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I've almost gouged out my eyes with the spikes on top of Cities of Death buildings, but the worst I've ever gotten is a poke from a spear or spike, and the inevitable nicks from x-acto knives.

One of my dad's historical wargaming friends replaced all the bayonets on his minis with needles because he was tired of people picking up his minis by the model instead of by the base. They learned to pick them up by the base pretty quickly.

Worst was I nearly took the outer tip of my left-hand finger off-the nail saved a small sliver of skin to keep it flopping about. Nurse gave me about 4 stitches, and I went about my way.

Only direct model injury I've gotten was the spike on the back of a Carnifex Crushing Claw stabbed into my thumb.

My worst injury occurred early on in my model-building days. I was assembling a Hellhound tank (the old metal and plastic hybrid model) and ignored the advice to cut AWAY from my hands. Smash cut to a hobby knife getting lodged in my thumb and a nice long spurt of blood that splattered against my mom's couch and wall.

The real injury was to my pride as I explained to my mother how and why I bled all over her living room.

Plenty of sliced fingers with the hobby knife. Glued fingers and impaling feet on 2nd ed grots with the pickelhaube helmets. Bloody sturdy those things!!

I forgot, while I was cleaning some models in the kitchen sink I used an exacto to pick some of the paint from cracks. My roommates were in the living room. About five minutes into my work, they heard me call out "can somebody get me the first aid kit? It's exactly what you think happened". Audible sigh from one of them, as she got up to procure me a bandaid.

If you put too much superglue on a model and are thinking of blowing the excess off, don't do it when the model is basically shaped like a parabolic reflector. Superglue in the eye *really* hurts...

Also, having to run to the bathroom holding your eyelid away from your eyeball so you can irrigate your head under the bath taps for 10 minutes and avoid blindness is undignified. Definitely the stupidest model related injury I've had.

Reading this thread before sleeping can't be healthy for me.

In 10 years or so of modelling and playing, the worst I've managed was a short, shallow cut along my thumb after I got pissed off trying to carefully extract a magnet and tried attacking it with clippers. Turns out that the force required to remove clippers from a rare earth magnet can propel said clippers rather farther than you might think once released.

Aside from that, I've had worse injuries from accidentally resting my hand on a pot of freshly-sharpened pencils standing point-up in a pot than I have hobbying.

Edit: I've actually had worse injuries whilst playing. Back in December I managed to lacerate my thumb on my tape measure as I was thinking. Gaming centre didn't have a first aid kit--legal shadiness aside--but fortunately, my opponent had a small one in his car.

I modded a Wraithlord to look like Pinhead. While drilling out his face, I pushed my pin vice through the face, then into the underside of my thumb, deep enough that is hit my thumbnail from underneath.

 carldooley wrote:
I use Zip Kicker on my models, so no getting them stuck on my tongue, but I have burned myself with the chemical reaction instead.

If anyone wants an improvised hand warmer, put a couple drops of zip kicker onto some crazy glue and wait for it to solidify. It gets rather warm. amusing when you use it to clean up spilled glue. Less amusing when it's on either of the quicks between finger and nail.

I set myself on fire once with super glue. It has a VERY vigorous reaction with natural fibers, like papertowels. Or denim. I had a big brush pot of loctite, which I knocked off the table and caught, upside down, when it hit my leg, and bunch of glue hitting the leg of my jeans. At that moment, I was like, 'gak! I've just ruined my jeans!' And thent he spot that had contact started getting _really_ hot. Then it started smoking. Then I was getting them off ASAP as they started smoking more.

I'm betting most of the wounds were inflicted by dark eldar metals, and chaos metal and plastic minis. Spikes everywhere. Combine that with the annoyance of dealing with metal minis, especially having to cut the vents off and flash off which can stab you by themselves, and you have a lot of room for pokes. It's a good idea for me to use cutters to remove the parts from the sprues, as every time I start to use an xacto for that, I wind up slashing my hands. Razor cuts heal fast and clean, though. A lot of my chaos minis have demanded blood during their construction.

4th Edition Warhammer goblins - reach across the table to get a different pot of paint, arm comes back with half a dozen goblin spears embedded in it....

Also, good ol' Chopping Board Thumb. I bought one of those mould line scrapers and now lose less blood.

Superglue in the eye *really* hurts...

Yikes, thats a scary one alright. Im super paranoid about eyes!

Years ago, I opened up my WHFB Mounted Chaos Sorcerer blister to find the top of the model's staff had been broken off. I filed down the broken ends of the two pieces and took my pin vise, with a fine bit, to begin repairs. The little bugger "skipped" off the model right into my thumb and broke off. Darned Ruinous Powers! Went to ER, had X-ray to confirm it was down in there...it was...and had it dug out. Thank God for good insurance coverage.
Binned the model out of principle and bought another.

Was cutting bits of a Stegadon off the sprue and stabbed the modelling knife into my forefinger, apparently it was very close to hitting the bone and I still have a scar there, my own fault of course, so now I'm super wary of modelling knives in general

Goblins from the WFB 4th edition box set. Trying to remove casualties was a painful experience...

 Bookwrack wrote:

 carldooley wrote:
I use Zip Kicker on my models, so no getting them stuck on my tongue, but I have burned myself with the chemical reaction instead.

If anyone wants an improvised hand warmer, put a couple drops of zip kicker onto some crazy glue and wait for it to solidify. It gets rather warm. amusing when you use it to clean up spilled glue. Less amusing when it's on either of the quicks between finger and nail.

I set myself on fire once with super glue. It has a VERY vigorous reaction with natural fibers, like papertowels. Or denim. I had a big brush pot of loctite, which I knocked off the table and caught, upside down, when it hit my leg, and bunch of glue hitting the leg of my jeans. At that moment, I was like, 'gak! I've just ruined my jeans!' And thent he spot that had contact started getting _really_ hot. Then it started smoking. Then I was getting them off ASAP as they started smoking more.

In the early 80s (early high school for me) my science teacher taught us about accelerant + superglue reactions (he was a firm believer in real-life examples of chemistry) during the class on "exothermic reactions". Cotton balls + superglue + zip kicker. !woof!

Battlefront German half-track. My sprue cutters broke and I was struggling to find good replacements at time so I figured I'd just skip the "cut a but away from the model" step and go straight to "cut with the knife so it's flush" step. Been using knives for years, been in the hobby for decades, what could possibly go wrong?

Knife doesn't want to go through one of the hull attachment points, not paying attention to where my other hand was I push a bit, completely predictable slash to fingertip ensues. It was actually a fairly long cut, but thanks to it being very thin a bit of washing and band-aid squared it away and it was a week before it healed without any visible scar.

Replacing the sprue cutters became a higher priority for some reason (which they eventually were).

Oh yeah, we've all had the supergluing fingers together or the craft knife in the finger tip....the real injury tho is what this hobby does to my bank account

Wow, you guys are bloody. The worst I have is a number of very shallow cuts on my fingertips from my hobby knife. Nothing worse.

I was holding an Ork on the edge of the table while I tried to pry an arm off with an Exacto knife. The arm popped off and I stabbed the knife into the top of my thigh! I reflexively pulled back causing a 1" deep and about 3" long gash in my thigh. I figured I was in shock, because there was no pain? I called my wife who is a nurse and told her I might need a ride to the Emergency room . 27 stitches and a couple pints of blood later and still no pain? Turns out I cut right through a nerve and there is a permanent spot about 4" wide and 8" long on the top of my thigh that has no feeling.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Wow, you guys are bloody. The worst I have is a number of very shallow cuts on my fingertips from my hobby knife. Nothing worse.

Obviously most of these Dakka members who have injured themselves are faithful devotees of Khorne

Stabbed my thumb pretty badly with an exacto maybe a year ago...blood allllll over the couch (ya its a white couch so it was kind of noticeable).
I try to be extra careful now haha
With an actual model I've stabbed myself with the sticky bits of a hellpit abomination a few times...hate that haha

I was putting together one of the new Genestealer Cult figures from Deathwatch Overkill, and didn't notice the fellow had quite the tongue. Stabbed myself rather painfully, and it hurt for days!

Seems somewhat appropriate somehow...

With the rules for LoS, I had a buddy who tried to get "down" on a model to check for LoS to an enemy model. His model he was checking was one of the new (at the time) dark eldar raiders. He took one of those mast tips right in the eye. We had to take him to the hospital.

 quickfuze wrote:
With the rules for LoS, I had a buddy who tried to get "down" on a model to check for LoS to an enemy model. His model he was checking was one of the new (at the time) dark eldar raiders. He took one of those mast tips right in the eye. We had to take him to the hospital.

Honestly pretty funny though....the person at the hospital asking what happened probably was like "WUT"

 pancakeonions wrote:
I was putting together one of the new Genestealer Cult figures from Deathwatch Overkill, and didn't notice the fellow had quite the tongue. Stabbed myself rather painfully, and it hurt for days!

Seems somewhat appropriate somehow...

Well, now we're going to have to quarantine any future children you have until we're sure they're free of Xenos taint...

Way to bring down a Hive fleet and end the world for everyone else man!

 ChainswordHeretic wrote:
I was holding an Ork on the edge of the table while I tried to pry an arm off with an Exacto knife. The arm popped off and I stabbed the knife into the top of my thigh! I reflexively pulled back causing a 1" deep and about 3" long gash in my thigh. I figured I was in shock, because there was no pain? I called my wife who is a nurse and told her I might need a ride to the Emergency room . 27 stitches and a couple pints of blood later and still no pain? Turns out I cut right through a nerve and there is a permanent spot about 4" wide and 8" long on the top of my thigh that has no feeling.

I did something similar, but not as drastic.

I was rebasing some Epic Terminators while talking to my wife so not paying attention+fiddly model+ very sharp knife=oops. Of course the knife slipped and cut deeply into my thumb, I really should have gotten stitches but I couldn't be bothered.

The worst bit though is that I have severed a nerve so I now have much reduced sensation in the tip of my thumb, one half of it is essentially numb. I think I may be getting some feeling back now though, either that or I have started to get used to the weird feeling when I pick something up with my left hand.

Last week I stopped my buddy from poking his eye out with the Archaon's wings. I didn't get into GW stuff until last year, but some of that stuff is sharp

War Kitten wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Wow, you guys are bloody. The worst I have is a number of very shallow cuts on my fingertips from my hobby knife. Nothing worse.

Obviously most of these Dakka members who have injured themselves are faithful devotees of Khorne

Indeed all those dirty heretics

pancakeonions wrote:I was putting together one of the new Genestealer Cult figures from Deathwatch Overkill, and didn't notice the fellow had quite the tongue. Stabbed myself rather painfully, and it hurt for days!

Seers somewhat appropriate somehow...

Even more heretics! And yes now we all get turner into gren goo

The worst model releated injury I have had is when I was assembeling the metal Chaos Slaaneshi lord on foot for Whfb when I started my WoC army. It elluded my attention that his sword was quite sharp, proced to me having a sword embeded in the palm of my hand