I never use them. I do use respirators, eye and ear protection. I don't know why I bother with ear protection as I am deaf already. The skin takes a beating from solvents, but I figure thats what its there for. I have drilled through the edge of a finger, cut off a finger nail with a piece of steel that went spinning when the power drill went almost all the way through it, nipped off the end of a finger and given myself a few dirt tattoos in hand cuts. I guess I should know better as I am a retired RN. None of my old timer professional mechanic buddies ever use gloves, it wasn't something we even thought about or considered. I'm not saying gloves are bad, I am just not in the habit of using them. Now a days they even make chain mail gloves for butchering. A case in point in favor of glove protection.
Years ago I was invited into a hunting camp by a bunch of guys I didn't know. I ran into some of them hunting and got invited back to their place for socializing and cards. They called their dump "Camp Toivo". The camp was covered in tar paper, made from home sawmill cut framing lumber, the occasional log substituted for a framing piece, dunnage, pallets, a dirt uneven floor with salvaged carpeting from a flood on it, an old culvert for the chimney, old wood storm windows for windows and old dish rags hung on straightened out coat hangers for curtains. The sound system was the entire dash of an old Ford truck that included speakers and an 8 track. They also had a 78 RPM record player so they could listen to Bobby Aro, the king of the great northwoods. They used half empty beer bottles for a level when building it so you felt like you were living in a surreal world when you went in. They were all huge guys, I am 5' 8" and 155 lbs. I could hardly move or turn in there with all these 6' 3" and up 300 pound guys. Introductions indicated that they were welders, carpenters, tug boat hands, dry wallers, and two ex cons who were not supposed to be anywhere near guns. When I told them I was a nurse they were elated as the previous hunting season they had to take someone to the emergency room and he showed me his scars to prove it. That was a relief as I figured they would think I was a geek or something and not treat me well, but they accepted me like an old friend. There was a card game upstairs in the "Urho Room", if you could call the attic like junk collected space that. It was more like the top of the stairs with very little elbow room for all these big galloons. The stairs are another story, made from an old pine stump they found in the woods and rolled back to camp. It was notched and had boards nailed in it for stairs. One of the card players, Jack, sliced off the end of one of his fingers when he was cutting limes for tequila shots (you know, lick the salt, toss the shot and suck the lime wedge). A lot of alcohol was involved in his cutting off his finger as this was 10 PM and he was reportedly already drunk at noon. At the time I was downstairs helping some of the others make venison sausage. No one knew for sure what the weights and measures in the recipe ment and as a nurse I got drafted into being the recipe interpreter, being familiar with the old English Apothecary System. Jack came down with a dirty shop rag wrapped around his hand and said "I cut my finger off". The welder said "I can fix that with my welder, got it in the back of my pickup outside". The tug boat guy said "go out and stick it in the fryer along with the turkey I am cooking". One of the carpenters was willing to help by holding his finger on the wood burning barrel stove to cauterize it. Jack left and went back to the Urho Room where the card game was. He came back with a paper plate with his finger tip on it and tossed it on the table, along with all the venison we were processing. Then he briefly took off the rag and blood spurted around. He started playing with it; on, off, on, off, like a faucet or something. Well that shut us up: I said "get in my truck and I'll take you to the ER". Jack said "well, your a nurse, I thought you could fix me up". I asked the camp owner if he had a first aid kit or at least any bandaids and he said, "no, my kids used them all on scratches". I looked around and found one feminine pad, one bandaid and unwrapped some electrical tape from the bare wires that were hanging from the ceiling that bare light bulbs were fixed to. I was able to stop the bleeding with a pressure dressing made out of the pad, bandaid, electrical tape and by sitting next to him and holding his hand high over his head. He kept fighting and arguing with me and trying to get up out of the chair but I was mad at him and said I was tired of monkeying with him and he wasn't going anywhere until it stopped bleeding. After awhile it stopped and he went back to drinking and cards. I never found the end of his finger, I don't know if it got tossed in the fire or ended out in the sausage. He didn't want his finger tip and nail put back on or even go to the ER for proper treatment because he would be a laughing stock at work. The story was that one of the old guys on his crew cut off 3 of his fingers with a diagonal cut across his pinky and the next two with most of his pinky gone. The ER told him it could be reattached, but it would be months before he could work. He asked how long he would be off work if he left his fingers off and it would only be a few weeks. He settled for a few weeks off work. Jack was no way going to any sissy ER. I ended out sleeping on a couch as my truck was blocked in by someone who left with someone else for another hunting camp. They came walking back to Toivo just before dawn and had quite an adventure themselves involving stopping at bars, a very high speed chase after women and wrecking their truck. The truck went into the ditch on a curve, up on top of a low rock cut, through a bunch of aspen whips and back on the road. They tried to sneak it cross country through the woods on two tracks back to camp but got lost when the trail ended. They couldn't back up as they discovered the tranny had no reverse and they had to walk miles in the dark back to Toivo with improper shoes and got bad blisters. While all this was going on I took a midnight sauna, mostly to get away from all the noise and nonsense, and made the mistake of trying to use a urial attached to the outside wall of the sauna. All my P went on my bare feet as it was not hooked up and I couldn't see that in the dark. I was a little miffed and mentioned that the urial was not connected to anything and I got my feet wet. They said "don't mean nothing, just good clean fun". I guess they designed it to drain on your feet. The sauna door had huge nails pounded through the hinges, all the way through the door jam and folded over on the inside of sauna. You had to lift the door up before it would open. I asked why they can't put hinges on the door, being carpenters and all. They said "its got hinges". The next morning Jack drove off for home like nothing had happened, didn't even appear hung over. It was Sunday and he had to go to work Monday AM framing a log cabin. I never saw him again. I later heard that this camp caught on fire because the chimney (rusty culvert) had holes in it and started the wall on fire. They started ripping the wall apart to get at the fire but it was spreading faster than they could deal with it so they cut the front of the camp off with chain saws and pushed it into the swamp. Several of the big guys held it up until they could jam logs and cut down trees under the roof to hold it up. It is now rebuilt with a good chimney. The old burned out front of the camp and crumpled, twisted culvert were still laying in front of the camp the last time I checked it out, which was probably 15 years ago. The front door was a piece of canvas nailed to logs on one side, that formed an A frame like structure on the front of the building. A log was somehow attached to the opposite side of the canvas, which was laid along the A frame roof to keep most of the wind and snow out. The canvas was part way frozen to the ground so there was only a narrow opening to squeeze through to get in. There were bullet holes in the walls, but they said that was from passing vandals. You all would probably think I am full of it if I mentioned that Camp Toivo has, or at least had, an indoor outhouse (located in a back shed attached to the camp with a door leading into the camp). The moral of this tail is that gloves are a good thing to use when working with sharp instruments or power tools. Also, Camp Toivo is a good place to stay clear of.
