You probably have had a few
splinters in your life, "Ouch! Where's a
needle?", and that works pretty well. Heat the end of the needle with a match to
sterilize it, stick the point under the big end where it went in and open up the
entrance hole, then grasp it with a pair of
tweezers. Okay for little ones, but this will address your
industrial strength,
professional grade splinters.
The worst ones are from the
jagged end of a split
piece of wood. When they enter they leave
multiple spears in your
finger (the usual location although the
palm is vulnerable too). The problem is that if the splinter location is at a
grasping surface, the
body will form a
callus over it to protect itself. This works for a while, but eventually the skin will crack at the site because the
intergity of the skin is disrupted by the callus material.
Direct pressure will reveal these splinters as the little points contact the
pain sensors. This kind is often on the sides of the fingertips at an angle.
It takes the right tool to do the job right, for splinter digging I find a
#11 X-acto blade works well, a sharp point and a cutting edge although a
mat cutter blade works well too. The best tweezers I've found are an
inking tip from a
drafting tool set, remove the
screw that controls the width of the ink line and you have a
stainless steel grabber that is easy to
control. I'm sure that
physician's surgical tweezers would work well, but they aren't too available. The wide, dull,
pluck your eyebrow style are generally worthless.
The first order of business is to get rid of the callus over the splinter site. The
pain receptors don't grow in the callus, so if it doesn't hurt you can cut or rip the callus away (
sharp or dull dissection). When it hurts or
starts to bleed, then you are getting close. The
wood bits are almost always too small to be
grasped, but making the
wound bleed is the key. You can't be a
wussy, you've got to dig til it's raw, by then it's usually
aching and throbbing too. Then stop. The
blood will dry and the
scab will form, and when it does, it will surround the
little splinter ends. As the skin heals, it will re-form from the inside moving the splinters out towards the surface away from the pain sensors. What works best is an
every other day schedule.
Dig, bleed, heal for a day. Test by pushing on the spot. If it still hurts, dig again. When you tear off the scab that has formed, it will take with it the little ends that have been
encapsulated by the scab. I have had
little daggers up to an eighth of an inch come out this way, but mostly this is the only way I've found to get out those tiny killer bits. After 8 or 10 days of this routine, chances are you aren't going to want to dig open the spot any more. That's okay, but if you stop the callus will form again and when you start again you have to taake the callus off again first. Also when you stop digging for a while, the skin will heal and you can see the
wood pieces in there that have been
stained dark by your blood.
This probably sounds
gross or like
self mutilation, but to many
workers, splinters are
an unfortunate side effect of the job. I worked for years as a
carpenter and digging splinters out was just an
unfortunate aspect of the work. When I met my
wife, she was working in a
redwood mill as a
grader and even though she wore
gloves, her hands picked up tiny
redwood pieces. After work we
de-splintered together. Redwood will usually
fester though and create an
infected spot within a few days, the body seems to want them out quickly.
Douglas fir (the most common
construction lumber here in the West) is relatively
benign to the body. Even though I haven't worked
construction for quite a while, I still get some splinters that come to the surface and
demand my attention.