Safety First People!

If only I had heeded this advice!

Sunday was a lovely day for working both in and out doors. So I thought I'd get to work and make the bench top for inside the wardrobe, which will be referred to as the modeling nook from here on in.

I had a large trestle table top in the garage made from some seriously thick ply of some description, which I thought would be an excellent piece to make my desk top out of.

So after measuring the space it was to fit, I set the table top up on three saw horses, carefully marked where it needed to be cut for length, set up the guide for the circular saw, made sure the bit being cut off was supported by the third saw horse, checked the floor to make sure there was nothing to trip over, made sure the power cord was behind me, checked my surroundings for anything that might be a problem, and begun to cut through the table.

Now as I was setting this all up, I thought to myself that I really should put some shoes on. I'm one of those that loves to walk around the house barefoot and typically only wears shoes when venturing out in public to the shops and what not. But seeing as how the garage floor is always swept clean and there is nothing to injure my feet on typically the garage is a shoe free zone.

So anyway, as the circular saw cut through the last milimetre of the table, the end removed proved not to be as balanced as I had predicted, and preceded to drop quickly and surely to the ground, rotating so that its edge was at approx 90 degrees to the ground just before it reached it. Unfortunately my big toe on my left foot was in the path of this piece, which is about 1,000mm x 400mm give or take, and quite weighty.

It landed sqaure across the nail, which immediately began to bleed rather profusely, and my initial thought was that I had broken it. I managed to hobble back up to the house and yelled for some help. My wife came to the rescue with a towel and some ice, and after a few minutes of sitting quietly I came to the conclusion that it's probably not broken, but by the same token is not in real good shape. I like putting pictures on my blog but I'm sure nobody wants to see a pictorial version of these events!

So for the rest fo the day I sat on the lounge, foot elevated, cursing myself for not listening to that little voice inside my head, which obviously knew that things were going to go bad. Needless to say I didn't get any more work done.

So if nothing else, let my pain be your gain, and please, take care when doing any jobs around the house. Take that extra few minutes to make sure you have your shoes, your safety glasses, gloves or whatever else you need to ensure you get done what you want or need to without putting yourself in danger and injuring yourself.