Due to a silly accident last week with a sponge, some disc break cleaner, a spinning rotor and a lack of concentration i am now left with a bit of a buggered right middle finger. I chopped off the last 3\4 of an inch which was then reattached but that hasnt worked so im having it taken off again tomorow which will leave me with a middle finger about the same length as my little finger!!! I know…. im a knob!

Just wondered if anyone else has a similar thing and what effect it has on riding your bike. I was thinking i may have to swap my levers round euro style so im using my better hand for my front brake. Any advice other than the obvious of “dont bother cleaning you brakes in future as your clearly not to be trusted with such complicated tasks”, would be appreciated. Ta.

bet that hurt.

Ernie TINA! if its not hurting its not working!

this may not help but braking wise i find i grip the bars with my smallest two fingers and pull the brakes with my index fingers, so that affliction wouldn’t affect that much. you may find otherwise. also, ouch!

Yup me. Bike upside down on handle bars and saddle. Front wheel spinning after getting rotation with water from hose pipe gripping nobbles on the tyres. Spotted a chunk of mud on the caliper. Insert finger to brush off. Wheel comes to a dead stop. Pull finger out and tip from 8mm down is hanging off with blood dripping down my hand. Luck escape tbh as any higher would have lost the tip. Finger bone which got chipped in the process prevented severage. Healed really good. Got a scar and lost some feeling, but jobs a gud un.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/sliced-finger-in-disc-re-constructive-surgery-on-wednesday-ouch

Ouch! 🙁

You have my full sympathy – I chopped the end of my right index finger off when I was a kid, but was lucky enough to have it stuck back on more-or-less straight.

If you get your brakes set up properly so you can use a single finger to stop, I don’t reckon you’d take too long to adjust to riding again once everything has healed. From what you’ve described you won’t actually have lost all that much gripping surface, really. Good luck, hope everything heals up quickly and as well as possible.

I lost about 10mm of my index finger about 7 yrs ago in a similar incident but I hasn’t affected my riding / braking ability so unfortunately can’t be of much help :-/
I’m sure you will find or adapt your braking to keep on riding.
Heal well.

Thats it over 1 week after. Sorry if anyone went a bit funny.

From the title it sounded like you’d found a bit of finger on the trail and were looking for the owner!

Apart from swapping levers around perhaps play with the lever position so you can gain better purchase and adjust for less reach?

Swapping levers does sound like a good idea, just be careful of endos until you get used to it

Two fingers on (non dominant) right hand lost in lawn mower blade interface 25 years ago.

Hurt a bit!

Dropped first pint afterwards in pub!

Handy when ordering halves 🙂

but shite when sticking twos up at someone

I smashed my hand up a few years ago. Still got all the fingers but a couple of them are pretty useless, in fact when I get tired one just hangs out and catches on things. Anyways, its surprising how well you adapt with what you have left. Do some exercises and strengthen your hand before you start messing around swapping levers that sounds more dangerous to me !

Porius- I still have the second ‘bird’ finger intact:)

Ahhhh thats a relief bud 😀

Not me but my dad. Many years ago (I was too young to remember) he got his finger between the big ring and chain of his road bike whilst cleaning it upside down.

He has a cool “zip” scar around his forefinger on his left hand now.

Ohhhhh that sounds so sore. I’ve knicked mine in the past and am always wary now.

When I was about 5 I caught three of my fingers on my left hand in the sliding door of an old Bedford camper. They managed to stitch the tops back on, but the nail bed on my ring finger is split and a bit gruesome, pinkie and middle fingers are misshapen and the nails are very brittle. They get a bit numb when its really cold.

Good luck with your surgery.

Didnt realise how many clumsy people there are. I dont feel quite as stupid now!

my cousin is minus tip of thumb and all of fingers just below 1st knuckles due to motorbike chain incident…ouch indeed!

Yup me. Bike upside down on handle bars and saddle.

That’s your problem right there.

hehehe, but I wasnt changing a flat tyre 😆

If they let you take the remnant home in some formaldehyde you can keep it as an ornament for your mantelpiece.

Had a phone call last night to say that a colleague had half a finger bitten off by some bloke he was trying to arrest 🙁

not yours!

Bez, I just retched at that. Nice.

I bust my little finger across the joint playing cricket, and the bone regrowth has messed up the joint so I can only bend it about 30 degrees. Means I can’t make a proper fist and if I get a handful of change in my right hand the little coins fall out of the bottom. You adjust, i always put my change in the other pocket now. I suspect you can adjust to 1 finger braking easy enough, that’s all many use now anyway.

A friend lost a bit of a finger but could have been much worse.

Lubing his motorcycle chain – bike on paddock stand, started it and put it in 1st gear to let the idle spin the rear wheel. He got too close to the rear sprocket and his fingers got dragged in by the chain.

Lots of re-constructive surgery later and I think he’s fine (not seen him for ages).

Bez, your nails are minging <sticks fingers down throat smiley> 😯

half my right little finger missing from a motorcycle accident in my early twenties. Clipped a roadwork sign at about 80mph and finger was gone, compound fracture arrived.

I can’t hold a handful of M&M’s without some of them falling out of my hand. Its bad.

My dad had his middle finger taken off at the first knuckle by a spot welding machine.I dont think it stopped him doing anything, and he had this weird claw nail thing that grew on the end.

i fully crushed the end of my little finger bone splintered into lots of bits on my left hand in feb and its still painful now it was going to be removed but it started to heal straightish so they left it got most of the movement back but no feeling :oops:hope you still have movement and use of what they leave

Just recovering from my third op since September on my left little finger. Smashed it on a tree at afan. The bone closest to your palm smashed all the wayin half length ways all the joint smashed as well. Had 7 screws and a metal plate fitted, removed and now sorting out tendons. You get used to it and soon learn ways with out trying. I’m a joiner and you just adapt.
Don’t worry to much.

The gulls probably ate what I left in a seacliff in Pembrokeshire when I slipped and fell a while back 😉

pah, thats nothing, my dad can beat the lot of ya!

He build a working replica musket as a lad but when test firing it for the first time forgot to take his thumb of the charge hole and promptly blew half his thumb off!!!!!

Amazingly he then spent his entire working life as a well respected, well qualified engineer!!!

A friend of mine cut his thumb off doing the motorbike paddock stand/chain cleaning thing. They reattached it, but he has no feeling in it. Grim.

You’ll be fine, you’ll adapt!

Not a finger. But my old man lost an eye when he was about 18. Incident with nail and claw hammer.

I have to say the disk brake finger slice/chop seems to be a fair common incident (or at least its something that crops up on here with some regularity). Disks are great in all sorts of ways but theres only one thing thats going to happen if you get your fingers anywhere near them

Knowing my enthisasm for things that spin, and sticking my hands where I shouldn’t when I was a kid (had a nasty incident with a rotory clothes line – and ran my hand into a set of foil rollers in my dads silversmithing workshop) it makes me shiver a bit to think of folk on here that have got young kids and bikes in the house.

This is my hand.

Fingers by h4muf, on Flickr

Struggle to hang on on fast rough descents!

My dad lost his thumb and the tops of his first two fingers trying to get a kite down from power lines with a fishing rod :roll:. Hes rubbish at playing xbox.

Guy from work was mowing his lawn, he was standing on a grassy slope uphill of the mower. Feet slipped, he landing on his backside and the mower promptly chopped off a toe. He was wearing sandals…

i lost my little finger on my right hand, down to the 1st knuckle.
i was splitting a bunble of 20m steel beams with a splitting hook, i place a timber under just has the hook slipped off.
my finger end was inmy glove when i removed the glove.
plastic surgeon made a very nice and tidy job of repairing it.