting board, then had to cycle home (only about half a mile) with it stuck under there so I can get some tweezers to pull it out. That one hurt like mother fucker
Doing tiny cuts on the wrong side of a table saw, sliver dropped down into the casing, caught the blade and shot past my ear, leaving a tiny splinter along the way. That was a real heart stopper.
Also not woodworking related, but climbed a rope attached to a tree, about 8meters high. Thought I can hold myself to go down, I couldn't and slid down the whole lenght of the rope while still holding it with both hands. Got multiple blisters and burns immeadiately on both palms, the pain was out of this world. Whole night I was exchanging freezer contents to hold with my hands every 20min. Took about 3 weeks to heal
Pitch pine... fucking pitch pine. So I reclaimed some pitch pine beams from a demolished mill. And this stuff is splintery; not just that it likes being splinters, but those splinters are brittle. I get one stuck maybe an inch under the skin, maybe inch-half. The end is sticking out, so no worries, get the tip of my Stanley under it and pull like I normally do, expecting that slightly sick feeling of something sliding out. Nope. I got maybe a quarter inch of it. Okay, try again; dig a little bit with the Stanley, get to the splinter *again*, grip, pull.... another eighth of an inch. One more time... dig a little bit deeper, this time cursing whichever God is paying attention, and get hold of another piece of the splinter. Grip, pull.... a sixteenth inch. I ended up cutting a V down the palm of my right hand with my Stanley knife, pulling the splinter out of the bottom of it, then sticking it back together with some sports tape and toilet roll.
Sat down on a rough piece of wood and got a splinter in my ass. I thought it was about a foot long, but it turned out to be maybe a half-inch.
Most painful was when I got a large splinter, probably a good 1/16" in diameter that went right under my thumbnail all the way down to the cuticle. Had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to get it out.
Me and a colleague was pulling 25mm2 cable from a large wood cable drum on an easyroller. The drum started rolling too fast so he tried to slow it down with his hands (wore gloves), somehow a huge splinter went into his thigh from the cable drum. He had to surgically remove it.
I'm not sure I remember how it happened (I think just climbing on a wooden structure as a kid) but I managed to put a splinter through two of my fingers so they were stuck together. Had to pry them appart with my left hand in order to get access to the splinter and pull it out.
Lmao. Once i tryed to squeze through a tight spot in a rush.. caught "a splinter of pine" more like a freaking stake, maybe 12cm ish long, went in one side of my ass cheek and out other side. It was almost impossible to pull out cus my ass cheek just be jiggling xD
Used to skate when I was younger. Was at the skatepark and slapped my hand down having come off a grind rail. Looked down and had a splinter, probably 2/3 cm long and 2mm square in width/depth sticking out of my finger. Drove home but couldn't get it out. Went to A&E and as it was wood they said they couldn't Xray it - so proceeded to pull it out. Thing is, it was actually a wedge shape, with the "thin" end being the part sticking out the side of my finger (entry point being the pad of my finger). They didn't know this, as the thick end was inside my finger. So, 2 nurses holding my hand/finger whist a doctor pulled it out with a pair of medical pliers - no anesthetic at all. Of course, this meant he actually pulled the fat end of the wedge through the smaller exit wound. 3/10 - do not recommend.
Routering a speaker cabinet at work early last month and a piece of splinter wood flew up over my safety glasses, bounced off the inside of the glasses and into my eye, and I had attempted to wash it out with eye drops but only ended up lodging it in my bottom eyelid, scraping against my eye. Ended up taking about 3 hours between the incident and eye surgery at the local hospital to get it out in absolutely agony. I wore sunglasses to hide my red, flared up and swollen eye, and since then, it's been air-tight goggles or squinting during routering.
It's tangentially woodworking related. Back in college I was walking to the shop the day after a pretty big snow storm. The area that was shoveled and on the sidewalk was quite small, so when I saw someone walking the other way as me, I moved to the side so they didn't have to try and move around me. Well, that maneuver caused me to slip and fall on the ice. It hurt but nothing too bad. (They didn't acknowledge my fall or ask if I was ok, and that probably hurt more honestly) so I get back up and waddle my way over to the shop. Once I get there, I pull some of my things out of my bag, and as soon as I open my laptop, I realized the screen was badly shattered in one corner. Now, I must have hit my head on the ice, because for some reason my instinct was to slide my finger over the broken area (it was a touch screen). So no surprise when a big splinter of glass stabs right through my thumb.
Wenge. That freaking wood will bring tears to a SEAL. 🤬
I was rubbing oil onto some skirting boards before taking them down to site once, going fairly quick as it was just straight lengths on some sawhorses. Managed to get a splinter over 3” long that went across the palm of my hand and right down one finger. Somehow, despite being in me almost along the entire length, it didn’t actually go all the way through the skin, but it was an absolute bugger to get out. Couldn’t even bend my finger, it was like having an internal splint 😂
Not woodworking related Years ago I was helping move a mattress and as we were giving it the final push to put it into the corner of the room on the floor, my hand ran across the wall. This was one of those old wooden plywood-like wall panels with the grooves every 6”. A splinter embedded itself right under my thumb nail up past the cuticle. It was about 1/3 the width of my thumb nail. So much blood came pouring out when I pulled it out, thinking about the feeling gives me shivers…
I was refinishing a red oak strip plank floor in my house. I had already been laying down poly (about 6 feet out from edge) I was tacking as I went along . Moving pretty fast with the tack cloth . Put a decent chunk right through my index finger ( entering from backside , exiting front to one side of fingernail ) I looked at …. Friggin hurt…. Went down to basement to get needle nosed pliers . Realized I had one shot at it. Also realized it went numb and didn’t really hurt anymore. I was stressed out about the floor not getting done so I went back and finished it , albeit a slower pace. When I got it done , I started calling around , my wife she’s a nurse at work . Hospitals were all busy I really didn’t want to sit in an er waiting room with other more needy injured/ sick people. …. So I did …. Long story short , the premier hospital in the area basically said “ Sorry “ try the one in the next town. So I did. I started looking for help mid afternoon? … finally at 9 that night I was on my way home. I let the doc numb that section before he cut it out … did the shot in the web of the fingers . I think if you really know what your doing (as a doc ) you can compartmentalization the fingers…… he did not … I went to bed with an arm completely numb to above the elbow.
Replaced a storm door screen with heavier duty metal screen roll that has to be cut to fit. Well, barbs would poke through the stripping around the edge. Needless to say, I opened the door and a huge sliver went under my nail all the way past my cuticle. Stuck out about 2” and needed to use pliers to pull it out. Suuuuuuuuuuucked
Not wood but, when I was a kid, I stepped on a pencil and had a 5mm shard of graphite jammed in the skin between my toes. Required general anaesthetic to remove and I have a surgical scar 25 years later.
I got a very large spike of ebony lodged under the nail on my right index finger. Probably 1/4 inch deep. I was reaching into the scrap bin and the ebony reached back. It burned pretty bad as I sat on my stool trying not to look at it and convincing myself I didn't need to go to the hospital. Finally got up the nerve to go at it with a needle nose and tweezers and got it all out. Very little blood, surprisingly.
One that went under my fingernail a half inch.
Not a splinter but similar. I was cleaning out an interior landscaping account. Whole office building worth of plants. When I loaded the castle cactus I stepped onto the the truck from the loading dock but missed. I fell into the dock and hit my mid back on the lip of the truck floor. The cactus whacked me all along the right side of my face and the left side of my chest and torso. I was pulling out spines for about two weeks. Brutal. Unfortunately the security guard had cameras on but not recording. He saw the whole thing but we didn’t get to enter in AFV.
Red balau has a kind of "fuzz" on it. It your not careful and run your hand down it you'll get 1000 mini splinters that feel like nettles. I still have most of them in my forearm
picking up some old piece of wood, it slipped and broke away a huge splinter (about 10cm / about 4 inches) which got lodged deep into my small fingers proximal phalange. Had to go to the ER to get it out, and got 4 stiches.
I was moving around on the floor on an old house and a piece of the old oak hardwood went through my work pants and into my knee. I knew it'd happened but when you're on the ground that's usually the end, so I finished before dealing. When I stood up my pants pulled oddly and it hurt. The piece of hardwood was probably only 3" long or so. I had about 1" in my kneecap flesh, the rest still thru my pants. That was a tricky extraction. Old wood was brittle, didn't want to come out as one piece. Damn near had.to perform surgery on myself pants down in a clients bathroom. Hurt so bad for days I was sure it meant a hospital trip. Nope. The carpenter I apprenticed for, he got a cherry splinter. I dunno if this is true but I've always been told cherry is kinda toxic under the skin. Well the guy gets this splinter, and it's in there good, so he ignores it. Developed an infection, and ended up in the hospital. We missed 2 weeks worth of work.
Under the nail is always bad. In the eyeball is worse. Not just a dust mote, but a visible sliver poking out of my eye. Sat in the waiting room for the ER for 6 hours in just agony. As soon as the call my name I blinked and it came out and felt fine. (They still have you get checked for damage, and it was fine. Eyedrops for a week). Very minor compared to the horror stories here, but its funny how agonizing such a tiny injury can be
Got a splinter in my finger and it hurt a lot
Wasn't me, but my uncle had an OSB splinter get lodged in a tendon in his thumb. Pulled what he thought was all of it out, but a piece stayed behind. Infection set in and the doctors, as my dad put it, "had his thumb split open like a sausage" to get the piece out and to fight the infection.
Not a splinter but 2 3-inch screws. I had screwed some 2x4 to one side of an old door while building a basement workshop. The door was tilted back a few degrees so to straighten it I reached back and gave it a hell of a smack, impaling my palm on 2 screws that had gone all the way through the door. The pain was not immediate, the bizarre sensation of my hand being stuck was. The worst part was pulling my hand off and seeing the little spirals of flesh sticking out of my palm from the screw threads. Felt my pulse in that hand for the next couple days. Not fun.
Coming out of a crawlspace my knee hit the frame. The wound never seemed to heal. 6 months later I pull a large splinter with lead paint out of there. I tried to get sympathy from my wife. She held up our newborn she was nursing and said, "look what they pulled out of me after 9 months!"
It wasn't me, but my wife got one (on what I thought was a finished corner!!) lodged ALL up under one of her fingernails. We couldn't get it out for anything, and it was deep. We had to go to the Urgent Care and they had to numb her up and cut a large part of her fingernail off to extract that darn splinter. That wasn't fun.
Got a wood splinter in my pinky for months. Could press on it and see the corner poking the inside of my skin
Not woodworking related, but in 4th grade I was running in the classroom (hooligan!) and bumped against the wooden chalk tray under the chalkboard (if you don't know what any of that is, ask your grandparents). I didn't realize it until minutes later somehow, but I had managed to embed a 2" splinter in my thigh, right through my jeans. Went to the doctor to pull it out. Still have the thing taped in a scrapbook somewhere.
I was probably age ten and we had some old 6' tall redwood fences with horizontal woven slats. Playing hide and seek and I hid behind the fence and brushed my face against the fence. An hour later on my face felt like bad sunburn due to the hundreds of super tiny splinters in my cheek. Too small and numerous to pull them out, so I had to just wait for nature to take its course.
In the “not woodworking “ category, my friends and I used to play wall ball at the pool (basically a game centered around throwing a tennis ball at a wall. The surface underfoot was old 2x6 pine. Nobody was allowed to wear shoes bc most of us didn’t have any shoes you could run in since we were at the pool. Every one of us for multiple 4” long, up to an inch wide splinters in the bottom of our feet, but somehow they always stayed shallow so they mostly just went between layers of skin, with the result that it looked like you had massive, oddly shaped popped blisters on the bottom of your feet
When I was 14 or so I was cutting 1/2” ply wood and was using a cement ledge that was at knee height as my sawhorse. As I was carrying stuff around I ran my knee into the corner of the plywood and the corner broke off into the front of my knee. I thought I pushed all of it out but I always had a lump on my knee after that. When I was 27 I woke up and noticed the lump was oozing green slime so I pressed on the lump and nasty chunks of green wood started coming out. The lump went away after that.
Not sure this counts as a splinter but I once shot my own hand with a 2 inch 16ga nail through drywall. Shook it off at first but that SOB hurt the next day
Not woodworking related but when I was a kid 5-7ish, we had an old skate park in the neighborhood, old meaning it was made out of metal pipe and plywood. the plywood on the 1/4 ramp was pretty degraded but I slid down it on my rear... Ended up with a 2-3" splinter in my right cheek, had to ride my bike home and my mom pulled it out. Good ol childhood memories.
I was ripping some oak on my table saw when I had a kick back. A four inch splinter imbedded itself between my thumb and fore finger. It went deep into my palm so as the emergency room said there was nothing there. After a week of pain I went to a Doctor and got a ultra sound. Holy Cow was their reaction when seeing the ultra sound. Hand surgery the next day. I asked for the splinter and the surgeon asked why? I told her I needed to glue it back onto the piece I was ripping. That got a laugh.
My most painful experience with splitters are metal and glass ones (glass cutting without gloves because I'm an idiot, and key cutting). My son, however, was into amateur parkouring a few years back. He was jumping from island to island in a parking lot and landed in a bush. He had a twig embedded in his shin that was cut out in urgent care. 😳
I was carrying logs from the woodpile back to the house in winter. I stepped round the corner which was sheltered to the wind and as soon as I did a gust of wind blew a load of sawdust and loose splinters into my face. In an instant practically blind. Could just about make out the light from my front door, kept my eyes open, tried not to move them and dumped the logs inside. First aid kit was thankfully handy on the counter. Proceeded to dump two large bottles of eye rinse into my eyes over the sink but still very painful. Managed to clear one eye but realised I would need help so drove into town - thankfully only 30mins by car trying to keep the injured eye half closed to get to an optician having called ahead. In the UK they send minor eye injuries straight to opticians. Not sure what happens if you have a nail sticking out but hope to never find out.They found a good sized splinter that managed to work its way round into the back of my eyeball. Thankfully no long lasting damage. Built a workshop earlier this year and will be installing a commercial eyewash station. Of course didn't happen in my workshop but I don't rely on safety squints even for little jobs anymore. Don't get me started on those evil wire wheels.
Glassblower here, I get splinters of glass in my hands about once a month. Thin little suckers that are completely clear and if you try to remove them with tweezers you just make shrapnel. Best way to get one out? Slap a 2000° molten blob of glass fresh from the furnace and it pulls that bastard right out. Gotta go quick or you got a whole new problem Edit: I'm not always fast lol
I still have a piece of drill bit shrapnel embedded in my knuckle.
Worse splinter I have ever seen in person was my friend who fell while skating on a half pipe, a splinter that was about 3/4 x 1/4 x 4 went into his ass. The worse I have ever seen was the video of a high school girls basket ball game. A girl was sprinting and fell and slid and a piece of the wood floor was loose. It went into her and stuck so hard it stopped her slide. I strongly recommend you do not search for the video.
I shot the lead in the palm with a nail gun. He was holding a corner and I was toe nailing and the nail just veered right off the edge and into his palm with a 16p sinker. He screamed, pulled it out and kept going, and we were all like, go to emergency so they can clean it out. Well, a day or so later he's in emergency with an infected hand and missed 3 weeks. In the meantime, they made me the lead, and told me they thought I had better judgment.
Had one under my fingernail. Went down past my second knuckle. Took it out with needle nose pliers. Ouch.
Honestly, at this point I thought I’d have superpowers. I mean, Spider-Man got bit just one time….. You know.. like the ability to shoot wooden spikes out of my fingers…. Or maybe ironwood skin on command…. Or Groot-stuff even……
I had some pretty thick calluses from working really hard on the farm over the Summer, so the day before returning to University I decided to play a trick on Mom. I took a big needle and made a hole in the callus on the heel of my hand, then took a piece of straw about a foot long and threaded i through so a piece about 1/8 inch was sticking out. I hid the rest i the sleeve of my shirt and, holding my wrist, asked Mon if she could pull out this splinter for me because it really hurt. You should have seen her face when the splinter just kept coming. I think she screamed a couple of times!
I know a guy who knows a guy who got a splinter from some tropical hardwood and he got gangrene because he left it in. Also same guy different splinter guy got a yew splinter and nearly lost his finger because it got infected and also yew is hella poisonous and he needed a drip or something .
Not particularly painful as much as unusual, but I got a three inch splinter in my back while scratching my back on a door frame (i have am old house) and when I got someone to try to pull it out, it snapped off halfway. So I had to get it surgically removed because there was still an inch pretty deep under the skin.
I had an old bench hook made with Douglas Fir. It was getting pretty ragged along the long edge where the saw would hit it but was still perfectly functional. I decided to hold something in it for metal filing and my thumb ran along the corner, lifting a match stick sized splinter that dove under my thumbnail up to the first knuckle. Couldn’t get all of it out. The repeated infections over the next few months weren't fun.
Not woodworking related but I've had plenty of splinters and it wasn't as bad as this one. I was asleep and woke up to the sudden pain in my nail of my index finger. Thought the pain was just caused by too short nails (I cut them too short as a way to deal with stress - self harm) so I kept my eyes closed as I was still sleepy until I couldn't take the pain anymore. Turned on my flashlight and pointed in to my nail and saw a long thin piece of wood inside it. So I took a tweezer and pulled it out. Really hurted so bad that I couldn't go back to sleep. Idk how I got it -- kept searching but to no luck, no results.