Was bending a piece of sheet metal on a 10 ft. bending brake. Stupidly had both my hands in the jaws trying to adjust the workpiece when the jaws partially closed on my hands. Imagine having all your fingers sandwiched between two thick steel plates because that’s basically what happened. It wasn’t really pushing down but just the weight of the jaws alone was enough that I was stuck and couldn’t get my hands out.
It didn’t hurt initially. Just felt like very intense pressure. I started hollering for help. Eventually another guy in the shop saw me and came running over to open the jaws. As soon as he did, I got this sharp, shooting pain in all my fingers. I think I hopped all over the shop, screaming obscenities. Had to just hold ice packs all day to keep the swelling down.
Didn’t lose any of my fingers. Didn’t even break any bones, somehow. Just bruised them really severely. It hurt like a son of a bitch but I was incredibly lucky.
