There’s an old saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” That goes double when giving safety advice that you don’t follow yourself.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I do follow it myself, but sometimes… Well, sometimes you slip up, your mind wanders, you just don’t pay attention, you get distracted, etc., and then this happens:

What you have there is an excellent example of what happens when your hand is too close to where you’re using a brad nailer. As sometimes occurs, the nail hit an obstruction or followed the grain, and blew out the side of the workpiece. My hand was way too close, and the brad went right through my fingernail. A classic safety warning I’ve stressed for years, and at least twice (that I recall) in published articles.

Miraculously, there was no real injury, not even a scratch on the skin of my fingertip. But as you can see from the photo, the difference between being lucky and being able to wear one of my wife’s pierced earrings in the tip of my finger was probably less than a few microns. Lesson learned? Yeah, I think so.