: Another problem I discovered was that in the wild I would have

: My wife is a surgeon and taught me a trick after a chisel slip left me with a
: deep cut in my finger. It needed two stitches to her eye and instead of
: going to the hospital she told me to get a big mixing bowl of very warm
: water and add some liquid soap. She had me put my hand in the solution
: until the bleeding stopped. About 20 minutes. No pressure was applied. I
: healed up quickly and with little pain. No stitches needed. I cant say it
: would work for every wound but it sure helped in my case.

: Jim

That couldn't have worked in my case. The skin had torn and there was a flap that was about the size of a Canadian two-dollar coin. I knew I couldn't just bandage it because the flap was moving all over the place when I flexed my knuckle. I added one stitch to the middle of the flap to pin it into place then stitched on either side until it was properly closed. I'll keep your wife's ide in mind for my smaller cuts. Lord knows, I get enough of those in a year. I suppose that if my cut wasn't a ragged tear but a nice slit that idea may have worked well. In this case, I would most certainly have tried the butterfly sutures. The neatness of the laceration determines the method of repair.

Now, if only I had some of those pieces of copper wire left over from my last S&G project, I could have saved the cost of the suture, those little things are expensive. Mind you, I think I would have been a bit giddy about drilling those 1/16" holes with a dull bit.