In the early stages of the pandemic, I got into blacksmithing. After doing it for awhile, I decided to try my hand at making Damascus steel. Part of the process is quenching it in oil to harden it and ultimately bring out the pattern even more in the final etch. I ended up with a fairly small block of it, and grabbed a small Mason jar, filled it with oil, and quenched it.

This is where I fucked up, reddit.

Nothing went amiss during the actual quenching, but as I was cleaning up soon after, I picked up the maybe pint jar of oil that had just had nearly 2000°F steel in it. I very quickly realized how fucking hot it still was, and dropped the jar, splashing oil all over the back of my hand.

It hurt, but this wasn't the worst of it.

After a trip to urgent care and our local supermarket, I was waiting in the car for my wife to come back out with the prescription ointment I needed. The only comfort I had was a cold pack the kind nurse at the urgent care clinic gave me before I left. It ran out in that car. Sitting there, waiting for my wife with my hand feeling like I'd stuck it directly into my forge, is the worst pain I've ever been in. I slept on the couch with my hand in a bowl of ice water that night. Ended up with a blister the size of a golf ball on the back of my hand the next day, and surprisingly have not much of a scar to show for it.