Shot myself with the nail gun on Friday. Three and a quarter inch spike sunk to the head in my calf.
Descending ladder with tool in hand instead of two hands free - check
Holding trigger when carrying gun - check
I got away with a simple flesh wound for some serious carelessness. Do I feel stupid? Yes. Very relieved I did not hurt someone else. A little carelessness nullifies years of experience.
Not using a sequential trip, I see. 
Ow ow ow! You’re sure it’s a simple flesh wound??
I ever so slightly chipped a tooth with a crowbar.
How it was so precisely aimed as to do that and not knock half my teeth out (or miss entirely) I do not know . . .
That sounds excrutiatingly painful. Sorry that happened to you and here’s to safer ventures in the future.
OWOWOW!!! That sounds really painful. The blow to your pride must be pretty harsh too. All those years of being safe, then doing something you KNEW you shouldn’t. I’ve made a few safety mistakes myself. Thank goodness I was the only one hurt. Nobody can call me stupid better than I can.
Hal Briston may like sex with sheep, but I think you’re the first Doper to admit to nailing a calf.
Heh! I am surprised no one at the job site came up with that one.
It really didn’t hurt much at all, I heard the gun go off and I felt a dull ache in my leg but I thought it had just ricocheted off until I saw the head of the nail. I did not try to walk - I am sure that would have hurt. Doctor yanked it out after an X-ray; no pain killers till I got home and took some ibuprofen. I expected it to hurt a lot more, and I do not suffer pain lightly.
The worst part is I know I must have been careless for some time and a much worse accident could have happened; I am just lucky it didn’t.
Count yourself (relatively) lucky. I saw a documentary a few years ago featuring ER patients, in which they interviewed a pissed-off-looking guy lying on a gurney. He explained his situation: nail gun hanging from ladder or some other object, with trigger pulled, he backed into it, and it fired a nail into his rib cage. Nail sunk in below the surface, coming awfully close to his heart; he was going to have surgery to remove it.
This was bound to happen after they lifted the federal ban on high-capacity nailguns.
On the plus side, you are entitled to say the line It’s only a flesh wound.
Complacency is such a dangerous thing, and one of the hardest things to deal with when it comes to workplace safety. It’s amazing how years of experience and training tells us what is and isn’t safe, but sooner or later our brains tell us “well, nothing’s happened yet…” and off we go and do something stupid.
Now take the opportunity to review the correct way of doing things and endure the eyerolling from your coworkers as you remind them of this (even though they already know it!) in the hopes of avoiding a more serious accident!
I’m glad it wasn’t too serious!
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Ouch! You got me beat, but I have a similar story of carelessness. I was working for a friend and we were doing some remodeling in a school. At his direction, I was standing on the very top of an eight-foot step ladder (you know, the part that has big letters warning THIS IS NOT A STEP!) while reaching up with a nail gun to secure a metal stud to a beam overhead. I didn’t feel the ladder wobble at all, nor did I feel like I was ever off-balance, but before I knew what happened I had fallen through the drop ceiling (heh) and was on my butt on the floor, nail gun still in hand. Fortunately I had only minor cuts and bruises to show for it, but I was a LOT more careful after that.
Did you just spackle over the hole?