Of splinters and fingers….

Sometimes we don’t heed our own advice.

To wit: I am pretty vigilant about telling people working in the shop to be careful around wenge (and a couple other woods like snakewood, but wenge is the worst) as the splinters and dust either cause skin irritation or get infected fast on broken skin.  It’s really necessary to wash your hands a lot if they’re exposed to it, and rinse cuts with peroxide; otherwise they go septic.

But sometimes I forget my own caveats.

Over the weekend, I was sanding a wenge bass fingerboard to radius (20”, fretless bass, fwiw) and got some dust in a cut next to the right-hand ring-finger fingernail.  I was busy and didn’t clean it as meticulously as usual.

And now I’ve got a sore finger and a (thankfully minor) infection running under the nail edge.  My doctor friend looked at it and asked when I was going to start wearing gloves when handling this stuff; he’s seen this before.

He said it should clear up in another couple of days but it sucks to be reduced to playing with thumb and two fingers.  He’s a classical player and agrees, and prescribed ibuprofen, topical antimicrobials, and Travis picking until it’s healed and work gloves for this kind of woodwork with hazardous woods afterwards.

….and this time I’ll take my advice……when prescribed by someone else….