To make a long story short, I was using a machine called a roto-tiller (photo above for those not familiar) to break up and move the soil following the disaster of a mess I made with the track loader. This is PA and the soil is full of rather sizeable rocks and clay. The tiller became jammed, and the function to un-jam it has been broken for years. This is just a switch that reverses the tines to help dislodge anything stuck. Most of the parts relating to this function have rotted or fallen off the machine and were not fixed as they were seen as “optional” features!
Just as I had done hundreds of times prior, I reached under the machine (after turning it off of course), went to dislodge the rock, and found that the gearbox had a lot of potential energy stored up because of the way in which it jammed. This caused the tines to rotate several degrees, pinning my hand between the blade and the rock, nearly removing my right index finger. (I think I uttered nothing more than the words “damn it” and took a moment to re-evaluate my life and the situation, just as any adult would do after making a dumb decision). Luckily, I had a pry bar near me to lift the safety cage enough to get my hand back out. I went back inside to realize that I didn’t own a household first aid kit. I cleaned up best I could and used my camping trauma kit to hold things together and hopped in the car to drive myself to the hospital. Did I mention I was smart and did all of this while home alone on PTO?
My finger is currently healing up thanks to the great staff at the Forbes Trauma Unit, but it will always be a reminder of why something called lock-out tag-out exists. I have my pre-injury full range of motion back, but feeling will take several years to return, if it ever does. The fingernail looks bad, and part of it won’t come back, but that will take about a half of a year to determine the extent of the damage. I am grateful that things worked out as well as they did, and this will always be a reminder of why OSHA exists.
For more comically bad OSHA violations, check out this subreddit!
I have progress photos in the gallery below, including a photo of where the damage took place on the machine. Yes, I did get a tetanus shot, it is very rusty.
