I became obsessed with the look of rounded edges on wood furniture. I looked into how rounded corners are made by woodworkers, and found that people use router tools with curved bits. I bought a handheld router as a gift to myself on my last day of college.

I began rounding the edges of all the wood furniture in my room

The router was my first power tool for fine woodwork. I had a circular saw and a drill, and had used some power tools in the sculpture lab in school, but didn’t get much experience with them. I don’t think I appreciated the power and danger of the tool at the time.

Dresser

One night, I found a wood dresser left out on the street and brought it back home. It was similar to the other wood furniture in my room, but it was a bit too big to fit anywhere. I decided it would be good wordworking practice to tailor the piece–take it apart and hem all the dimensions in a bit, and then give it the rounded-edge treatment– to match the other furniture in my room.

Changing the dimensions of the dresser involved disassembling each drawer completely and cutting a few inches off each side, and then putting it all back together again.

Eventually, I got the dresser to this point. I still had to remove a bit off the top (where the screws are in this photo) and create new drawer pulls.

My idea for the drawer pulls was one long 2x2 bar on each drawer that was rounded on the edges, and with a finger groove carved out of the bottom side.

I bought a rabbeting bit for my router and the next day I tried carving out the finger grooves. I couldn’t figure out a good way to do it, and the next thing I knew, I was carving out a groove in my finger.

Typed into my notes app:

Right hand

Middle finger 

First knuckle

I’m in my ER room. Waiting. 

I knew what I was doing was unsafe. 

The router tool was upside down

I was using it like a routing table. 

I am worried thinking about what this means for the shed. 

The tools aren’t unsafe, it’s the user. It was me. 

I don’t want to think about whether or not insurance will cover this

I was trying to make drawer pulls for my dresser

I even thought how ironic it would be to injure my finger while making a slot for my finger to pull the drawer. 

I was using the tool and almost got hurt with it

It kicked back and broke the wood and the bit flew off like a copter propeller and landed 15 feet away

Among all the red flower petals fallen from the coral tree 

The red bit was hard to find. 

That was a message 

I thought to myself

A message that I should stop pressing my luck

A message from god that I was too stubborn to listen to. 

But not too foolish to miss. 

Then I had a few more kickbacks and dangerous moments. 

But I carried on

and I actually got a better control on it

Then I 

Agh I can’t even write 

I pushed the wood too far and it kicked back or whatever I don’t know 

But my knuckle hit the bit

Which I actually bought last night at Home Depot

And I knew instantly I was fucked

I saw crumbs of bone in the cut

Blood started rushing

I yelled out to my parents

I hate seeing them panic 

Dad and I got in the car 

My finger wrapped in a wash cloth

It was a slow drive on a beautiful day

Passed by many people on nice walks and bike rides 

We hit bad lights and kept having to stop 

It was almost funny

My dad stopped at a yellow light when the metro train was coming

And we had to wait a minute there

Looking back now I realize how little that mattered

I have been waiting for hours now

3 1/2 hours 

So bored 

So Fucking bored 

I don’t want to think about the pain

I wish I could just get it wrapped up in plaster now or a splint 

I hate being here 

Even if I find it sort of interesting

I just want to reach out and feel my pain with somebody else

Not maya or my parents or anything 

I don’t want to burden and worry them

Not the nurses or doctors

Whose job requires them to emotionally disconnect from their patients 

I want to reach out to the other ER patients moaning in pain down the hallway 

I left the hospital the next night with my hand wrapped up and immobilized, with a 3 inch pin through my middle finger. I had severed my extensor tendon and broken the bone at the joint.

Maya helped me finish the dresser after the injury. We came up with a different drawer pull solution.

We used clothesline rope and rivets for the drawer pulls.

After a year of use, I wouldn’t use this design again, especially not with the kinds of fancy drawer slides I used, which require a strong amount of force to open.

I returned the router to Home Depot a few days later and got a full refund.