You know it’s going to be a good day in the shop when you’re bleeding in the first 5 minutes
The first order of business Saturday was to put the battery I hoped was charged into my drill and put a few more holes to cut out center pieces. I did, and it seemed to have enough juice. I did one. No problem. I did a 2nd one. Then the bit broke, which would’ve been bad enough, as it was my only small bit. But the drill, no longer propped up on its bit, succumbed to gravity. What happened next happened so fast I don’t even know WHAT happened, but I did know that my thumb was bleeding and it hurt like a bitch.
From the circumstantial evidence, I can surmise that gravity brought the drill down on the thumb holding the piece of shell in place, with the bit still moving for a second and now ragged and sharp, and then it glanced off. You can see what’s left of the bit still chucked in the drill. I didn’t find the other piece until later in the afternoon when I cleaned my bench. Glad I was wearing eye protection like a good girl.
I went into the house and showed my owie to Scott, who told me in no uncertain terms that he did not want to see it. Apparently, he’s more squeamish than I thought. No sympathy around here!
After I washed it off, I could see that the drill bit had gone through the nail halfway in from the tip of my finger, and nicked the finger good, too. It’s going to take awhile to grow out. I really do have a talent for inflicting original injuries upon myself. I fear that the family power-tool curse, which heretofore has only affected the males, may well have begun to experience a bit of mission creep. I’m going to need to say a novena to the patron saint of workshops. Once I figure out who that is.
Considering that a Band-Aid would’ve just gotten in my way, I did what I do with most cuts on my fingers these days: I superglued it. I was going to use medium superglue, but when I grabbed it out of the box, the bottle was all misshapen.
Perhaps leaving my glue out in the garage during the summer is not my best-laid plan. It’s still fluid, but barely. I think it’s probably shot. So I used a few layers of thin glue. It still hurts, but it’s protected.
The breaking of the bit, however, put a crimp in my plans for the day, because if I couldn’t drill holes, I couldn’t saw. I had tried one piece cutting out the middle last, but then I didn’t have much to hold on to as I sawed, and the piece got increasingly vulnerable the more I cut. Leaving it as part of the larger shell blank until almost the end, having cut out the center first, worked a lot better. I finished drilling the hole I’d been in the middle of with a one of the finger drills, but I’ll have to wait until the bits I ordered for my Dremel arrive to continue.
I sawed those 2 pieces and another, finished cutting out the perimeter of the main MOP piece and sanded it round, glued new patterns to shell, and called it a day. Now I just have to wait for the postman.
