Every experienced woodworker has a shop injury story. Not a catastrophic one – those are rare, and if you’re reading this you’ve presumably avoided them – but the minor injuries that happen when you’re tired, distracted, or rushing. A chisel slip. A splinter that needs to come out properly. A flying chip that made it past your safety glasses. A router bit that caught an edge and sent a shock through your hands. The question isn’t whether you’ll have shop injuries. It’s whether your first aid setup is ready when you do.
The minimum kit, based on reader input and common shop injury patterns: a full box of bandages in multiple sizes (fingertip bandages are particularly useful – the hardest place to keep a regular bandage in place). Sterile gauze and medical tape. Tweezers for splinters. Eye wash solution in a squeeze bottle. Instant cold packs for crush injuries and bruises. Nitrile gloves (primarily for finishing chemicals, secondarily for wound care). A pair of clean scissors that never leaves the first aid kit. All of this fits in a medium-size plastic box and costs about $30.
Location is as important as contents. The kit needs to be accessible in under 30 seconds from any position in the shop, with one hand (injured people often have one compromised hand), and without navigating past machines or obstacles. Mount it on the wall at a visible, unobstructed location near the shop entrance. Put it where a panicked person who has never been in your shop could find it without searching.
Reader and ER nurse Lisa adds one item our standard kit doesn’t include: a tourniquet. “In a serious hand or finger injury, a tourniquet applied immediately and correctly can save a digit or a life. Most people don’t know how to use one. Learn before you need it. It takes 20 minutes to learn and might matter once in your life.” This is advice worth taking. What’s in your shop first aid kit?