For the last few nights I've been working rather industriously to get one of these and one of these completed for an event that's coming up Saturday morning. I'd had the kits for years, because airplanes that ugly look cute to me, but the thing that's coming up gives me an excuse to get them built.
Things were going reasonably well until Sunday, when a moment of fumble with my hobby knife sent it out of my hand, pointy end down, into a fleshy part of my lap. Not very far, and not enough to cause serious injury, but just enough to make me bleed for a bit. I did the first-aid stuff: stop the bleeding (elevating the wound above heart level), clean the wound and put a bandage on it. Inconvenience, but no permanent damage. Just to be safe, I went to the doctor Monday and had a new tetanus shot. It had been a little more than nine years since my last, so it was a good idea anyway, but I wanted to take no chances after that moment of oops.
Last night I'm upstairs working away on a troublesome little area on that Owl (and, believe me, there are several). It's hard to explain, but for one second just the edge of the tip pad of the middle finger on my right hand tried to occupy the same space as the very edge of that brand new #11 blade. Anyone who's ever worked with those knives knows that, especially with a new #11 blade, it takes no pressure at all. It was only a shallow, grazing cut, but the pain was instant (and still makes me physically cringe when I think of it) and the bleeding was profuse. I stood up, finger wrapped in a paper towel, and in frustration yelled a short but incredibly bad word at the top of my lungs. Downstairs to do the medic deal (after pacing around for several minutes for the blood and pain to subside, at one point soccer-kicking the mattress because I was so mad). But nothing I haven't been through before. The bleeding stopped and the pain subsided, and now I have a finger wrapped in gauze and tape.
A little while later, I went back upstairs. The first thing I did was remove the blade from that knife - it was, after all, the same demon blade that caused Sunday's carnage, and as a friend pointed out, it obviously had developed a taste for blood - and discard it. I worked a little more last night without further damaging myself, so there's some hope, I suppose. And I've thought more than once that Monday's tetanus shot couldn't have been more timely.