I’m an idiot.

I’m not going to apologise for the gruesome photos, as they need to be shown as a reminder of how not to work.

What happened? Well, the MDF anchors which I was creating (follow-up blog post later) have holes in them for the bamboo. Some of the holes hadn’t lined up perfectly - tried to do the holes individually to ease the load on the pillar drill - the anchors are made up of 4x25mm layers, 3 of which are drilled, and thus required gluing. Thus, I turned to the cylindrical sander - easy, stick a smaller (not small enough as it turns out) cylinder into the sander, place the MDF block on top, and sand. What did I forget to do? Secure the MDF brick.

What happened? I created a circular MDF death block-saw. Caught my hand on the corner, and, well, you see the result.

I am incredibly lucky that I still have a functional hand, with all my fingers & thumb still attached. Don’t anyone else ever be as stupid as I was this morning. I’m 27, and should know better not to operate machinery when I even feel a little bit sleepy.

All being well, stitches (yes, I required 2 to secure the bottom of the ring-finger) should hopefully come out next Friday. I think the stitches were actually more painful than the accident.

I’d like to thank Ben & Simon for acting appropriately & providing first aid; the nurses at Canterbury Minor Injuries Unit for patching me up; and Jack for providing gallows humour & good company whilst they did.