Almost three weeks ago I nailed the back of my middle finger near my fingernail on my 8" Nils as I was trying too fast to leave work to go fishing, get home, change my clothes, and reattach my auger blade with my left hand with my bibs only half on, not watching what I was doing. I slapped what I think was the corner of the blade with the back of my finger. It was a horseshoe piece of skin that got gouged and was dripping everywhere.
I applied pressure, got a paper towel and pressed down some more. I stopped the bleeding just long enough to drip some arrow fletching glue that I keep in the fridge onto my cut (the glue smells and works like super glue). A piece of towel stuck to the wound as I pressed to try to keep it from bleeding and blew on the glue to dry it. The small piece of towel that stuck was saturated with blood and made it look worse than it really was. It did hurt a bit, but it wasn't that nasty throbbing that you get when you break something. I wrapped it and went fishing.
The paper fell off after a few days and the wound didn't get infected. When I glued it, I had bent my finger so that it wouldn't pop apart as it healed. It worked. I only had to add a drop of glue on the right side of the horseshoe slice a day or two later to keep it pressed together. I also kept a bandage on it since it hurt every time that I banged it on something, and I couldn't stop finding stuff to bang it on.
It turned out better than going to the walk-in clinic for stitches. I was able to get out onto the ice that day. Simple tasks, like tying a lure took longer to accomplish, but after 2+ weeks it finally closed up and at 3 weeks looks better than if I would have gotten stitches.
If I could do this over, I would be more careful and not be in such a hurry! I should know better.
Not that it would have helped in this case, but I did get a Cold Snap auger cover delivered in the mail soon after after I cut myself. I won't go on about the couple of times that I messed with the stock, garbage cover that came with the auger and I cut myself or torn my pant leg, but after using the Cold Snap cover in my house to figure out how to use it, I'll never use the cover that originally came with my auger again. It's going in the trash.
