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Comment by c141charlie | Hacker News Reader

True statement. I lost a finger tip in a mandolin making potatoes lyonnaise. It mostly grew back. However, it has never felt the same. It's like the nerve endings in the finger tip throw unhandled exceptions. Some say properly cooked french food is worth it. i agree.

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As an accident-prone home chef myself, I highly recommend a pair of kevlar "cut gloves" for anything involving a mandolin, peeler, or grater. They're just a few bucks and can save you a lot of tears.

I took the pad of a finger off while drying my mandolin blade after washing it the first time. These gloves are a must whenever the mandolin is out.

(For anyone keeping track in this thread: the sliced portion has feeling, but no finger print, it all looks like scar tissue. The urgent care doc used a gelatin sponge (gelfoam) to stop the bleeding. Dunno if that explains the outcome)

Seconded. I also lost a fingertip to a mandoline when slicing potatoes. On Xmas eve, just as guests were arriving. And oh boy did it bleed!

My fingertip took over 3 years to regain full feeling, and it's still slightly flattened compared to the rest of my fingers. (I made the front page of reddit with an animation of the regrowth!)

Since then I bought cut gloves because I'm now semi-phobic about using the damn thing without them.

As somebody who has also lost a chunk of my finger to a mandolin (regrew including print) this thread has convinced me that mandolins are just not worth it.

The warning I give to family members who use my kitchen is "if my mandolin takes your finger, it gets to keep it." That usually discourages them.

In practice, use bear claw technique (you might catch a knuckle but less flesh to lose), and use either a stop or a cut glove.

Link to the animation?

> I lost a finger tip in a mandolin making potatoes lyonnaise.

I had to look this up because I only knew of mandolin the instrument and not mandolin the cutting tool. It did give me a very interesting mental image, though.

My first thought was: how hard to do you have to strum it for that to happen?

How long is never? I have some cuts with nerve damage that slowly improved (or was it my brain gradually learned that the different feeling is not foreign?) over many many years, like more than 10. No serious ones on my finger tips though.

I had an all-the-way through my palm cut that also went the full length top-to-bottom. There were various "dead/numb", "tingly", etc, parts for 16 years, that all sort of went away in the last year of that 16 and felt normal from then on.

Interestingly, that’s quite similar to what developing a new sense of smell was like after nose surgery! I haven’t smelled burning rubber from a cup of tea in a few years so it’s nice that the brain/nerves finally wired themselves up properly.

What is the nature of the exceptions? Does it feel like something is still undefined?

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