I had a friend who got his toe caught in his steel toed boot when a heavy beam landed on it. He had more damage to his foot from the extraction than from the accident itself.
The only time i had a "coulda been" serious accident to my foot was: Here we go again. you guys made me do it, so suffer.>>>>>>>>>>
When i was in mason biz, often at end of day when we cleaned up an area, we had some very sturdy rubber buckets that we would put the debris into. If there was mortar left, that went into the buckets first. with the taper of the bucket sides, the next day, a quick bounce, or whack with heavy hammer would spring the solidified mortar out and easily disposed of without making a mess. I had shown the crew, and very explicitly told them that if loose debris went into the buckets first, the mess might well be nearly impossible to extract the next day. One could beat on the bottom of the bucket, the sides and use every bit of vocabulary known to man, especially man in the building trades, and the debris would not dislodge from those rubber buckets.
One morning, after a few things had gone wrong and frustration was flying out of my ears as big shooting flames, i had told my helper to empty out the buckets into the dump truck and we could use the debris on another job where we were dumping broken blocks, brick dust and any other debris not decayable. Joe was beating away on one of the buckets with no success to dislodge the solids. I was in a hurry to get away and heading to a meeting on the next job. I was getting more impatient by the minute and finally went over and grabbed the hammer from Joe, turned the bucket upside down, as i had shown my helper to do. A few good whacks and ......... nothing happened. I started beating on the sides of the bucket, but the bucket had long ago lost its even taper and the hardened cement was much stronger than brick mortar. It was actually hardened concrete that had been used to finish off the top of the chimney we had been working on. Those chimney "collars" were made with a richer mix than even anything used on a garage floor. it was strong, and by that time, very hard.
i was banging away and letting Joe know that I was just a wee bit upset that he had not done as i had told him with other cleanups. In my most polite (definitely not) way, I decided very radical demonstration was in order. I picked up that bucket over my head and with the bucket upside down slammed it, for all it was possible, towards the ground. It hit the ground, upside down and with just enough loose space in the top, as it hit, the sides buckled in a little. They buckled just enough, that as they sprung back into the natural shape, that full bucket became a projectile and catapulted about six or seven feet back into space. I was so surprised, I just stepped back, looking up at my handiwork as it seemed to hang in mid air for a brief moment. As the bucket started heading back towards earth, i still admired and stepped back..... with only one foot. the other foot sort of remained anchored in place, i guess i was marking a spot for that bucket to land.
well. it obeyed my directions. It landed right on my big toe. We had to do some cutting of boot to get my swollen toe out of there. By the time we got the boot off, I guess i had softened my attitude a little bit and everybody on the job was laughing, including yours truly. By the time i got home (I drove my truck myself), the toe was swollen to about twice its normal size and a deep blue color. I took a small drill out of my tool box and boiled it in water for a few minutes, added disinfectant (in those days, we used iodine)to both toe and drill and went to work thru the toenail to relieve the pressure. I went to my meeting, a little late, but was able to hobble around the site with the owner and finished my day working. I must have done something right that day. the toe was not broken and my first aid method did not cause any infection. I think it might have been a bit more problem had i been wearing steel toed boots (which i never have worn before or since.)
I suppose I might have used wow's first aid kit to good advantage that day. [wink]
Tinker
