Today I cut my fourth finger to the bone. I got some stitches & a splint & I'm good to go. I know that I'm different than other musicians in that I don't have fears of hurting my hands. I live life & if I get a cut or a sprain that's just the way it is. I have met people with a neurosis/psychosis about their hands: they can't be around dogs, machines or anything else that will endanger their hands. To me the drive to tinker & create something is two very important character aspects of a musician; I know ten good fingers are very important too.
What do you guys think?
Christ, Brad, be careful! Was that in the workshop? I don't worry about it overly much, myself, but I'm aware of it. I decided not to keep skiing when I was dancing 5 days a week, for instance. I'd find some other way to have music in my life if I lost a hand or whatever, I suppose, but I'd really rather not have to...but mainly because I'm a total wimp about pain!
We'll have yo get Brad one of those t-shirts that says, "Runs with scissors."
When I worked at Flatiron, one of my coworkers lost a finger or two in a joiner planer. It tokk a while just to clean up the shop afterward...pretty gruesome. I split the end of my thumb once on the band saw, and another time I broke two windows with one bite of a pin router. Just glad the shrapnel went through the windows and not us hyooman beans.
I don't overly worry about it though. I work with hand and power tools a lot, and do some crazy mountain biking and snow boarding (hit a tree last winter--that gave me *more* time to play music . The thing that gets to me is all the gripping you have to do when working with your hands, which can later interfere with making music.
At one session last year, we had one fiddler with two broken fingers and another with stitches in her wrist--one side of our circle looked like the waiting room at an ER....
Jim (Dorans), have you any comments on this from your martial arts perspective?
When I was in my teens and 20s I did judo for several years with no injury problems. Then I started karate when I was about 19/20 but stopped after two classes when the instructor got us doing press-ups on two fingers, and I started having visions of the possible damage to my hands.
Trevor
Jim, I was in a hardware store buying work gloves not too long ago, and a big rough-neck lout of customer in the check out line next to me gives me the eye and says, "Gloves are for sissies." I didn't disagree with him. But when I got out to my car, I muttered to myself, "Yeah, and splinters, cuts, and blood blisters are for morons."
Come to think of it, I do baby my hands. I always wear rubber gloves when I wash the dishes. But it's because Montana is so dry (the humidity worked its way up to 12% the other day), the ends of my fingers split if I don't wear the gloves. You haven't lived till you have an e string go inside a raw crack in your finger tip as you slide up to a note. No one can hear your intonation over the screaming....
I was putting together cheap light fixtures, they are basically bent sheetmetal. I was opening a little lip with a screwdriver when it slipped & my hand ran along the cutting edge of the fixture. I was wearing 'railroad' gloves at the time, it cut through heavy leather gloves & my hand too - just one of those freaky accidents. I didn't even know that I had cut myself 'til I noticed the blood on the floor. I'm very good about wearing hardhats, gloves, glasses (scratched my cornea once - I got to wear an eyepatch for two weeks, Arrgh!) but shit still happens. I only imagine what would have happened had I not had any gloves on. It's the pinky on my bowing hand, so it's not too much of a problem for fiddling.
What doesn't kill you makes you older.
Visiting a neighbor I fell on her sidewalk and crushed the muscle in my wrist and slammed my face onto the concrete.....good thing I'm not flat chested or I might have broken my nose.
Anyway not playing for a several weeks was torture. I think I dusted the ol fiddle about 6 times a day. Guess that was my way of feeling like I was doing something with it. The wrist is all better and now I have the cleanest fiddle in town. Still can't play worth a hoot but I think I'm addicted to it. Now I'm really paranoid about injury.
Stay healthy!
Mary
I used to ensure I went rock climbing on Sunday after the Saturday night gig, and not the other way around. Spending four or five hours putting one's wrists through a cycle of repeated extreme isometic exercise meant the fingers didn't respond all that quickly the next day.
I stopped sailing dinghies on Sundays (therefore, forever!) since trying to play my accordion in evening sessions was impossible. My right hand fingers were locked and stiff, as I'd been hauling on a mainsheet for 3 hours that lunchtime, and I regularly knocked my knuckles to bits. Gardening and DIY of any sort usually means my fingers get tired and swollen, so I do it minimally.
I'm as good as the next man at going for things and living life, but ITM gives me the most back, so excuse me for looking after my digits! My garage is still not rebuilt after five years, as I know bricking will ruin my hands. I shall have to lift the phone and get someone else to do it. At least my fingers with be in good shape to write the cheque to the builder! : (
I know a really excellent guitarist who works as a carpenter. He complains that his hands are too stiff to play properly these days, after working all day, and he just can't do what he once did. It frustrates and saddens him, but he has no other way to make a living. It's a big sacrifice. He'd be in his fifties, I guess.
What you can get away with, in your pliable youth, you may find catching up with you later. Injuries can come back to haunt you as arthritis or other kinds of damage. Don't treat your hands as an endlessly re-newable resource, Brad! Eventually, they may not bounce back.
I agree with petemay's approach; if the music is more important than the yachting, then choose the music. Tricky when it's your livelihood in question, of course. But - 'gloves are for cissies' - what a totally stupid sentiment...
Something like 20 years ago, I smashed up the pinky on my right hand fairly impressively playing a pickup game of American football one weekend. No break, but it ballooned, and the joint was smashed up. After about 6 months, I had full mobility back... I thought.
The bottom joint is actually a dogleg (scar tissue on the tendons pulled it that way), but it works just fine with the finger in towards the center of the hand.
However, if you have the finger stretched all the way out to the side (say, if you were stretching for a button on the concertina), it has a tendency to lock.
But, I suppose, things could have been worse. Back when I was playing Rugby, I broke both middle fingers one evening. Broke one in the first game of 7s, and the other in the second. As it happened, the third game was the best game I ever had. But typing was unpleasant for a bit.
Some years back I almost sawed my left hand off from sliding it up and down against the back bar of the bodhràn to change tone while playing. i now wimpishly wear a specially sewn leather thong on my paw to prevent a reoccurance. i do get some funny looks but ain't sure if it's 'cos i wear what looks somewhat like a weird sexual aid or cos I play the dreaded drum.
Clint Eastwood et al had no fear at all of damaging one's hands. Many's the hired hand they filled with lead. Did'ye ever see "The Outlaw Josie Wales"? graaand stuff.
Our "music teacher" in high school was asked to take the shop class one day, and while he was demonstrating the table saw he apparently said, "Now kiddies, don't do it like this..." and took the last joint off his right middle finger. He had a big boney knob there, and he used to smack people with it if they played out of time, or sometimes just for fun. I've still got scars...
One of my friends had to give up playing the mandolin when he took off parts of two fingers on his left hand. But he switched to Uilleann pipes and seems to manage ok. He's Mr. Safety nowadays though.
I am around power tools all day everyday. For the last 20= years, I have yet to seriously harm myself.
This, I believe is due to a great fear of my power tools.
I do draw blood regulary from sharp knifes, chisles, splinters etc. Rare indeed is the concertina that exits the shop without traceable DNA. Sort of a high tech signature in blood.
I am sure you have heard many times "a dull tool is dangerous".
True indeed. What they don't tell you is that a sharp tool is even more dangerous...it cuts faster and deeper.
Truly, on the occasional slip of the chisel or knife that fails to cut me, my first thought is often:
"hmm, that tool should have cut me good, I will have to sharpen it."
I worked on oilrigs for years. Very few people who had worked the drill floor could display a full set of fingers when I started in 1979. Health and safety awareness was non-existent.
Fortunately one of the first floorhands I met was a mandolin player too and he showed how to fold my fingers in when handling heavy moving objects.
I saw a lot of squashed and severed fingers but (touch wood)mine are all still there.
The worst finger accident I had offshore was when I cut my little finger with a sharp knife, while slicing open a bread roll. Right to the bone but the nerves grew back over about five years.
I still fold my fingers in when pushing something on the edge.
I'm pretty much more aware of potential hand and finger injury now than I was x amount of years ago. I've done a few silly things like slicing my left thumb in two with a sharp knife (not on purpose!), although the hospital staff were able to stich it back together again.
Trevor, I've bruised my knuckles several times on badly thrown punches (karate practice) and ripped skin off my right hand after a mis-timed high-speed 'flying swipe' at a heavy bag....I have to admit that these days I do not do any proper sparring, simply for the fear of damaging my hands. I tend to train in punching and kicking using things that *don't hit back*!
Ironically, the worst hand injury I've ever had occurred while carving out the inside profile of a fiddle back. I slipped with a brand new sweep gouge and scarfed the hide on the inside of my left middle finger back like a banana peel from second knuckle almost to the tip. Took a long time to heal but now there's scarce a scar.
The worst injury I almost got came while renovating a bathroom. I had the sheetrock off the wall and was cutting through studs with a circular saw. I was holding one stud while cutting a nearer one in twain when the saw bucked, a long sliver of 2x4 jammed the guard back and the sawblade ran across the inside of my left wrist. There was an impressive amount of blood and I about lost all sphincter control but when I cleaned it off, turned out I just had 6 little tick marks caused by the carbide teeth just breaking the skin as they rolled across my wrist.
The funniest injury, and most embarrasing, I got while trying to knock the 2x6 top rail off my deck railing. I was swinging a 16 oz claw hammer upward from the knees to the underside of the rail to knock it loose when I completely missed the rail and the hammer and right forearm's arc ended perfectly right in the mouth. My wife was standing right behind me when I performed this stunt and she heard the WHACK and muffled grunt. She said, "you alright?", to which I answered, "No frovlem, jusht a little fit of a floody lipf, call the dentisht, will you?"
No really, I'm very careful. These are the only incidents in 30 years of woordworking. Just goes to show, though, that it only takes a second's inattention, or one brainfart, to rearrange your anatomy.
You know that TV commercial where Sears prates about the lifetime warranty on Craftsman tools? Don't believe it, or at least don't try to apply it to Craftsman power tools. I was routing the binding groove on a guitar with a Craftsman router when the cooling fan exploded, shrapnel came out of the cooling slots, smashed my safety glasses, and cut my face all up. I tried to return the router to Sears and they said, "sorry, only 30 days warranty on power tools." Wouldn't even give me a new router!
Never bought another tool from Sears, which is fine, as their stuff is crap anyway.
Don't wear rings on your fingers. Or, if you do, go to the jewelry shop and have the jeweler make cuts so that if they catch on something, they will break free. If you catch a ring on something, you can get a "ring avulsion" in which almost all the flesh is stripped off your finger. It cannot be repaired--you lose the finger.
If this happens to your left hand, you will not be able to play flute, fiddle, mandolin, or other string instruments. You will be left with only bodhran and accordion. Is it worth it?
I have a 12 ton hydraulic press that I use to cut bellows papers in the shop. I noticed an unusual drag on the hand lever. I had my darn ring finger under the press and squished it into an oval before I woke up.
I had to rotate it and squish it back round(ish) to get it off.
Apart from the risk of damage to a finger if a ring gets caught up in something, I'm sure a ring on the left hand, particularly if it's a man's ring, which tend to be larger, can interfere with finger movement when playing the fiddle and probably most of the fretted instruments.
Trevor
Thinking of the brainiac in the hardware store - I read a letter in a British motorbike magazine from a guy who used to think that way but suddenly changed his mind when he lost it on a long straight road and went fifty yards down the road on his hands and knees. Apparently he lost seven layers of skin off his hands (I only knew about the first one, but apparently there's more). Anyroad, he said the worst thing about it wasn't the pain or the weeks of changing bandages. It was having to call his mum in to wipe his a**e whenever he went to the toilet... :-{
I gave my son (plays mandola) the ultimatum when he went up to high school, and was in casualty 3 times in his first term.
You are either a rugby player or a musician. Not both.
I am pleased to say he chose the latter.
If you do gardening it's a good idea to wear gardening gloves as much as possible.
Although my forays into gardening are curtailed by Herself to digging, mowing the lawn and pruning trees and bushes - due to my carefully honed inability to distinguish between plants and weeds - the gloves protect my hands and fingers from those scratches and cuts which otherwise seem to be an inevitable part of the business and could cause problems in playing an instrument.
when i was 13 i cut the top joint off my ring and middle finger in a lawn mower. the two were sown back on but the ring finger didnt take and it had to be taken off again. I now work as a carpenter and work with power tools every day. I am very safety concious but i find its not the tools that are the biggest danger, its those hidden snags like rusty nails and bits of broken glass. wooden splinters are a bonus if you manage to get a good one. never mind your hands its your ears we all forget to mind. the long term effects of using a hammer cant be good. i find that after hammering for a while i get a ringing in my right ear. you dont see many good deaf musicians
Fear of damaging ones hands
Fear of damaging ones hands
Today I cut my fourth finger to the bone. I got some stitches & a splint & I'm good to go. I know that I'm different than other musicians in that I don't have fears of hurting my hands. I live life & if I get a cut or a sprain that's just the way it is. I have met people with a neurosis/psychosis about their hands: they can't be around dogs, machines or anything else that will endanger their hands. To me the drive to tinker & create something is two very important character aspects of a musician; I know ten good fingers are very important too.
What do you guys think?
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Mad Baloney
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Christ, Brad, be careful! Was that in the workshop? I don't worry about it overly much, myself, but I'm aware of it. I decided not to keep skiing when I was dancing 5 days a week, for instance. I'd find some other way to have music in my life if I lost a hand or whatever, I suppose, but I'd really rather not have to...but mainly because I'm a total wimp about pain!
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
We'll have yo get Brad one of those t-shirts that says, "Runs with scissors."
. The thing that gets to me is all the gripping you have to do when working with your hands, which can later interfere with making music.
When I worked at Flatiron, one of my coworkers lost a finger or two in a joiner planer. It tokk a while just to clean up the shop afterward...pretty gruesome. I split the end of my thumb once on the band saw, and another time I broke two windows with one bite of a pin router. Just glad the shrapnel went through the windows and not us hyooman beans.
I don't overly worry about it though. I work with hand and power tools a lot, and do some crazy mountain biking and snow boarding (hit a tree last winter--that gave me *more* time to play music
At one session last year, we had one fiddler with two broken fingers and another with stitches in her wrist--one side of our circle looked like the waiting room at an ER....
Brad, just don't go severing any nerves....
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Jim (Dorans), have you any comments on this from your martial arts perspective?
When I was in my teens and 20s I did judo for several years with no injury problems. Then I started karate when I was about 19/20 but stopped after two classes when the instructor got us doing press-ups on two fingers, and I started having visions of the possible damage to my hands.
Trevor
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Jim, I was in a hardware store buying work gloves not too long ago, and a big rough-neck lout of customer in the check out line next to me gives me the eye and says, "Gloves are for sissies." I didn't disagree with him. But when I got out to my car, I muttered to myself, "Yeah, and splinters, cuts, and blood blisters are for morons."
Come to think of it, I do baby my hands. I always wear rubber gloves when I wash the dishes. But it's because Montana is so dry (the humidity worked its way up to 12% the other day), the ends of my fingers split if I don't wear the gloves. You haven't lived till you have an e string go inside a raw crack in your finger tip as you slide up to a note. No one can hear your intonation over the screaming....
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I was putting together cheap light fixtures, they are basically bent sheetmetal. I was opening a little lip with a screwdriver when it slipped & my hand ran along the cutting edge of the fixture. I was wearing 'railroad' gloves at the time, it cut through heavy leather gloves & my hand too - just one of those freaky accidents. I didn't even know that I had cut myself 'til I noticed the blood on the floor. I'm very good about wearing hardhats, gloves, glasses (scratched my cornea once - I got to wear an eyepatch for two weeks, Arrgh!) but shit still happens. I only imagine what would have happened had I not had any gloves on. It's the pinky on my bowing hand, so it's not too much of a problem for fiddling.
What doesn't kill you makes you older.
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Mad Baloney
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
LOL -- altogether true, and thank goodness for it, Brad...hope it heals up soon, what a pain, literally...
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Visiting a neighbor I fell on her sidewalk and crushed the muscle in my wrist and slammed my face onto the concrete.....good thing I'm not flat chested or I might have broken my nose.
Anyway not playing for a several weeks was torture. I think I dusted the ol fiddle about 6 times a day. Guess that was my way of feeling like I was doing something with it. The wrist is all better and now I have the cleanest fiddle in town. Still can't play worth a hoot but I think I'm addicted to it. Now I'm really paranoid about injury.
Stay healthy!
Mary
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Antikhntr
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I used to ensure I went rock climbing on Sunday after the Saturday night gig, and not the other way around. Spending four or five hours putting one's wrists through a cycle of repeated extreme isometic exercise meant the fingers didn't respond all that quickly the next day.
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by NeilBarr
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Sheet metal is nasty, nasty stuff. Glad to hear you're on the mend, Brad.
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I stopped sailing dinghies on Sundays (therefore, forever!) since trying to play my accordion in evening sessions was impossible. My right hand fingers were locked and stiff, as I'd been hauling on a mainsheet for 3 hours that lunchtime, and I regularly knocked my knuckles to bits. Gardening and DIY of any sort usually means my fingers get tired and swollen, so I do it minimally.
I'm as good as the next man at going for things and living life, but ITM gives me the most back, so excuse me for looking after my digits! My garage is still not rebuilt after five years, as I know bricking will ruin my hands. I shall have to lift the phone and get someone else to do it. At least my fingers with be in good shape to write the cheque to the builder! : (
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by petemay
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I know a really excellent guitarist who works as a carpenter. He complains that his hands are too stiff to play properly these days, after working all day, and he just can't do what he once did. It frustrates and saddens him, but he has no other way to make a living. It's a big sacrifice. He'd be in his fifties, I guess.
What you can get away with, in your pliable youth, you may find catching up with you later. Injuries can come back to haunt you as arthritis or other kinds of damage. Don't treat your hands as an endlessly re-newable resource, Brad! Eventually, they may not bounce back.
I agree with petemay's approach; if the music is more important than the yachting, then choose the music. Tricky when it's your livelihood in question, of course. But - 'gloves are for cissies' - what a totally stupid sentiment...
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Nell
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Something like 20 years ago, I smashed up the pinky on my right hand fairly impressively playing a pickup game of American football one weekend. No break, but it ballooned, and the joint was smashed up. After about 6 months, I had full mobility back... I thought.
The bottom joint is actually a dogleg (scar tissue on the tendons pulled it that way), but it works just fine with the finger in towards the center of the hand.
However, if you have the finger stretched all the way out to the side (say, if you were stretching for a button on the concertina), it has a tendency to lock.
But, I suppose, things could have been worse. Back when I was playing Rugby, I broke both middle fingers one evening. Broke one in the first game of 7s, and the other in the second. As it happened, the third game was the best game I ever had. But typing was unpleasant for a bit.
--Dave
# Posted on July 22nd 2004 by Dave Weinstein
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Some years back I almost sawed my left hand off from sliding it up and down against the back bar of the bodhràn to change tone while playing. i now wimpishly wear a specially sewn leather thong on my paw to prevent a reoccurance. i do get some funny looks but ain't sure if it's 'cos i wear what looks somewhat like a weird sexual aid or cos I play the dreaded drum.
Joe
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Joe Quinn
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Clint Eastwood et al had no fear at all of damaging one's hands. Many's the hired hand they filled with lead. Did'ye ever see "The Outlaw Josie Wales"? graaand stuff.
Joe
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Joe Quinn
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Our "music teacher" in high school was asked to take the shop class one day, and while he was demonstrating the table saw he apparently said, "Now kiddies, don't do it like this..." and took the last joint off his right middle finger. He had a big boney knob there, and he used to smack people with it if they played out of time, or sometimes just for fun. I've still got scars...
One of my friends had to give up playing the mandolin when he took off parts of two fingers on his left hand. But he switched to Uilleann pipes and seems to manage ok. He's Mr. Safety nowadays though.
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Gzeg
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I am around power tools all day everyday. For the last 20= years, I have yet to seriously harm myself.
This, I believe is due to a great fear of my power tools.
I do draw blood regulary from sharp knifes, chisles, splinters etc. Rare indeed is the concertina that exits the shop without traceable DNA. Sort of a high tech signature in blood.
I am sure you have heard many times "a dull tool is dangerous".
True indeed. What they don't tell you is that a sharp tool is even more dangerous...it cuts faster and deeper.
Truly, on the occasional slip of the chisel or knife that fails to cut me, my first thought is often:
"hmm, that tool should have cut me good, I will have to sharpen it."
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by bt
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I worked on oilrigs for years. Very few people who had worked the drill floor could display a full set of fingers when I started in 1979. Health and safety awareness was non-existent.
Fortunately one of the first floorhands I met was a mandolin player too and he showed how to fold my fingers in when handling heavy moving objects.
I saw a lot of squashed and severed fingers but (touch wood)mine are all still there.
The worst finger accident I had offshore was when I cut my little finger with a sharp knife, while slicing open a bread roll. Right to the bone but the nerves grew back over about five years.
I still fold my fingers in when pushing something on the edge.
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Bren
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I'm pretty much more aware of potential hand and finger injury now than I was x amount of years ago. I've done a few silly things like slicing my left thumb in two with a sharp knife (not on purpose!), although the hospital staff were able to stich it back together again.
Trevor, I've bruised my knuckles several times on badly thrown punches (karate practice) and ripped skin off my right hand after a mis-timed high-speed 'flying swipe' at a heavy bag....I have to admit that these days I do not do any proper sparring, simply for the fear of damaging my hands. I tend to train in punching and kicking using things that *don't hit back*!
Bit of a wimp, really.
Jim
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Ironically, the worst hand injury I've ever had occurred while carving out the inside profile of a fiddle back. I slipped with a brand new sweep gouge and scarfed the hide on the inside of my left middle finger back like a banana peel from second knuckle almost to the tip. Took a long time to heal but now there's scarce a scar.
The worst injury I almost got came while renovating a bathroom. I had the sheetrock off the wall and was cutting through studs with a circular saw. I was holding one stud while cutting a nearer one in twain when the saw bucked, a long sliver of 2x4 jammed the guard back and the sawblade ran across the inside of my left wrist. There was an impressive amount of blood and I about lost all sphincter control but when I cleaned it off, turned out I just had 6 little tick marks caused by the carbide teeth just breaking the skin as they rolled across my wrist.
The funniest injury, and most embarrasing, I got while trying to knock the 2x6 top rail off my deck railing. I was swinging a 16 oz claw hammer upward from the knees to the underside of the rail to knock it loose when I completely missed the rail and the hammer and right forearm's arc ended perfectly right in the mouth. My wife was standing right behind me when I performed this stunt and she heard the WHACK and muffled grunt. She said, "you alright?", to which I answered, "No frovlem, jusht a little fit of a floody lipf, call the dentisht, will you?"
No really, I'm very careful. These are the only incidents in 30 years of woordworking. Just goes to show, though, that it only takes a second's inattention, or one brainfart, to rearrange your anatomy.
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by ScottC
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Oh, yeah, I forgot one other:
You know that TV commercial where Sears prates about the lifetime warranty on Craftsman tools? Don't believe it, or at least don't try to apply it to Craftsman power tools. I was routing the binding groove on a guitar with a Craftsman router when the cooling fan exploded, shrapnel came out of the cooling slots, smashed my safety glasses, and cut my face all up. I tried to return the router to Sears and they said, "sorry, only 30 days warranty on power tools." Wouldn't even give me a new router!
Never bought another tool from Sears, which is fine, as their stuff is crap anyway.
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by ScottC
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. I have to stop reading this thread, I've got all these sympathetic pains all over now...
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Don't wear rings on your fingers. Or, if you do, go to the jewelry shop and have the jeweler make cuts so that if they catch on something, they will break free. If you catch a ring on something, you can get a "ring avulsion" in which almost all the flesh is stripped off your finger. It cannot be repaired--you lose the finger.
If this happens to your left hand, you will not be able to play flute, fiddle, mandolin, or other string instruments. You will be left with only bodhran and accordion. Is it worth it?
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by John Conoboy
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
rings eh?
I have a 12 ton hydraulic press that I use to cut bellows papers in the shop. I noticed an unusual drag on the hand lever. I had my darn ring finger under the press and squished it into an oval before I woke up.
I had to rotate it and squish it back round(ish) to get it off.
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by bt
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Apart from the risk of damage to a finger if a ring gets caught up in something, I'm sure a ring on the left hand, particularly if it's a man's ring, which tend to be larger, can interfere with finger movement when playing the fiddle and probably most of the fretted instruments.
Trevor
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Ych a fi, as the Welsh expression has it (meaning yeeeeuuuchhhhhhh!) - I shouldn't have read this thread before breakfast...
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by Nell
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
Thinking of the brainiac in the hardware store - I read a letter in a British motorbike magazine from a guy who used to think that way but suddenly changed his mind when he lost it on a long straight road and went fifty yards down the road on his hands and knees. Apparently he lost seven layers of skin off his hands (I only knew about the first one, but apparently there's more). Anyroad, he said the worst thing about it wasn't the pain or the weeks of changing bandages. It was having to call his mum in to wipe his a**e whenever he went to the toilet... :-{
# Posted on July 23rd 2004 by bc_box_player
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
I gave my son (plays mandola) the ultimatum when he went up to high school, and was in casualty 3 times in his first term.
You are either a rugby player or a musician. Not both.
I am pleased to say he chose the latter.
# Posted on July 24th 2004 by geoffwright
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
If you do gardening it's a good idea to wear gardening gloves as much as possible.
- the gloves protect my hands and fingers from those scratches and cuts which otherwise seem to be an inevitable part of the business and could cause problems in playing an instrument.
Although my forays into gardening are curtailed by Herself to digging, mowing the lawn and pruning trees and bushes - due to my carefully honed inability to distinguish between plants and weeds
Trevor
# Posted on July 24th 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
...especially if you forget to pull the thorns out from your fingertips.
Jim
# Posted on July 24th 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: Fear of damaging ones hands
when i was 13 i cut the top joint off my ring and middle finger in a lawn mower. the two were sown back on but the ring finger didnt take and it had to be taken off again. I now work as a carpenter and work with power tools every day. I am very safety concious but i find its not the tools that are the biggest danger, its those hidden snags like rusty nails and bits of broken glass. wooden splinters are a bonus if you manage to get a good one. never mind your hands its your ears we all forget to mind. the long term effects of using a hammer cant be good. i find that after hammering for a while i get a ringing in my right ear. you dont see many good deaf musicians
# Posted on July 24th 2004 by onefinlongford