Thread: Take your rings off when using power tools

ouch!!!! not only power tools, my mate did a similar thing jumping down off a truck, his ring caught on a snag and he degloved his finger a bit too....
not good.

What power tool are we talking about?

Zelk

Agreed there zelk, but either way its made a hell of a mess of things.

Apparently it's quite a common injury (snagging on something is easy to do), and roughly one-third of all such injuries lead to loss of the finger; in the remaining cases, there is stiffness and severely reduced finger utility.

Note that the ring finger is considered a 'minor' finger by orthopaedic surgeons, so sometimes the better decision is to remove it as this has less effect on grip strength and usability of remaining fingers.

For those who really can't part with their bling, a workaround is to get a jeweller to make two cuts most of the way through the ring from the inside and fill the gap with low-strength solder - these weak points should give way before the skin does!

A study of injury potential (using fresh cadaver hands!) showed that there was a 100% degloving rate when the hand was attached to a 10kg weight, and the weight was allowed to fall 500mm - so it doesn't take too much force to create severe injuries!

See:
http://www.securiteconso.org/notice5...id_article=510

They also advise against wearing rings on the thumb, index and middle fingers as these are all critical in grip so they are the ones your really don't want to loose!

My point basically is.
If there is a danger you should go through the hierachy of risk management. Ellimination being the prefered choice. Nomatter how small the probability of it happening isn't it better to get rid of the risk?

All rings should actually be banned at all times to minimise that risk. Girls should not have wedding rings either. Our love for them should be worn in their hearts not on their fingers.

Guess who wants to save three grand?

OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can only imagine how much that must have hurt.

OUCH big time. Wow that is shocking enough to make me take more precautions when using my tools in future.

My problem is that my finger has got larger since I was married. The ring just doesn't come off. At all. I guess that means there's less chance something will get caught under it, but at the same time if it ever happens it will be bad. I already got a jeweller to cut it off and resize it once. Guess it's time to do more exercise.

Peter

Degloving injuries are very nasty.
Hopefully he did OK

Why not just wear gloves?

Unless this is a freak accident that can happen at any time.

Originally Posted by zelk

What power tool are we talking about?

Good question, which power tools cause de gloving?

Obviously a bad and painful injury but not generally one associated with power tools.

Cheers, Jack

Why not wear gloves?

Wear gloves and it won't be a finger that gets flayed (skinned) it will be your whole hand that gets dismembered (ripped off).

When you know theres a danger your instincts tell you to pull back your hand if you feel something. With a glove you don't feel it until it's too late.

Same principle really applies to all incidents (old term accidents). If you had a warning it probably wouldn't happen (unless your thick), the problem is the reflex time is longer than the point of no return for all incidents that happen. Otherwise they wouldn't happen. A machine travelling at 1000's of RPM doesn't give the operator much of a chance to make decisions.

Which power tools cause degloving?

That's the problem with safety and risk assessment.
All power tools (that are manufactured to the appropriate standard) if used appropriately and for their intended purpose are "almost" totally safe.

It's the little things that have small probability that catch people out.

It's always best to increase safety standards and elliminate the risk.

We are talking about removing a ring while doing anything (as already mentioned, even jumping off a truck).

But Where. But When. But How.

Just take the bloody thing off.

Originally Posted by Ch4iS

Why not just wear gloves?

Gloves lead to a whole new set of problems - depending on what it is you are doing, you could turn a potential degloving injury into an attempt to remove your entire hand or drag your whole body into rotating machinery.

My rule of (keeping my) thumb is to not use gloves on anything that I would not consider grabbing the business end of with my bare hand while it's in operation.

This pretty much limits me to cordless drill use while wearing gloves.

Typically degloving injuries are caused by catching on a fixed 'something'. So unless you are going to go through life wearing gloves...

(quoting from my earlier link):

"They occur during game and leisure activities, one-third occur when ring gets snagged on a nail, fencing, doors and moving doors, and less than 2% during sports or DIY activities."