Man shoots nail into chest

[bazooka]

Ouch.

Man Survives After Shooting Nail Into His Chest
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Oct 20, 10:48 AM (ET)

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man building a shed accidentally fired a nail into a major artery near his heart on Wednesday but survived after emergency surgery, medical officials said.

The 3-inch nail had lodged in the 35-year-old man's aorta, the body's main artery leading from the heart, said a spokeswoman for John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast in the tropical northern state of Queensland.

He is still alive.

More of the story can be found here.
http://reuters.excite.com//article/20041020/2004-10-20T144810Z_01_SYD17043_RTRIDST_0_O...AILGUN-DC.html

[Shocker Milwaukee]

I gotta find the link to the story of the mexican immigrant who fell off a roof onto a nail gun. He took six or seven nails directly into the head...and he lived too.

[CoasterCreator]

I remember that idiot they showed a x-ray and you could see the nail in his head....they need to do it right ...

[CoasterCreator]

ok found it http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4909827

[jimmalenko]

I left the Gold Coast on Sunday gone. I think I saw this bloke. We drove past a clearing which was getting a concrete slab poured. There was some guy making himself concrete floaties

[Shocker Milwaukee]

ok found it http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4909827

That's the one.

[tgpo]

....How exactly would you do that? Was he firing the nail gun towards himself?

[glockjs]

its kinda like when your a kid and you learn to use a knife and not cut TOWARDS YOURSELF

[Guest]

I gotta find the link to the story of the mexican immigrant who fell off a roof onto a nail gun. He took six or seven nails directly into the head...and he lived too.

Go called to read a head CT last summer, where a guy got a nail staight down in his noggin. I talked to him in the department. No pain, no neuro deficits- the guy was just freaked out He lucked out be cause it went right between his cerebral hemispheres. No significant brain tissue here,only veins. They cut the board around the nail,so he had a piece of board nialed to his head

[fritzi93]

....How exactly would you do that? Was he firing the nail gun towards himself?

He probably slipped and still had the trigger depressed. Most nailguns are contact tripped, so....

A good many years ago I somehow nailed my boot to a roof I was putting on, nail missed me. :P But one very cold winter some unseasoned wood was frozen stiff. When I tried to nail thru it into another structural member, it deflected. Through the thumb on the hand holding the wood.. Not really quite as bad as it sounds, happens all the time in construction. But guys who manage to do the aforementioned, well, how about nominating them for The Darwin Award?

[ZAPPER]

About the six nails in the head. In over 20 years of construction work I have seen some shit. I know a little about air nailers. IMO this was no accident. On most nail guns you can keep the trigger squeezed and bump the gun against the surface to be nailed and the gun will shoot. This makes for some fast nailing when you can hit the gun against a firm enough surface. Sometimes the gun will fire twice if you don't hold it tight enough to the surface and let it jump a little while not fully squezing the trigger. Usually you push the gun into place and pull the trigger and one nail is shot. When a nail gun misfires or double hits, it happens so fast that the nails almost go into the same hole or the second nail ricochets off of the first. If you are not holding the gun with authority it can hop or recoil and land back on the surface and shoot again this what happens to most people that double shoot. I dont use the big framing nailers every day, but I have never heard of one misfiring more than twice in a row. Although I have not examined the skull of the victom and I am not a doctor, the x-ray looks like it is showing quite a large spread and different angles of nails. I would figure that even if the gun went fully automatic (which I don't think can happen), the nails would be much closer together and pointing in the same general direction and along one path from start to finish.
Maybe the guy had it comming to him(thats pretty harsh, because this was attempted murder) But something is fishy here.

[lordsmurf]

[fritzi93]

Yes, it's odd, even suspicious. But I won't venture to say it's absolutely not an accident. You're right about the double tap, that's common. You know, I have a number of nailguns, some contact trip, some sequential. They're pretty rugged and simple, it's hard to figure six shots.

But employees have f**ked them up somehow on a regular basis. Goddam retards sometimes sit on a roof at lunch break shooting at birds. They hold the trip back and BRRRRUPPP. A bird would have to be extra unlucky, though, it's pretty low velocity, doesn't go all that far either. Not much energy transfer unless it's in contact with something. Sorry, off on a tangent.

The Aussie guy, that's an accident. The Mexican? Hell, I dunno, too weird.

[ZAPPER]

fritzi93
I wasn't going to admit all the stupid shit that I have done with a nail gun. I got a picture or two of one of my men with an 1 1/2 18ga brad thru his index finger. I showed him how to pull the saftey back with one hand and shoot.( I guess I should have explained the part about keeping your finger away from the exit) I do mainly trim, But I have played with just about every size and make of nail gun there is, never shot my self yet (not counting nails curling back out of the wood and into my fingers that I knew might get hurt) I think that the Mexican had a better chance of hitting the lottery than "accidently" getting shot in the head six times.
Oops, forgot, did shoot myself in the thigh with a roofing staple gun once. That shit hurt! It looked like a snake bite with a 5" bruise around it!

[thecoalman]

I know a guy that happened too.... He was framing and put his hand behind a rafter and shot from the other side, Guess the gun was too high or whatever, anyway it went right through the palm of his hand, they had to cut the rafter to take him to the hospital. Saw this mentioned above where the guy had the board still on his head, same thing here. It has to be pretty funny some times working in the ER when you see something like that.

Here's my constuction accident story, we were demolishing parts of a old factory and were using a forklift to put the material in a dumpster. I get the forklift by the dumpster and it ran out of propane. I decided to climb the lift to push the material off while this old guy went to get a new cylinder. While I'm climbing he decides to let it down because it's too high

If you've ever look ed at forklift you'll know it's like telescop, with my feet and hands on the parts that come together. Basically where my feet and hands are is like a guillotine. Luckily I saw it coming and move both my hands and one foot out of the way, the only other option was jumping. So now the front of my foot is stuck in the guillotine part (the guy stopped when I started yelling). No fuel in the forklift and the the new cylinders are pretty far away. I ended up being stuck there for quite a while.... The foreman is trying to keep me calm, just relax he says. I'm always pretty calm and have a level head but there were a few choice words spewing from my mouth It just broke my big toe, they did have to operate on it though. I was lucky, probably would have chopped my fingers right off it had gotten them. The moral of the story is you ever break something and have to go to the ER and the nurse wants to give you shot of demmerol in the arm tell her to "get fucked" because your arm will hurt a hell of lot more the next two weeks than whatever you broke.

[northcat_8]

Damn If he had just died he might have made the Darwin Awards.

Not you coalman, aorta boy in the original story.

[thecoalman]

Damn If he had just died he might have made the Darwin Awards.

Not you coalman, aorta boy in the original story.

Kind of hard to die from a broken toe....errrrr smashed toe

[richdvd]

agreed.

[Dr. DOS]

Those nail guns are very dangerous.

They have an auto mode so when the tip touches a surface boom, the nail gets shot.

A contractor I wroked with a few years back tells me a story of being on a roof and shooting a roofing nail accidentally through his big toe



Now roofing nails are different ... they have a 'barb' that stays intact with the nail. Helps keep them from coming loose. So, they jut couldn't pull the nail out. So he's nailed to the roof... they had to go underside and from the attic cut the barb off and then yanked the nail out of his toe... ****, that must have hurt.

My brother shot a 1 1/2 inch brad nail (20 gauge) through his thumb. He was holding some wood together and shot the nail in. It hit a knot in the wood and 'took a right turn' right into his thumb. This does happen... I was shooting some 2 1/2 brads into same casing and it hit something in the wood and shot out 90 degrees from my placement. I never hold the wood within 3-4 inches of the nail guns tips. If I do I use clamps.