After the fact, I was a little surprised at how calm I’d been when it happened. I was happy about it though, because I’m sure that, along with the sweater, it had helped me avoid injury.

    Not long ago, I had what was perhaps my closest brush with a major injury while sculpting ice. While I was making snow from a chunk of ice with my die grinder in my right hand, I slipped and the tip of the grinder strayed too close to my left wrist. The long half inch diameter endmill bit spinning in the grinder was all too happy to grab onto the fabric of my jacket and sweater and it pulled itself towards my wrist!

    Of course, I’ve sustained injuries while carving before. In over 20 years of ice sculpting, I’ve been cut by both razor sharp tools and the ice itself many times. One time, I stabbed a non-spinning endmill bit into the palm of my hand and another time, I even broke a bone in three places when an ice sculpture slipped from our grasp! (Fortunately, it was only my big toe; no cast required. Couldn’t really even treat it except with pain medication.) Also, on this site, I’ve mentioned other instances where ice carvers have cut themselves with the most obviously dangerous ice sculpting tool, the chainsaw.

    But Makita die grinders spin at 25,000 rpm! And we put nasty, twisting blades called endmills on them that literally shoot streams of snow off the ice as they cut, all in the pursuit of faster carving. Almost from the moment they first came on the scene, I’ve been most afraid of getting caught up with a die grinder, of not being able to get away from a destructive spinning blade that’s pulling itself towards me. I’ve witnessed a die grinder accident before and known several ice artists that have had similar accidents. In my experience, they usually end up with tendon damage, extensive surgery to repair the injury, and lots of rehab. A chainsaw probably has a better chance of killing an ice carver, but I’d put my money on the die grinder when it comes to maiming.

    Complacency, arrogance, and inattention all played a part in my incident. As I described before, the grinder slipped and managed to catch my coat and sweater near my left wrist. Had I been handling the tool with both hands, as I should have been, there would have been no problem! But sculpt ice long enough without any real problems and you begin to believe that you’re good enough to avoid the bad stuff; that the bad stuff happens to other people.

    But even fools get lucky, and such it was this time. The sweater that I like to wear while carving is made from a heavy artificial material. The endmill cut through my light parka, but when it got to the sweater, it couldn’t power through and the sweater bound it up and managed to stop the spinning! But the grinder was still on, so there I was, trying to pull my left hand away from the grinder. With my right hand, I was trying to pull the grinder away from my left wrist. Meanwhile, the grinder was doing everything it could to start spinning again and I had no hands left to turn it off! As I mentioned at the start of this entry, however, I’d stayed calmer than I would think that I’d be and I looked down, found where the grinder was plugged into the extension cord, and used my feet to pull the grinder plug and the extension cord apart. The grinder stopped humming, no longer energized, and I was able to assess the damage.

    My parka was lightly damaged, but my sweater hadn’t been cut at all. I now consider it my lucky sweater. Best of all, there was no blood and no injury! The most lasting effect was that feeling that you get when you happen to hesitate before you pull into an intersection and that’s when the speeding truck runs the red light. It was close, WAY too close, and I’ll have to be much more careful in the future if I want to keep my most important ice sculpting tools, my hands, in good working order.