best sign related injury :)

[flyplainsdrifta]

wasn't me but my lil bro just got four stiches in his eyebrow from a sheet of masked palight. i almost lost my hand to a lx850 due to an errant edge clip. both quite hilarious to watch the replay on cam. anyone else got some good stories?

 

[2B]

a 2 man power auger got hung on a root and gave one guy a concussion and the other guy get a dislocated shoulder

an X-acto blade rolled off a table and landed blade down, sticking into a bone on the big toe

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

12 stitches total, 6 in my thumb 6 in my index finger cutting MaxMetal on our panel saw... a little sliver of aluminum when cutting wrapped around the blade and whipped at my face, i instinctively grabbed it to keep it from slicing my face open and pinched it between my fingers slicing it pretty deep. It was pretty gruesome looking and set me back 6+ weeks.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Big gash in my shin from falling through the tongue of the trailer while I was trying to remove a ladder from the top of the truck.

 

[printhog]

A great friend of mine won my prize for most drastic - he was 80 ft up in a bucket servicing a cabinet when the nearby high voltage line arc'd over from 30 ft away, he flew out of the bucket, fell backwards over the crane bed, broke his back, the impact likely restarted his heart. He satup in the ER a while later, wanting to go home, unaware the spasming muscles were all that was holding his fracture together. Doc saw that and immediately had staff grab him. "Youre not going home sir" .. months in body cast. He has some wicked entry and exit scars from it.

on the "I'm a dipsh*t" award- a new hire in graphics dept cut EVERY fingertip over the first 10 days of his job - yes even the thumbs. I still dont know how you do that. State law required we keep him on for 90 days. he was gone on day #91, by that time he had mastered an xacto.

 

[sardocs]

Way back in the early eighties I was hired to handpaint the name on a large fishing boat in the local harbour. They were working on it getting it ready for the upcoming halibut season. I had to stand on a 2x10" plank jammed in the tie rails on the dock to get me out to the bow of this big 100 ft fishing boat. While I painted the name the deckhands were loading provisions and working on the motors. Well, someone bumped the controls into gear and knocked me and my quart of 1Shot off the plank and into the drink. Unfortunately, 1Shot floats. Even the old lead-based stuff. I climbed out of a black oilslick painted like I was hydrodipped.

 

[vincesigns]

Was thinking of all the things I had to do on an install and walked right off my crane truck. Luckily landed on my feet. Another time I was doing an early morning install on a kiosk in a mall about 200 miles from my shop. In a hurry because i had to finish before the mall opened or spend that day there to finish that night when the mall closed. Was moving fast and walked off the counter on the kiosk and ended up doing the splits on the floor inside the kiosk. A couple of mall walking ladies so me and being concerned came over to see if I was ok. I had to pretend everything was fine so that they wouldn't try to get me help and slow me down. That one hurt like heck

 

[Johnny Best]

Holding a 3" square 1/4" clear piece of clear acrylic between my index finger and thumb. Wanted to drill a 1/4" hole in the middle.
Halfway through drilling into the acrylic, it heated up, melted and "grabbed" the drill bit causing the acrylic square to spin at a high rate.
That caused the acrylic to turn into a blender blade taking chunks of flesh off my finger and thumb. That piece of acrylic looked like a large glass slide with blood all over it to check under a microscope.
Thinking about it 50 years later still makes my fingers tingle. Thank God I have never lost fingers to a band saw or kickback injury from a table saw.

 

[letterman7]

Trimming with a laminate router. First problem was it was the end of the day and I was tired, second problem as I got distracted when I reached the end of the run. Finished the trim, lifted the router up to turn it off with my left hand (being right handed), and brought my hand up under the blade instead of away and over top. Lost the tip of my middle finger that day...

 

[bulldozer]

so far, i have just sliced a chunk off the side of my pointer finger. i was trying to hurry up and decided to trim a sign on the wrong side of a ruler. whoops.

 

[JR's]

Besides of cutting the tips or side of my fingers off just the skin now and then like bulldozer.
when trimming show cards or PVC and not paying attention. The skin grew back, luckily.

My worst injury probably was from a X-Acto blade. On a job site went to go sit in my truck and something kept on getting hung up on the back of the seat. So I reached around trying to figure out what's going on. And all of a sudden I feel like this warm liquid. I pull my hand in front of me to see what it is and I was all cut up.
Took some paper towels and masking tape and bandaged myself up so I could finish the job.
Truck seat was ruined and I should've went in for stitches. Till this day I don't put X-Acto blades in my back pocket.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I think everyone here has had many flesh piercing encounters x-acto blades! When I used to work for another sign company, my old boss used to stick it above his ear like a pencil. While lettering oil-field water tank trucks he stuck it in the side of his head! Blood everywhere!

I use this little waste-band pouch while installing. Has just enough room to hold a squeegee, scissors and small pen-sized pockets for x-acto blades that I put in pointing down.

 

[ams]

Two of my installers were in an enclosed room, one was spraying rubber coating from a can (stuff you spray under vehicles with) and the other was using a heat gun. The vapors caught fire and there was a huge fireball, one lucked one and only had 2nd degree burns on his face and hands, the other got 2nd and 3rd degree on his hands and entire head, it singed all of his hair off and large pieces of his skin was falling off. That was pretty scary.

 

[fastmax]

ive had some big ones and scary ones, but the funniest has to be static electricity. Wether its to the balls or the eyebal jumping off your glasses, its the most infuriating thing and you cant do anything aboout it every winter. I always laugh when its someone else and am always pissed when its me.

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

ive had some big ones and scary ones, but the funniest has to be static electricity. Wether its to the balls or the eyebal jumping off your glasses, its the most infuriating thing and you cant do anything aboout it every winter. I always laugh when its someone else and am always pissed when its me.

dude story of my life. especially pulling the masking off of sheets of pvc. at least 30+ times a day

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

ive had some big ones and scary ones, but the funniest has to be static electricity. Wether its to the balls or the eyebal jumping off your glasses, its the most infuriating thing and you cant do anything aboout it every winter. I always laugh when its someone else and am always pissed when its me.

I am constantly in a habit of tapping the table because it's metal. Or walking around tapping a toolbox. Maybe I need to put some wire on my wrist and Leash myself to a ground. It's a problem, sometimes I've touched the plotter and caused it to restart because I shocked it. I have a copper wire on the take up wheels cabled to a ground.

 

[JTBoh]

Me? I had a blade in a front-pocket shirt once, dropped something, went to pick it up, and ended up with a vertical blade directly in my left arm artery.
This was in a very clean, fresh, and sterile fertility clinic that hadn't opened up yet. I was alone.
How did I know it was an artery? When I plucked it out, blood spurted all over the clean, fresh, sterile floor all the way on the run to the bathroom. It stopped after about 5 minutes, YAY I didn't die. Blood cleanup (to my admittedly low standards) took longer than the install. Shhhh.

Worst I knew of was a couple of old-school, yahoo, cowboy installers - who knew their stuff - were pulling a face off an old neon cabinet for us.
Younger of the two touched the metal and got held stiff by 240v.
Unfortunately, he was standing on a railing corner at the time, about 18 feet up.
Fell, shattered pelvis, shattered jaw, concussion, skull fracture, IIRC.

He assumed, and almost cost him his life. I don't think he worked signs again after that, poor guy.

 

[TammieH]

Back in around 83' I picked up an old 22" x 72" painted piece of 3/4" MDO and ran a toothpick size splinter down through the tip of my right middle finger
all the way down to the first knuckle, I spent an hour digging it out, so a coworker could grab it with a pair of needle nose and pull it out.
My boss must have not been too happy, but considering I did not run to the ER he got off easy. At one point he told me that he lets his fester out, I told hom this one's not going to fester out. LOL . But other than that he was the best boss/sign shop owner, that I had ever worked for.

 

[Jason Dunmire]

Had an accident with the table saw, acrylic kicked and the corner cut my middle finger to the bone and took a large chunk of meat off my ring finger. Had to have surgery to graph skin from my wrist onto my ring finger to fill in the hole.

 

[pjfmeister]

About a 1/2 dozen staples in the my head from a post pounder to the top of my head...luckily i was helping local firefighter EMTs drive sign poles so when I woke up they pretty much had me taken care of....pretty high on the embarrassing meter!