About six weeks ago I was using an 18 volt drill with a 1/2″ bit to drill out a hole under a stair rail. I was sitting drilling up. I had the drill on maximum torque. The bit hit a large screw and stopped. The drill handle swung my hand to the inside direction of my body and hyper extended the tendons just under the outside bony portrusion on my left wrist. The only thing that stopped my wrist from breaking was a spindle that the drill handle stopped on otherwise snap. I have iced it alot. Had a physical therpist manipulate it by hand, ultrasound and electric shock and ice a few times. I can’t swing a golf club or lift weights due to the nature of the injury. Has anyone else experienced this and how long did it take to heal? I sure learned a lot about torque and the proper use of it. GW
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story
The Fine Homebuilding Podcast team chats about how to prevent roof sheathing from rotting.
Featured Video
Highlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
Had a nearly identical injury from a DeWalt corded 1/2" drill. I'd say it took me a few months before any sign of pain was gone. It was about ten years ago and it still flares up from time to time...good luck.
I had something similar twenty years ago. Unfortunately, some soft tissue injuries like this can take much longer to heal than a broken bone does. Mine took around about six months, but then I never did learn to slow down and let things heal...
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
Hi Greg,
I had a drill (electric 1/2" Mikita) pin my hand in a corner as I was drilling for electrical instalation - until I could pull the plug.
Suck it up - I grew up on a dairy farm.You wouldn't last 5 minutes working aroung cows!
Old Guy,
I work 5 days a week installing and finishing hardwood floors @ 53 yrs. old. On Saturdays I run a construction trash hauling service. www. trashhaulers.com
Inbetween that I live on two acres with 1/4 acre avocado trees, 1/8 acre of fruit trees and a half acre of Canary Island Date palms in production. I have a 25,000 sq. ft. house pad on that lot, of which there is no grass. It is all garden/park like. Always something to prune, weed and fertilize. I have been working since I was 10 and my parents never gave me anything gratis. I think I could do the farm; and enjoy it!!! Sorry to burst your tough guy farmer bubble. GW
Greg,Looks like you're just too busy to let that injury heal.
Dam, now I feel lazy, or maybe you need a vacation.
No money like trash money. A good friend of mine has made a small fortune hauling trash, he's basically retired at 35. Goes to the office until his 11 am tee time, signs a couple checks while he's there.
U finding alot of stairs around cows these days?
that must be a weird looking farm .....
they're supposed to go on the outside of the farm house ... U sure yer doing that part right?
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
Ya, working around cows could be a "slip-slidin" job
How do you get the cows up the stairs? I gotta see that!
get the cows up the stairs?
Cows & horses will generally go up stairs. It's the getting them back down again that is usually less successful.
If ever faced with livestock not wanting to go down a stair case, reverse the stock and walk them backwards carefully.
A person could ask how I know this, but the answer is likely to be blurred by hangovers long past and lies <g> . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
"Cows & horses will generally go up stairs."
I have my little boy convinced that if he looks hard enough .. on long road trips ...
he'll soon see one of those "cows eating apples" ...
and where do cows eat apples, you ask?
why on the top of the tree!
I think he's on to me ... finally ...
last trip ... he "saw" three!
"look Daddy ... I saw a cow up in that tree EATING apples!!!"
kid is just plain weird ... must be the wife's genes ...
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
Found it was easier to get the cows to shake the apple tree than to get the darn fools back doun the ladder...
I had a milwaukee 1/2 holeshooter with a holesaw jam and it bent my thumb around where no thumb has gone before. Still hurts sometimes. 7 years ago.
Ice, ibuprofen and a wrist brace. Initially wear the brace all the time. Then have it in the tool box for when your wrist gets sore late in the day or when your doing something that might aggravate the condition.
Wear the brace at night even after you can get through a tough day at work without any pain. Get several copies of the brace so you can wash one and wear another. I used to have one for 'formal' wear, one for every day. One for dirty work.
The more you keep the wrist in a neutral position the faster it heals. Once the wrist is 80% try squeezing a rubber ball while watching TV. When the forearm feels tired change hands. Don't overdo it.
Figure six weeks for initial healing. Twice that, assuming no reinjury, for 80% recovery. The last 20% will take longer and won't even start before the pain is long gone and the wrist feels normal. Don't be fooled into thinking your healed all the way.
Reinjury is almost a sure thing if you work construction while your healing. About the time I thought I was healed I would do something stupid and a months healing would disappear in a second.
Another reason to wear the brace. Only part of the benefit is the protection it offers and the neutral position it promotes. Part of it is in reminding you to take it easy, protect the wrist and limit what you do.
Using the side handle helps a lot if you can use both hands. Great when it works out. A trick I have taken to using, if the drill will accomidate it, is to set the depth control so that it is just tight enough to keep the bits from slipping. That way if a bit or hole saw binds and stops the depth control will slip. Limiting the amount of reaction and the forces your wrist has to absorb.
Edited to add the last block.
Edited 8/7/2005 9:15 pm ET by 4LORN1
I printed out your prescription Doc. GW
Can't help you much with the pain but I'll offer this.
I have installed about a bazzilion stair rails in my lifetime and I never use a cordless drill. Myabe it's all in my mind but it seems to me that a cordless drill is much quicker to bind up and spin the drill body. My Dewalt 1/2" drill will simply drill into the screw and destroy the bit. I've had it happen a few times. I've also seen my old partner sustain the injury your talking about using.............you guessed it............a Dewalt 18V cordless.
I do however keep a secret stash of 800mg Motrin handy. I almost never take pain medication so two of those and you could chop my foot off and I wouldn't care.
Thanks for the time you all spent in replying to my issue. I kind of figured that it was going to be an issue the rest of this year. It is not sore at this point, just irritated. I will place more effort in wearing the neoprene wrist splint that I bought. Thanks again. GW
I would expect that your physical therapist gave you a set of exercises for you to do at home. Your recovery depends a bunch on how well you do the exercises - if you find time to do them every day *and* you don't reinjure it by doing things you shouldn't - then you can progress well. But... injuries like this can take a long time to heal, where long == months, and sometimes there is permanent damage.
If you didn't get exercises, then you should find a different physical therapist.
I'm also assuming that you saw a Dr. to rule out more serious injuries.
... Which reminds me of my favorite idiot with a drill story (no offense to you; yours was a legitimate use injury) ...
I spent 12 years as a machinist before turning to bending nails. I worked in a job shop that occasionally finished some aluminum castings. The milling machine used had a fixture bolted on the table made out of welded up 1" steel plate. There was an access hole on the fixture where you could insert a socket on an extension to tighten a nut. Hole needed to be enlarged.
Good practice would have been to bolt the fixture to a big-time drill press on go for it. Idiot foreman chucks up about an 1-1/4" drill with a turned-down shank in a 1/2" drill with extension handles and goes for it. Mind you the fixture is no longer bolted down. So just as anyone would expect, the drill immediately grabs and jams in the existing hole.
Here is this sawed-off foreman, about as wide as he is tall, dancing around the shop with about a 200 lb. steel fixture lazily turning on the end of his drill. The guy can't let go of the thing, as the drill is trying to wrap him up at the same time. What a sight! Someone finally pulled the plug on his drill (damn!).
Oh yeah, your injury. Rest, ice, ibuprofen.
PS - Ask me about the 16' long lathe dancing around in the air sometime.
Shoot, none of you have lived until you accidently hit the switch lock while using a self-feed on a right angle Mil. to bore for a lockset!!!!
Few years back a I saw a plumber (weighing in at over 200) get spun around by a Mil righ angle when the 4" self feed he was using caught. we were all a bit surprised. And more cautious after that.
My favorite was when the guy I came into the biz with (65yo) was drilling a piece of pt sill with a 1/2" Makita drill. Bit caught BOTH cords on his hooded sweatshirt. Fortunately, he took his finger off the trigger as soon as it started to catch, but those gear-reduced drills take a while to stop. I heard him laughing, and looked out to see him, with about a one inch hole left in the drawn up hood, giggling.
Hope your boo-boo heals quick, dude................think Bass ale
Nobody mentioned this techique yet (or i missed it) but learned as a kid > 50 yrs ago to always hold a large power drill so that if it binds it pull your finger off the trigger. Have an old Souix 3/4 drive 300 rpm drill with 18 inch handles, that sucker bound up only a little while ago with a 1-1/8 bit in steel and likely would have broken my arm if the handle had not pulled away from my finger (aint gonna tell you what happened as a teen to teach me how to hold the drill right)
If I suspect a possible grab I hold the drill left handed, this will pop the drill outof your grip. While dropping a drill and snapping a bit blows it is better than nursing a wrist injury. Although this back-fired once when drilling overhead on a ladder-the drill grabbed and popped out my hand whereupon it promptly smacked me in the forehead and jabbed the bit into my leg as I stumbled down the ladder. Nothing serious except that all the other guys saw it happen, atleast they waited until asking if I was alright before bursting out in laughter. Still, I'd rather a goose-egg and a band-aid over a sprained or worse wrist, can't even push a pencil with one of those.
a plumber i knew in denver, also a pretty big guy, said his holehawg yanked him off his ladder once and spun him around a couple times like ceiling fan.
i have a milwaukee 3107 rt angle- i was drilling a 5/8" hole in 1/2" steel plate (base of a vise pedestal) and it bound up the bit as it broke thru. while i had been careful to use proper technique in bracing the secondary handle against the upright pedestal while drilling, i had a momentary lapse of intelligence when i casually hit the reverse switch and pulled the trigger- it jerked my wrist and the second handle whacked me in the leg. gee, those big toys are fun...
m
Yes. Many years ago I sprained the wrist with a Milwalkee reduced gear. Variable speed is a good thing, start out slow and don't push the tool. Sprains are painful.
I have my own collection of cow stories from working with and around them while growing up. I've never built a stairs for them though.
Working in the rural areas, I've never built cow stairs, but I've built a lot of henways.
Ok, I'll bite.
What's a henway?
"Ok, I'll bite. What's a henway?"I was hoping someone would. About 3&1/2 pounds. Ha ha ha.
Edited 8/14/2005 4:12 pm ET by Huck
Youse farmers!
(rimshot)It's a simple plank with nailed cross strips that leads up to the elevated hen house.
I didn't know it was called that. I actually have one for my hobby chickens.
I know a fellow who keeps his two pot bellied pigs in the house. They ain't little no more at 200-300 lbs. Couple years ago, they couldn't walk down the concrete stairs to do thier business outside. He built a set of stairs with 18" deep threads, 4" risers and triple stringers especially for the pigs. I guess it beats carrying them outside a couple times a day.
I've never built a stairs for them though
It must be a city-kid thing, this odd urge to wander livestock from where they are happy to the top floors of university dormitories or other buildings. Them after it all goes pear-shaped (as such things almost always seem to), all hands seem to work in concert to make it worse until someone who knows enough steps in (ugh, volunteering at its worst) if only to keep the ruckus down.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
>> ... after it all goes pear-shaped ...Fascinating! I've never seen this as an expression of FUBARedness. Can you describe the derivation?
Can you describe the derivation?
Picked up from the Brits I know; something about how if things are not "sorted," first they go all "wobbly," then are pear-shaped.
But, then again, Bob is everybody's uncle, too . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Get a "Stanley Proto J5447 1/2" Drive Ratchet Adapter" for about $50 and it's worth it. I got tired of almost wrecking my wrist.
https://amazon.com/dp/B001HWG9HI?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details
These can be set to stop left or right kick back. You need a couple adapters to fit your drill and another to fit the tool that can cause the kick back.
(You can also set up a safe way to start a gas engine.)