I know what I am doing, and my time is too valuable...

[Randy Roberts]

to waste the time waiting for the router to spool down to a stop before lifting it from the work at hand.

As a result, I took a portion of a finger off, ground off the end of the last phalanges bone, and have wasted 6 hours driving around to finally find an ER that would actually suture it back up, and god only knows what the final bills will be...

Please people, it only takes a few seconds for a power tool to stop spinning etc. take the time to let it come to a stop.

(Ought to be a whole lot of fun pulling on the surgery gloves tomorrow morning at work.)

[Eric Knapp]

I'm very sorry to hear this. I hope you heal quickly and thoroughly.

-Eric

[Gordon Bellerose]

Impatience has cost me a couple of projects. Luckily no digits.
Thanks for posting. I hope your injuries heal well and quickly.

[Mark McLean]

As a wise man once said - "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need power tools"

[Bryan Bear]

Ouch! I hope it heals well and quickly. May you always be able to count on one hand the times you made a power tool mistake!

[Brian Evans]

I have an honest and deep fear of routers. I hate them, yet for some things they just do too good a job. I hope you heal quickly.

[Mark Swanson]

Take it easy Randy! It's a sobering reminder to be careful!

[Jason Rodgers]

Noooo! I'm so sorry, Randy!

[Chuck Tweedy]

Randy, really sorry to hear!!
As someone missing the end of a finger for most of my life - I do know that you can live a full life without the distal part of a digit.
I wish you a speedy recovery!

[Matthew Lau]

Good Grief!

I wish you a swift recovery, Robert!
In the meanwhile, I'm selling off my routers.

[Clay Schaeffer]

"As a result, I took a portion of a finger off, ground off the end of the last phalanges bone"

I did something similar with a belt sander some years back. When changing positions with the sander my finger got sucked into it with the sander locked on. It sanded off the end of my finger down to the bone and ground off the end of the bone. Most of my finger eventually grew back, including the nail, which the doctors said never would. It is about a 1/4 inch shorter than my other index finger, and over the years I have regained some feeling in the end of it. That small loss is still noticeable to me when I play guitar. I have to make a conscious effort to reach a little farther to hit the string.
Routers are relatively safe, as are belt sanders, but even a caveman's stone axe can do some damage in a moment of inattention.
When I was in the E.R. I was kind of feeling sorry for myself, until a person who was missing both legs wheeled himself though the hallway. We should count our blessings.
Hope you heal well, and try to rest that hand as best you can ( I think that is why my finger grew back so well).

[Doug Shaker]

I had a similar encounter with a table saw. It was interesting to see the kerf in my finger-bone on the x-ray.

My holiday newsletter that year had a section entitled "Doug discovers quick and easy (though not painless) way to lose weight."

[David King]

I have a couple of shortened digits myself and I can only say that the sight of any sharp spinning object near my hands causes immediate ghost pain in those missing bits that helps me focus intently on the task. Unfortunately knocking that finger into a hard object on a cold winter day will instantly bring you back to the time and place of the accident.

[Gordon Bellerose]

In the interest of education, we should start a thread about missing digits or parts of digits, and exactly how they became that way.
Whenever I am in a woodworking store, or almost anywhere, and I see someone with missing or shortened digits, I always ask how it happened.
I have learned many things to avoid through that process.
If we can all learn from others mistakes, that would be a very good thing.