Looks like I’m going to lose the nail after all. A couple of months ago, I’d earned my junior builder’s badge, a black carpenter’s thumb. I’d given it the taster’s pack, hitting it first with the tacker stapler (thankfully the staple didn’t go into the nail) then, about an hour later, with the hammer. More recently, I freshened it up with ‘the whopper’, the 8lb-ish homemade wooden mallets we were using to split shakes. I had a few millimeters of cuticle left holding the nail on, but with that last blow the nail bulged out and a ridge of distressed, mottled nail formed, indicating that it was thinking of abandoning ship.
A recent guest (a level-one carpenter) advised me that sinking a hot pin into the nail to relieve the pressure might help. I passed on that. The next day, the pressure must have built up too much and the nail split near the base and clotted blood seeped out. Now I’m favouring the nail, hoping that the last strips of nail bed will hold it on at least long enough that some sort of growth will cover the raw flesh underneath.
Everyone around here has had experience with digits getting in the way of some productive work. “How about when you put a nail through a finger?” said Randy, slotting his hands under his armpits and clamping down, grimacing with the memory. “Then you have to get a pair of pliers and pull it out again. And those galvanized nails with all the rough bits…ugh.” Rich told me about working with Corey who hit his thumb with a waffle-faced hammer. “The blood squirted 26 inches. We measured.” My favourite is hearing about Dan, from the café, and his weird black thumbnail. Apparently, it looked exactly like the silhouette of a black bear. I’ll see if I can track down a picture from someone. I thought mine looked a little like an elephant running away, but that was a stretch even by Rorschach test standards.